Observer column 15 March 2024

On 8 March, International Women's Day, I was delighted to be invited to speak at the Women's Voice Festival, 'Here Me Roar'.

All across this town there are amazing women running businesses, art and theatre projects, campaigning for better housing, supporting refugees, running energy coops, and leading charities. Many of them attended the festival as well as an earlier celebration of women leaders at East Sussex College organised by Jane Hartnell, the Chief Executive of Hastings Borough Council.

In the statutory sector, the chief of police, the police and crime commissioner, our MP, the principals of East Sussex College, the Chief Fire Officer at East Sussex Fire and Rescue, and both our chief and deputy chief executive at Hastings Borough Council are women, but when it comes to political representation on the council the picture is not so good. I am only the third female leader of Hastings Borough Council. Just ten of our 32 councillors are currently women and at East Sussex County council the ratio is even worse with only 14 women councillors out of a total of 50, and just one in a senior leadership position.

It's becoming more and more difficult to run a local council, especially when we consider that councils must still lead in so many areas: looking after the streets, collecting rubbish, tackling homelessness, trying to deliver on the climate emergency, and managing green and play spaces among many other services. Our council would greatly benefit from more involvement from the community.

If you care that the voices of women and girls should be heard when we're discussing how to make our streets safer or our sports and play facilities more inclusive then we need your presence in the room when funding decisions are being made. If you care about your community and want to make sure women's voices are heard in council chambers, please consider standing as a councillor. A  much more diverse councillor body would help ensure that we listen to everyone when making decisions about how to spend our increasingly limited funding, so that it can go to those who need it most.

The landslips that occurred in recent weeks are still having a huge impact on the affected residents' lives. A task force has been set up with a dedicated resident liaison officer to ensure good communications with residents and to offer support and advice and to devise a long-term plan. We, alongside other councils in a similar situation, are lobbying central government for proper funding to tackle what will be an ongoing problem as we learn how to live with extreme weather due to climate change. This needs to include financial help for residents as well as councils.