Next week we will finalise the budget for the council. The good news is that, thanks to hard work by officers to identify additional savings after years of government cuts to our budget, Hastings Borough Council is NOT going bankrupt. The situation is still challenging, requiring savings of £3.9 million because of the expenditure required for the 500 people we still have in temporary accommodation. At the moment there simply isn’t enough housing available at prices local people can afford. And this doesn’t cover those we don’t have a duty to house, mostly young men, who have to rely on the very committed but overstretched voluntary sector who are working hard to tap into any available funds to provide housing for rough sleepers.
Across the country the number of social-rent houses has not kept pace with those removed from the market by the right-to-buy legislation, so there are fewer and fewer houses at rents the average person can afford. In Hastings the council is addressing this by buying up houses to provide temporary accommodation. Over the next three years, however, 813 affordable houses will become available, of which 327 at social rents. Beyond that we have over 700 empty homes here in Hastings which, with the right incentives, could be housing local people. Excellent new legislation, passed last November, allows councils to double the council tax paid on empty homes after they have been empty for only one year rather than two. As well as being socially irresponsible, empty and derelict homes are a blight on local communities, making some streets look unloved and abandoned. We need to find ways to use this new small income stream to advise home owners on how to bring these properties back into use.
Deputy leader, Councillor Glenn Haffenden, and I recently met the team at Interplay who run the adventure playground on Broomgrove Road, to learn how the Parks Fund, as part of the Shared Prosperity funding, had paid for improvements to the area. These include a lovely new inclusive swing which whole families can pile onto.
Central government has allocated the meagre Shared Prosperity funding to all councils to help replace the many funds we used to be able to access from the EU for such projects. In Hastings the previous administration focussed this funding on Broomgrove in an attempt to make substantial changes in a single long-neglected area. This was a good move, but there are still challenges to ensure 1) that residents are properly listened to so that their priorities for the area are at the forefront of future plans, and 2) that the key partners, from the County Council to the NHS, are all working together. If we can get it right and join up all these different agencies and budgets, we might have a good model for future efforts to tackle the long-term health challenges of our town.