Firstly, I’d like to thank the people of Hastings for putting their trust in our Green candidates. It’s clear the electorate were ready for a fresh start. We feel honoured and energised by the challenge. It’s good, too, to see that our council of 32 members now includes 14 women ― not yet parity but closer than it’s ever been. I am also pleased to welcome Yunis Smith as our first Muslim councillor. We are, however, a completely white council and all parties need to ensure that changes at the next election.

All group leaders will no doubt want to thank any of their councillors who stepped down this May or were not re-elected for their service to the town. Claire Carr sat as an Independent for her last few months as a councillor, but we valued and will miss her passion for serving and giving voice to the seldom heard in her ward.

Four existing councillors have been re-elected to serve their residents but we also have 12 new Green and Labour councillors. The energy for change was palpable in the room at their induction last week, and I would like to thank the existing councillors who participated. Your experience and guidance will be invaluable in the coming months. I also want to thank the officer team who put together the induction. The ‘jobs fair’ style worked well and set the tone for the good partnership we anticipate, with councillors setting the vision and officers making it happen. 

Let’s make sure we embed continued learning and reflection in that process so we can all be challenged to do our best and innovate in what continue to be financially tough times. 

Jane Hartnell and her team also deserve thanks for delivering a well-run election count and also dealing with the water outages across much of the town over the May bank holiday weekend. I have sent everyone an update on the lessons learnt and the letter from Southern Water laying out the frankly derisory offer of compensation to residents. Under the regulations Southern Water apparently aren’t required to offer the standard £30 for every 12 hours of water loss; instead a community fund of £500,000 is being offered plus £120,000 for festivals, schools and to compensate the Jack in the Green festival. I think we can all agree that this is a derisory offer and much less than would be available via the normal compensation process. I welcome councillors’ thoughts and feedback to offer to Southern Water before the 28 May. 

The senior team at Southern Water have agreed to attend a special full-council meeting to answer questions from councillors and to inform us of what investments they will make to address the various infrastructure failures. The S19 report has recently been issued and leaves many questions unanswered. We will set a date for the meeting when we know the availability of the SW top team. 

We have much to do. After the sudden change in leadership in January, We agreed to delay devising the new four-year Corporate Plan until after the May elections, and we have committed to that being a fully cross-party process. 

A major priority is putting our own house in order. The last few years have seen challenging reports on both the council’s finances and its audit processes as well as a number of bad decisions. We need to demonstrate that we have learned from past mistakes and put new systems in place that ensure rigorous and transparent decision making. I welcome the input of the new Audit and Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

Hastings can be a place where residents are proud of their town and feel safe, valued and heard; where housing is available, affordable and energy efficient, and people can live healthy fulfilling lives. 

Tackling the huge health inequalities in our town has to be at the heart of everything we do. Because human and planetary health are intertwined, these ambitions go hand in hand with tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis. We welcome initiatives for a local Poverty Truth Commission where people with lived experience can offer advice for an anti-poverty strategy. Work was stalled on plans for a Health, Equity, Wellness and Prosperity Plan for Hastings due to lack of capacity. We need to find ways to restart that plan as part of a new regeneration strategy for Hastings with a major focus on improving skills training for young people. Recent research by young people funded by Connected Futures identified lack of suitable training opportunities as a major gap in provision for young people.

The following are some of the important projects already in process:

Improving the quality of our housing stock and that of social housing providers and the private rental sector will make for improved health and cut carbon emissions. Lack of proper insulation is one of the biggest contributors to the town’s carbon footprint.

A variety of funding streams will help us tackle the temporary accommodation crisis. This will improve lives and save the town £5.6 million in temporary accommodation costs. A long-term housing strategy will include a new licensing scheme for the private rental sector to improve standards and housing quality.

The long-awaited asset management plan will lay out a process for both understanding the value of our assets and ensuring their best use in the future. 

Investors are needed to bring cherished but deteriorating assets such as St Mary in the Castle back to life. 

Hastings is lucky to own many large green spaces and parks and we need to harness the new income stream potential from such sources as biodiversity net gain and carbon credits.

In the coming months and years we will be moving forward with some exciting capital projects, including an upgrade of the Hastings Castle and West Hill Café. The aim is to have this work complete in time for the major international festival in 2027, led by the French region of Normandy, celebrating the 1000th anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror. The major town centre public realm and ‘green connections’ project as well as future work with Homes England could leverage new investment in the town. I am keen to ensure that that all such projects should be community led, and that we attract the kind of investment that allows public assets to stay in public hands for the long term.

This of course must be integrated into essential flood prevention work for our town centre which will be led by Southern Water. The modelling for this is due to be completed in July, and we will be working hard to ensure plans are formulated as soon as possible and integrated into an updated storm water management plan for the town. A local climate adaptation plan that addresses the extreme weather we are already experiencing and the resulting floods, landslips and water contamination is a major priority. I have created a portfolio for this which includes the development of a plan to tackle it. In fact, climate action is threaded through every current portfolio.

One strand of the ten-year Long Term Deal for Towns is connectivity: how to get from here to there in the town. This could be a catalyst for a step change in the provision of infrastructure that encourages people to walk and wheel as well as improving our bus network to move people away from private car use. 

All of these strands of investment mean it is essential that we have a sustainable events and tourism strategy for a town where tourism is such a key part of the economy. In these financially straightened times, imaginative solutions will be needed so I am keen to harness the energy and experience of our cultural leaders and event organisers to devise a future plan.

We are blessed with many voluntary groups who work on everything from keeping our beaches clean to greening the town and growing food. We need to make sure they feel appreciated, and work with them to keep our town clean and well cared for as well as working toward increasing biodiversity and the number of street trees.

The Local Plan informs every strategic decision, from where, and to what standards, we build new homes, to how we protect our green spaces – so it’s essential we get it right. We will be asking for input from all councillors before it goes out to final public consultation later in the Autumn.

I think you can see that we have much to be getting on with together. I am confident that the transformation process that we will be focussing on in the next few months can turn us into the more agile, open and enabling council that we have to become in order to meet the challenges to come.