Across the country our public infrastructure is at breaking point. In Hastings one of the starkest indicators of that is our broken housing market which is about to break the council’s finances with a forecast spend this year of £5.6 million on temporary accommodation.
It is surprising then that one of the council’s responses to this is to sell off housing land that could provide fifty-four affordable rental properties and a route to a secure home for at least some of the 520 households currently in temporary accommodation, many of them miles away from family and friends. The council claims that these sites could be built out faster by social housing providers, but there is no guarantee that these building plots won’t be snapped up by private developers who seem to have a knack of wriggling out of their obligation to build affordable homes.
Selling off this land – and the expensively-restored York Buildings – on the open market will also mean that around £460,000 will need to be paid back to Homes England now none of these sites can be used as new council homes. And what about the costs of hundreds of hours of wasted officer time trying to deliver these schemes? The council has justified borrowing money for housing acquisition to save money on temporary accommodation costs: why does the same not apply to building these houses?
Meanwhile, in another part of what should be part of our public estate, public protest has forced the rail companies to extend the deadline for their ‘consultation’ on the mass closure of England’s ticket offices to 1 September. In Hastings alone there have been three protests this month, all supported by Green Party councillors and members.
These closure plans, which transport secretary Mark Harper is understood to have ‘pushed’ rail firms to adopt, is expected to lead to the closure of almost 1,000 English ticket offices within the next three years, with the loss of over 2,000 railway station staff.
According to its own website, Southeastern (which runs the Hastings and St Leonards offices) is proposing ‘for all ticket offices to eventually close’ subject to a public consultation, and for all closures to ‘take place over the next two years’.
As the railworkers union, the RMT, has noted, the closure plans will significantly worsen passenger service, accessibility, safety and security.
They will also lead to de-staffing of stations. This is because the arrangements for ticket office opening hours are the only statutory regulation of station staffing. So, as the RMT explains, ‘Once the ticket offices are gone and the regulations no longer apply, there will be a further bonfire of jobs that will only serve the interests of corporate profits.’
And such de-staffing will clearly make our public transport system *less* fit for addressing the climate crisis by discouraging many people from using the train rather than a private car
Passenger watchdogs have already received over 315,000 responses to the consultation, and the companies are clearly feeling under pressure. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to add your voice before 1 September by visiting https://tinyurl.com/save-our-ticket-offices.