Archery Gardens: When Hastings Got an Arrow in the Eye

Hex News Team

Archery Gardens is an almost-completed housing development in St Leonards. It used to have Hastings College on the site, and before that it was Victorian landscaping with some fancy houses. The 117 homes we see now on the site were built by local Battle-based developer Gemselect, in partnership with one of the main housing associations in Hastings – Orbit, which manages a lot of social housing across the country.

So far, so normal. A local developer, a not-for-profit housing association – it could also seem heart-warming. But this development is part of a bleaker tale, as some of you will be well aware. Various interests around town, and particularly neighbours of Archery Gardens, were concerned about the appearance and potential social impact of any new build from the very beginning. Save the Archery Ground (STAG) and the Burton’s St Leonards Society led the charge on there being less housing, and new builds being more in keeping with “the historic core of St Leonards-on-Sea” (it is right next to a conservation area). There’s also a pretty comprehensive Hastings Online Times account of Gemselect’s more recent planning alterations and attempts to squeeze as much profit from the site as possible.

But what doesn’t seem to have been much discussed is the involvement of Orbit in what ultimately became a very profit-driven, if not necessarily profitable, housing development.

Orbit and their previous partner, Gladedale, made a deal with Hastings Borough Council (HBC) that the site would host 56% affordable housing, a majority of which would be for rent. On the basis of this promise HBC agreed not to impose legally-binding Section 106 conditions – this is the mechanism councils use to enforce socially beneficial contributions from private developers during the planning process, whether that’s offset payments for the carbon impact, affordable homes or children’s playgrounds. According to the leader of the council at the time, HBC understood that not imposing section 106 conditions likely allowed Orbit to apply for substantial amounts of money in public grants, which HBC thought would help the project to be delivered.

HBC went around town telling everyone who was trying to oppose the development – don’t worry, it’s fine now, we’ve got it sorted, you can trust them. The opposition of course included STAG, which had been complaining as loudly as possible about Gladedale’s competence and likely financial capacity.

Planning permission was secured, but Gladedale was going bust. In 2015 the site was sold on to Gemselect, and Orbit soon after dropped their affordable housing offering to less than 26% – the level usually demanded from any private developers – with only 12 for affordable rent and the rest as expensive shared ownership houses for sale. Apparently they didn’t even do a viability assessment to show why it needed to be dropped.

What happened to Gemselect’s commitment to help “deliver much needed affordable housing in the local community”? What happened to Orbit being a not-for-profit, to its “vision”, namely “we believe everyone is entitled to a good quality home that they can afford, in a place that they are proud to live”? Who knows. It seems like the only conclusion is that it was all bullshit to begin with, designed to fool HBC into granting favourable planning conditions for a (perhaps quite badly thought out) money-making scheme.

Since the development started, the housing crisis has only got worse, but HBC has gone through a substantial changing of the guard – with new housing officers and new councillors running things, and they all seem to have forgotten that Orbit charmed their pants off and tied them to the bed, only to loot everything that wasn’t nailed down and jump out the window. It wasn’t that many years ago folks, you don’t have to be that forgiving. In fact, at this point it’s not being forgiving, it’s just being incompetent.

As Gemselect now approach the last stage of the development – the section which should be their big pay off – they’re not treating their existing or prospective private customers with much respect either. The local MP has already been called in for a meeting between the developer and residents who are angry at the poor build quality and shoddy maintenance. So much for “treading in the footsteps of Decimus Burton in St Leonards”, as their website proclaims.

The remaining flats just about to go on the market are small (Gemselect recently got permission to cram in another five on top of what had been originally planned, and none are bigger than a two bed), have little or no view, and sit cheek-by-jowl next to and overlooking the properties built in the earlier phases. Because the developers can no longer benefit from the Help to Buy scheme which the government ended last year, Gemselect are forced to provide their own version of the scheme, offering to lend first time buyers the deposit to try to tempt people to pay the crazy price they are charging. The average price for a one bed flat is £296,000. A two bed is £350,000. It remains to be seen if they will even be able to offload them.

Meanwhile, in the Orbit-run properties, tenants are complaining of damp and maintenance issues, which shouldn’t be present in new builds, and has apparently become standard behaviour for this town’s housing associations. One tenant said Orbit has put scaffolding up ten times to try to fix problems with their roof, which implies Orbit are already spending substantial sums to correct build flaws. Despite this, and even after a visit from Helena Dollimore MP, residents say their demands still aren’t being satisfied.

And it’s because of situations like this that we’re having a Protestival at the old Bathing Pool site on 13 July… because communities in Hastings need to unite against the developers that are so content to abuse us. Whether at Archery Gardens – where the leeches are almost full and about to drop off – or at younger sites, like the bathing pool, like Sandrock Bends, like the proposed redevelopment of Four Courts and Clifton Court. At every turn, these companies only show an interest in profit, and care nothing for the people their work is supposed to serve, or the town they’re operating in.