On 29 March, Hastings Assembles held a community assembly for two hours in Hastings Town Centre, for local people to meet and discuss the planned changes to local government, including the plan to abolish Hastings Borough Council and bring in a new elected mayor for all of Sussex. The afternoon kicked off with Julia Hilton, leader of Hastings council, explaining the overall…
News
News in Brief – Observer – 19/04/2025
Merlin Betts This week it feels like reminders of the obvious. Roadworks go on well past their timeframe. The pier might get slightly less noisy – maybe. Ill-conceived housing schemes push onward under Labour’s national encouragement. Southern Water embarrasses itself, and Helena Dollimore quotes facts and figures according to her latest sealed instructions from Labour…
Voices of Southern Housing: Four Courts – the Loss of an Icon
Simon Lee, secretary of Hastings Area Southern Housing Tenants’ Association, reflects on the living situation in a local housing association estate. Anyone who has lived in the Four Courts will know that the most frequently asked question of anyone is ‘how long have you been here’? When I arrived just over a year ago, I…
Funds to tackle homelessness head to Hastings
Lizzie Beck It might take a minute for this to sink in. The latest statistics from a report carried out by homelessness charity Shelter reveal one in 64 are homeless in Hastings. Both shocking yet oddly unsurprising, these figures lay out in black and white the genuine crisis hitting our town. The cause for the…
Unite for our rights in Hastings
Alan Mathison, Hastings Branch Secretary, Unite the Union Have you ever thought about joining a trade union? The Hastings branch of Unite the Union is holding our Annual General Meeting on March 12th and we want to open it up to anyone in the town who is interested in finding out what our union is…
What future for the Four Courts?
Grace L. Image: tenants’ protest July 2024 One Tuesday morning in February, tenants in the Four Courts flats in Hollington got a hand delivered letter inviting them to a meeting the very same day with their landlord, Southern Housing. The meeting would be about moving them out of their homes within a year. The whole…
A democracy worth defending?
Grace L Our local borough council is being abolished. It’s a done deal apparently. At the moment we have a local borough council in Hastings that makes decisions on a number of important issues – such as planning permission for new developments and dealing with homelessness – and a county council with a vastly bigger…
Debenhams with Moxie: That’s One Way to Get Noticed
Words: Merlin Betts, Photos: @sonskaphotographystudio Cold winter sun in the town centre, the occasional ray of light and heat caught by a winter jacket, or touching a frosty face. It’s a Saturday, and among the steady flow of shoppers, drinkers and cafe enthusiasts, people are stopping to read freshly printed copies of Hex, wet paste…
The Closure of Hastings’ own Factory of Funds
Looking at the plywood boards that now cover our town’s promised wonderland, Lizzie Beck is just left wondering. Where did our £400k go? And where’s Willy?I could be justly accused of overegging the pudding by describing the town centre Debenhams building as iconic, but perhaps I’m fair in saying it’s now a monument to mismanagement,…
Fighting for freedom in Palestine – Fighting for free speech in the UK
Grace L (picture by Palestine Solidarity Campaign) Every time I think I have become hardened to the relentless suffering in Palestine, a new report will punch me in the stomach with the sheer injustice of it all. Last week it was a video from a community activist in Al Mawasi filming his return home after the…