Observer Column 28 May 2025

This column has been written by Cllr Glenn Haffenden, who was elected as leader of the council at Annual Full Council on Wednesday 14 May 2025.

I am delighted to have been elected as the leader of Hastings Borough Council, it is an honour to have this opportunity to lead the council for the coming year. I am keen to carry on the great work Julia has started with collaborative working right across the council. 

All the Cabinet members at the council play an important role in how the council runs. During my time as leader, I’m keen for you to hear more from them, so over the coming months each of them will be taking a turn to write about their particular area of the council in this column. 

As well as being leader, I am also the lead for housing, community wellbeing and sports. This covers lots of the council’s priority areas. Alongside balancing our budget, ensuring all our residents have a safe and secure place to call home is our main focus in our new Corporate Plan. I am really proud of the work being done by our housing team to improve housing in Hastings. They’re working on a new housing strategy and are asking anyone who lives, owns property, works or studies in Hastings to give their feedback – visit our website to find out more and have your say. 

I was excited to get to the Bexhill Road site where we are going to be building the first council homes for several decades last week. As well as building new homes, we’re also buying properties to help reduce our temporary accommodation bill. This is where most of our budget goes, so reducing how much we spend on housing will really help us balance the budget for the future.  

I’ve also been able to see some of the new homes being built by Orbit and Southern Housing at several sites around the town. Working with our housing associations to resolve residents’ problems takes a lot of my time, I want to hold them to account so they provide high quality homes. The work to regenerate the Four Courts is just getting started so I’ll be keeping in touch with Southern Housing to watch how that develops. 

Sport and leisure is also really important, we are lucky to have some amazing sports facilities in our town, and our Active Hastings team do fantastic work at getting out into the community. I’ve been out and about visiting lots of places in the last few weeks, including the award-winning tennis courts at Alexandra Park, talking to Freedom Leisure about the different things they offer, and meeting some of our sports clubs and organisations. 

The community wellbeing part of my work covers community safety and licensing so I work closely with the police and always want to know how we can help people feel safer in our towns.