Observer column 8 November 2024

Next week on Monday 11 November, Southern Water are returning to the council chamber to share their investment plans for Hastings with the public as promised at the meeting in July. They will be covering their five year plan from 2025 to 2030 to reduce the risk of water outages, as well as flood prevention and lowering sewage discharges. You are welcome to attend the meeting and submit questions. As a council we are committed to holding Southern Water to account and ensuring they deliver on the investment so badly needed to their infrastructure in the town. They have also committed to regular updates on progress.

At the cabinet meeting this week we heard the results of the consultation on the dog beach ban and agreed to remove the summer beach ban on Rock-a-Nore and the Stade beach. This gives a fair balance between dog free and non dog free beaches right along the sea front. We will be enforcing these dog free areas rigorously from April to September and expect dog owners to be responsible in clearing up after their dog and keeping them under control on the beaches where they are permitted so both dog owners and non dog owners can enjoy the beaches together. We had the biggest ever response to a public consultation for this with over 2800 responses. I am really pleased that so many people took the time to respond and hope we can build on the learning from this to ensure other consultations are publicised as widely as this one was. We are keen to find the best ways possible of hearing residents’ views on all council matters. This week I and my Deputy Leader Councillor Glenn Haffenden are starting regular drop in sessions at supermarkets across the town to make sure we make ourselves available to as many people as possible and hear their concerns. This week it will be the Asda at Silverhill, we hope to see some of you there!

This week’s cabinet also saw us agreeing fees and charges for the coming year. As part of this we also agreed to remove the booking fee for our event spaces for community groups and not for profit events. We are so lucky in this town to have so many groups willing to put on events and festivals for free so I am pleased that we have removed this barrier that meant groups on a tight budget had to find another hundred pounds a day to book our spaces.

In wider news, I welcome the government’s budget commitment to greater funding for tackling homelessness but it was disappointing to see no increase in the local housing allowance rate.  This urgently has to change as currently there is no private rented housing available at or below this rate and is a major cause of people presenting as homeless.