An open letter from Hastings Green Party to the people of Hastings and St Leonards.
Hastings Green Party is ending the cooperative alliance it formed with Labour to run Hastings Council.
After Greens won three additional council seats in May 2022’s local elections and took the council into No Overall Control[1], Green and Labour Group leaders agreed to run the council together, with two Greens[2] and six Labour cabinet members serving under a Labour leader. This arrangement was working well. Openness and transparency were growing.
However, the agreement has been hanging in the balance for weeks, because the national Labour Party has threatened the local Labour leader, Cllr Paul Barnett, with expulsion if he doesn’t remove the two Green portfolio holders from cabinet. Cllr Barnett has now bowed to this pressure, which changes the terms under which we have been so successfully working. He is being forced to run what will be an unstable and inefficient minority administration.
That national Labour Party officials should wade in and pull the strings of the local Labour group with no thought for the best interests of the people of Hastings and St Leonards shows a complete disregard for local democracy. Clearly the national Labour Party cares more about its own internal rules than the lives of people in our town and places little value in parties working together.
We cannot continue an alliance in which Labour rules bar Greens from holding leadership roles. So, with huge regret we are ending our cooperative agreement. The national Labour Party has made it impractical for us to do anything else.
We call on local Labour councillors and members to protest in the strongest terms against this sort of high-handed behaviour on the part of their leadership, and to defy national Labour diktats that go against the interests of local communities.
We are proud of what our Green lead councillors have achieved in the short time we have been in cabinet. Julia Hilton, as lead on Natural Environment and Climate Change, has worked tirelessly with officers to bring grounds maintenance in house, which will enable us to deliver a more nature positive and less expensive approach to looking after our gardens and parks. She has also started to build partnerships with local businesses to accelerate our town’s transition to a zero-carbon economy. Glenn Haffenden, as lead on Urban Environment, also hit the ground running, and has committed Hastings to convert our waste trucks to HVO fuel, slashing carbon emissions and improving the air we breathe. In addition, he’s set up a partnership between HBC and local housing provider Optivo to tackle fly-tipping, and started action days with Optivo to educate residents about waste and recycling.
Green Group Leader Julia Hilton says ‘Hastings Borough Council faces a severe financial crisis with possible threats to services. Hastings residents face a winter of hardship and increasing insecurity, so we need to work together for our town. We call for a cross party meeting to identify a way forward.’
[1] The 32 seat council is now made up of 15 Labour, 12 Conservatives and 5 Green.
[2] Julia Hilton (Old Hastings) took the cabinet post of climate change, environment and active travel, while Glenn Haffenden (Tressell) took Urban Environment.