Love Hastings (the town centre Business Improvement District) has been running a survey for a few days to get a feel for the ways people in Hastings feel a new £20million fund (spread over ten years) could help make the borough a better place.
If you’ve not yet seen the survey you can complete it here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/20million
Based on over 200 initial survey responses (enough to see trends emerging), here are the common themes and priority areas for spending that are getting support:
Priority Areas for Spending Money
The survey responses indicate a clear emphasis on several key areas for investment:
- Regeneration, High Streets and Heritage: This category consistently emerges as a top priority. Projects in this area aim to revitalize local spaces through improvements to infrastructure, green spaces, cultural assets, and by supporting businesses and digital connectivity. Specific initiatives frequently mentioned include:
- Improvements to town centers, neighborhoods, and high streets, encompassing both capital expenditure and running costs.
- Arts, cultural, heritage, and creative activities, projects, facilities, and historic institutions.
- Investment in digital infrastructure for local community facilities.
- Incorporating green spaces, community gardens, and natural features into wider public spaces.
- Non-domestic energy efficiency measures and decarbonization in local businesses, high streets, and community infrastructure.
- Community Safety and Cohesion: This area focuses on initiatives to address crime and anti-social behavior, enhance town center management, and promote community togetherness. Key mentions include:
- Tackling anti-social behavior, crime, and minimizing reoffending.
- Improved town center management.
- Crime reduction initiatives.
- Measures to improve community cohesion.
- Volunteering and social action projects.
- Housing: Projects under this theme are directed at providing safe and sustainable housing, supporting vulnerable populations, modernizing social housing, and improving energy efficiency in homes. Popular ideas include:
- Helping reduce home energy bills and improving the energy efficiency of homes.
- Providing safe and supportive environments for people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping.
- Modernization of social housing.
- Improving the attractiveness and liveability of homes and their surroundings.
- Providing support for healthy and climate-resilient homes.
- Work, Productivity and Skills: This category encompasses initiatives aimed at fostering employment opportunities, supporting local businesses, developing skills relevant to the local economy, and boosting the visitor economy. Frequently cited initiatives include:
- Support for the visitor economy, such as local attractions, historical trails, cultural tours, campaigns, and related tourism products.
- Skills provision tailored to local opportunities and skills gaps.
- Business support and networks for smaller businesses and social enterprises.
- Support to improve awareness of, and access to, local provision that moves people closer to and into sustained employment.
- Education and Opportunity: Projects in this area focus on supporting young people’s development, reducing child poverty, assisting families, and growing the local social economy through learning and development initiatives. Initiatives mentioned often include:
- Support for families and young children.
- Support to reduce levels of child poverty and prevent negative impacts on children and families.
- School-based programs to support young people’s development.
- Community-based learning and development.
- Growing the local social economy, including community businesses, cooperatives, and social enterprises.
Specific Ideas Put Forward
Respondents also provided detailed ideas for utilizing the funds, often highlighting specific concerns and innovative solutions:
- Public Realm and Cleanliness: Numerous comments emphasized the need for a cleaner, more attractive town. This includes better waste removal, more frequent street cleaning, increased bins to combat litter, and major investment in public realm elements such as street lighting, bollards, pavements, and street furniture. Suggestions were also made for more low-maintenance trees and revitalizing seafront decorative lighting. The sentiment is to “Fix the little things and the big stuff will follow” to instill pride in the population.
- Addressing Anti-Social Behaviour: Many responses highlighted the urgent need to tackle anti-social behavior (ASB), crime, and reoffending. Specific areas like Priory Street Car Park and Cambridge Gardens were mentioned as hotspots for fighting, assaults, drug use, rubbish, and fly-tipping.
- Cultural and Arts Spaces: There were calls for a new gallery/performance space in the town center to support Hastings’ creative community. The restoration of St. Mary in the Castle into an operating theatre/arts center was specifically suggested. One respondent suggested opening St. Mary’s Castle as a zoo or reptarium, a place with multiple exhibits for exotic plants and reptiles, to attract more visitors and increase the town’s status.
- Tourism and Heritage: Ideas included investing in tourism development and information offices, revitalizing a “grotbusting” scheme, and heritage building maintenance training. Repairing Hastings Castle was also suggested, as it has fallen into decay. There is a desire to make the seafront and town center attractive again to encourage visitors and provide income for businesses.
- Housing and Homelessness: While housing was broadly supported, some respondents noted that the £2 million fund might be too small to significantly impact high-value housing, suggesting a focus on improving existing housing stock and providing affordable/social housing instead. The need to provide safe and supportive environments for people experiencing homelessness was also highlighted.
- Transportation and Accessibility: Suggestions included better bus infrastructure and improving pathways for accessibility, such as to Station Plaza medical center.
- Community Engagement: One detailed idea proposed an annual “social action weekend” where the community could come together to improve their homes and buildings, with discounts on supplies and evening events to foster pride and community spirit.
- Specific Building Regeneration: The regeneration of the old Debenhams building was suggested, potentially transforming it into a major art hub, performance space, music studio, or youth club. Another idea for the Debenhams site included a mixed food court and shopping concession.
- Financial Sustainability: One comprehensive idea suggested using a small portion of the £2 million to set up an agency that would issue fines for littering, leaving trash on the beach, smashing bottles, and especially illegal pavement parking. The respondent estimated that Hastings Council misses out on £30-40 million per year in potential fines from illegal parking and proposed using AI cameras to enforce this, thereby generating significant funds for the community and reducing reliance on centralized government funding.
- Local Businesses: There was a sentiment that there are too many art and expensive cafe restaurants and not enough useful places for affordable essentials. One idea was to help businesses with reduced rates to encourage larger stores to return.
The survey responses collectively underscore a strong desire for tangible improvements in Hastings’ appearance, public spaces, and safety, coupled with continued support for its cultural heritage, tourism, and addressing fundamental social needs like housing and employment.
DETAILED RESPONSES
The full list of what people have said so far is as follows:
RESPONSES TO ‘OTHER” UNDER GENERAL THEME PRIORITIES
- Better bus infrastructure
- Better sustainable travel
- Building new homes
- Clubs and activities made for people with disabilities
- Combining different aspects in layered projects, eg using artists to make high streets more beautiful, or training volunteers to make housing energy efficient do they can build careers after
- Could some of this money be used to support a 3rd term on Love Hastings BID on behalf of businesses and services?
- Effective specific support for substance users, including funded rehab
- Hastings and St.Leonards on sea is in a mess.
- Help local businesses with modifications
- I think investing in regenerating the area lile they have done in Folkestone, cleaning up litter in streets, ensuring attractions like the Pier and large buildings like OWENS or the cafe by St Leonards Station, the Azur, or St Mary in the Castle, are invested in and not just left unoccupied for years, and introducing things like a tidal pool (similar to Margate) and an indoor food market or lido/sea lanes like in Brighton will then encourage more people to visit and therefore bring more money to local businesses and the council which can in turn be invested in things like skills, education, housing etc which are also important. Investment in venues such as these will also build a stronger community and cohesiveness which could reduce crime rates and provide entertainment for younger generations and jobs/employment. By tackling e.g. upskilling and education first, without making Hastings somewhere people want to stay, they will just move elsewhere after being invested in.
- Improve parking facilities. I hear of so many people who will not come into Hastings due to parking difficulties – lack of parking and cost so they go elsewhere..
- Improve youth proving. More MUGA’s
- Improved public transport
- Keep and maintain green spaces for wild life and environment
- Local Tax on 2nd home/Air BnB owners
- More services promoting option for change, be it from addiction, support from prison, forced, mental health etc.
- Pelham Crescent Parade, improvements
- Permanent homeless shelter
- Please note that I’m saying this from the point of view of a motorist : Parking enforcement cameras in St Leonards in order 1) To keep cars from parking on pavements, and 2) to prevent parked cars from holding up bus routes on London Road and Norman Road.
- Practical shops and businesses. There are far too many Art and expensive cafe restaurants that common people can’t afford and not enough useful places for affordable essentials.
- Projects to tackle the radicalisation of young boys on the internet and general extremism against minority groups.
- Provide better cycling infrastructure off main roads, try out some cycle areas only, put in 20 mph streets around schools, some cycling pods for cyclists living in flats and others as many bikes are being stolen at this time. Introduce some age friendly toilets in cafes to allow everyone to utilise a toilet who really needs it . Think about mapping toilets for Hastings and St Leonards. Safe areas for young people to go to . Have a pop up Tourist kiosk in Towncentre or by the station. Make the walk way made by walkers by Station Plaza into a real constructured walkway from Station plaza down to pedestrian crossing . As many people cannot walk all the way round . Thank you
- Provide safe spaces for teenagers to get together (youth clubs)
- Rail and road improvements (for drivers)
- Seeing this list makes me realise how hard a task this is OF COURSE the are all important – of course they’ll all make life better for people who need it. I’ve would like to tick them all but where is the point in that? What a difficult choice.
- Sewage clean up and environmental services
- support for teens and young people
- Tackle the trash problem. Have volunteers and cleaners go through all the down town areas and remove rubbish daily. Doesn’t matter if seagulls do it or others, it needs to be removed!
- Tackling anti-social behaviour, violence, crime and drugs on our streets.
- The flower beds, and gardens, bring them all back, it’s so sad, they used to be so lovely
- The most important thing is to make the town centre more attractive and welcoming to visitors, so that they bring money into the town.
- The seafront desperately needs to be more attractive to visitors, to bring tourism/£ to the town. This will mean small, independent businesses will thrive and, thus, so will Hastings…
- These are all valid ideas and should be supported. But how about rather than just spending 2 million pounds a year you use that money to set up an agency that hand out fines for those who litter leave trash on the beach smash bottles and most importantly parking on the pavements.
- We need industry, something that employs local people, something with is specific to the area. There is no point in supporting families with housing etc if they have no work to upkeep. Tourism is big pull to the area so looking after high streets, heritage etc is important, however we also need out of season work options.
SPECIFIC PROPOSALS
A weekend every year dedicated to social action in Hastings would be a chance for the community to come together, roll up their sleeves, and make a real difference. Whether it’s fixing broken fences, painting worn-out walls, or planting greenery, everyone would be encouraged to spruce up the outside of their homes or buildings. To make it even easier, there would be discounts on paint, plants, and supplies for anyone involved. The weekend wouldn’t just be about hard work; in the evenings, the town would come alive with music, food festivals, and other activities that bring people together. It’s all about creating pride in our surroundings, making the streets cleaner, brighter, and more welcoming, while fostering a sense of ownership and community. Hastings has some streets that are frankly disgusting; it’s time to take action and make this town a place we’re all proud to call home.
£20 million isn’t a lot of money. Areas like education, skills, and employment are (strictly speaking) the responsibility of central government, so I think this £20 million should be spent elsewhere, on areas that are usually overlooked. Culture and tourism are good things to concentrate on as they drive regeneration: artists and creators move into town, visitors spend money and thus support local businesses. An arts and creatives market would be good. Also, a proper town-center music hub would be nice, with rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, a cheap recording studio, etc. (like the Acoustic Couch in Bracknell).
A contribution for all seafront properties and shopping areas (e.g., Kings Road, London Road, Queens Road, Town Centre) to be well maintained, with shops painted and windows cleaned. Too many places look grubby and uncared for. This will help tourism.
A fully inclusive building regeneration project to provide new social housing or community space, which also builds community and develops skills among participants. Improvements to the town center (including sustainable flood defense measures) and a central community focal point are also needed.
A gallery/performance space for Hastings, somewhere in the center of town. With so many creatives here, there is a distinct lack of amenities for them to share and sell their work.
A space to house the fabulous automata collection—shown on the pier in 2018 (20,000 people in 5 weeks)—it would be a great addition to the town’s attractions.
Abandon all the grandiose plans and just tidy up the whole town. Regain control of the pier, tidy up amusements and swan boats, reinstate the public path between amusements and swan boats, get on with the George Street building site and the Deluxe building refurbishment. Abandon the ridiculous net-zero targets and restore some pride in the town.
Appointment of a person to personally sell Hastings to businesses, encouraging them to develop empty spaces and take up usage of empty shops and offices, paid by the appointee’s results.
As an older person, I want to sit down at nice seating with green planting surrounds. I want signposting to beautiful, clean toilets with an attendant. Also, make it easier to travel to Station Plaza medical center as it needs a pathway I can use better. There is a path I use, but it’s made by the community. The Hastings Station area needs to work better, and coming down into town, it’s a dead space that Havelock Road makes very depressing; it needs someone to paint the buildings bright! There are lots of dead spaces which need planting and seating. More information kiosks (pop-up) for tourist information in different areas. Plus, one interactive screen with information at the station: things to do, things going on.
As mentioned above, I’d love everything on the list above to have funding. I think improving the appearance of our town could help with many other issues about crime and lack of opportunities. I was saddened by the ‘failure’ to push through the ambitious plans for Havelock Road. If this could have become bus and pedestrians only, like Eastbourne, it would have been a huge improvement. I worry with any big capital/community spend how much money is wasted on funding proposals that then get canceled at a later date.
Better secondary school provision, with decent Ofsted reports.
Clean up all the graffiti, including the Warrior Square toilets building. Murals look awful and are a sign of poor maintenance.
Crèche/childcare options so that parents can engage in services like Active Hastings and use the gym and do wellbeing activities through charities like FSN and EFT.
Finding a permanent solution to the unsightly rubbish bins that immediately have a negative effect on the street scene.
Flower beds and rubbish collection, street cleaning. Note: bins emptied more often.
Focus on using our facilities better; St. Mary in the Castle and the Pier should be in local ownership.
Funding for tourism development and an information office. Funding for a revitalized “grotbusting” scheme and heritage building maintenance training. Seed funding for a botanical garden.
Funding for youth centers.
Funds must not be used to look after people. Rather, they should be invested in initiatives that empower them to care for themselves.
Green Skills Training, Retro Fit Training and Support, Community Energy Initiatives, Renovation of Community Spaces, Parks and Gardens preservation and improvement, Bus Travel support (infrastructure, information, vehicles).
Hastings and St. Leonards-on-Sea are dirty. The swan ride pond on the seafront is an eyesore. No one ever goes on it. And if you fell in there, you’d be so ill. The land could be used in a better way to attract visitors to the seaside. The rides are old-looking and are never open in Old Town. Hastings and St. Leonards-on-Sea have the worst pavements. They are not mobility or pram friendly. We need to get some big businesses to open up here for employment, e.g., an Amazon warehouse. Also, we could do with a shopping park like Arthur Green in Ashford. Everyone I know goes clothes shopping in Ashford. No money is spent in this town, as there’s nowhere to spend it. We don’t need any more barbers or shops that don’t sell anything but seem to survive on government handouts. There are a few things that I think about.
Hastings is primarily a historic seaside town and has always relied on visitors to increase revenue, but in the last ten years or so, this has been ignored by councillors. The whole shabby seafront and town center should be made attractive again to encourage visitors, which in turn will provide income to encourage businesses to open and grow, therefore raising money to tackle other issues. Conservation of our best assets has taken a back seat. We need to feel proud of our town and heritage. And bring back the toilets! Let’s make people feel welcome.
Help local businesses. Target landlords who charge too much. Stop leases that mean businesses have to pay for all repairs on buildings, which are decided by landlords.
Housing: too many Airbnbs, not enough affordable places for people to rent.
I am concerned that the existing County Council regeneration plan (mentioned in your email) will overlap or even conflict with this initiative. I hope that there is going to be interaction between the different organizations or people implementing these projects.
I think central Hastings needs a lot of support to bring back some character (not talking about Old Town) so the gulf between St. Leonards and Old Town isn’t so pronounced. Trinity Triangle goes some way towards this, but Wellington Place, Priory Meadow, Queen’s Road, and the surrounding areas could be vastly improved.
I think it’s a trickle-down effect. If you make the town look nicer, take care of it, etc., it will reduce crime, bring tourists, and earn the respect of the community. So making Hastings appear nicer will also tick a lot of other boxes.
I would like to see the council and police take action against the ASB around Priory Street Car Park, Warming Up The Homeless, and Cambridge Gardens area. Fighting, assaults, hard drugs, toilet activity, rubbish, fly-tipping, car and motorbike racing, music, shouting, skateboarding, and plenty more (up to 24 hours a day/7 days a week).
I’d like to see an end to Airbnb rentals in the town and some rent controls for private rents. This would bring down the cost of renting locally and help with the housing crisis and homeless families.
I’d like to see Hastings Museum & Art Gallery relocate and take over the old Debenhams building, thus regenerating the whole of Hastings town center.
Improve the quality of local secondary schools.
Improve the street scene, e.g., the condition of pavements and street furniture, painting buildings, removing graffiti. First impressions are vital for return visits for a town that relies on tourism.
Invest in a brilliant open community space at the old bathing pool site.
Invest in the Pilot Field—a huge community asset that’s now in total disrepair. The club gets over 1000 attending each home game and has the potential to become a great community hub. Health and social benefits.
Investing in infrastructure to deal with drug, alcohol, and housing issues. Clamping down on Airbnbs and making rented properties affordable for local people.
It is important to improve the general environment to give people pride in their town. Involve the community and take notice of their ideas, etc. Housing is needed, but currently, the only housing plans appear to be high-value homes, not social or actually affordable housing. Improving housing stock would help. Hastings is a coastal tourist town but is losing more and more of its appeal to people. The events are very popular, but there are very few good holiday hotels, especially outside the Old Town area.
I’ve mentioned above in my ‘other’ comment, but I think a tidal pool could be a great investment, and taking back ownership of the Pier to turn it into somewhere for the community to come together, perhaps with more indoor areas like on Brighton pier or a community kitchen that becomes a feature restaurant like on Deal’s pier. Why pick and choose when you can roll a lot of these benefits into one, e.g., if you upskill unemployed people to learn e.g., project management, trades, cooking skills, front of house, perhaps team up with the local college, and then they learn on the job by actually building and running one of these community projects I mentioned, like a community kitchen and restaurant on the pier. It would give people something to work towards, create a new community space, give them real on-the-job training and experience, encourage people to feel proud and invested in where they live, and have a long-lasting impact on the running of said community projects and spaces. I’d love to help create something like this! It would help drive up employment and reduce poverty, build community and cohesion, and reduce crime, as well as increase visitors, which will benefit other local businesses too. I think improving the housing situation could also play into this, e.g., where disused buildings are being renovated and turned into office space and affordable housing—again, get local unemployed people or students at the college involved in these projects too. I get that the budget is tight, but I think some investments will give rise to organic growth in the other equally important areas! Thanks so much for letting me have a say; I appreciate it and love our town and how it feels like things are possible here.
Keeping and improving green spaces, parks, etc.
Like many local authorities, tree planting is on the agenda, but there’s no point in doing this unless there’s a plan to ensure the trees’ survival. If only 25% of the fund is revenue, who will care for the trees?
Make Hastings and St. Leonards a place where local children can hope to work and live before they get completely priced out of the town.
Make it more affordable to have a business in Hastings so fewer shops are empty.
Money spent on improving Hastings town center.
More effort should be put into improving the public realm and getting to grips with anti-social behavior and graffiti. Making sure council tax is collected and business rates are paid. Efforts need to be made to sort out the endless dodgy businesses and barbers along Queens Road. Some of these options are rather vague, and a lot of them, such as education, are more related to services provided by the County Council.
More public events or places that would encourage them.
More waste removal. More often. Litter says Hastings is TRASHY. It isn’t attractive. In Paris, they have cleaners come through the streets every evening to clean the place with brooms. We need the same kind of service, paid and/or volunteer or community service. Have more bins. Make the rubbish collection systems more seagull-proof!
On the West Hill, there is a pathway that leads from the Old Town to the Castle. It would be good to have some form of lighting to illuminate that pathway as it seems like a risky area for women and girls. On a side note: I would love to see Hastings Castle be repaired as the site has fallen quite badly into decay.
Our parks and open spaces are important for everyone’s mental and physical well-being. They need to be safe and well-managed with a light touch instead of ridiculous, unenforced bylaws. They can be a space to provide volunteering, education, and culture for all ages in an approachable, relaxed way, much like community garden spaces, litter picking, and wellness walks already demonstrate.
Pavement parking is an epidemic in Hastings. The damage to our curbs and the ultimately undesirable consequences for those who inconvenience members of the public make it more and more frustrating to visit and will ultimately deter people. For example, I have managed a shop on Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE, for over 8 years. In that time, I see an average of 200-300 cars a day illegally park on the curbs and pavements on a 200-meter stretch of Queens Road. With an average fine of £50 per car, that’s £4000 pounds a day, or £1.4 million a year, in lost fines this council just lets flush down our toilets. Considering that Hastings has multiple roads leading in and out of Hastings, illegal parking on a daily average would be 10-20 times more, so on average, Hastings Council lets slip through their fingers almost £30-40 million a year in fines (and Hastings says it hasn’t got money to fix up our housing and streets). If you actually did what’s in the best interests of the public, you would use a small portion of those funds to set up a network of AI cameras around our streets to catch those who illegally park and put the public at risk or cause massive inconveniences. And have those people pay the fine. This would free up traffic wardens and may effectively make them redundant, saving more money that could be used to improve the other issues. You have to invest in a strategy that would fine these inconsiderate people and bring in more funds for the community at large, such as fixing up historic sites like St. Mary’s Castle. Please don’t allow any officials to claim we don’t have the funds; the funds are there, you just have to hold people accountable for when they are inconsiderate and put the public at risk by parking on our pavements. (This failure of public safety is ultimately your responsibility.) Again, use the funds to set up an agency that will fine those who break our community’s guidelines and public ordinances. Then use those funds to make Hastings better. So, in conclusion, spend £20 million over 10 years, or spend £200,000 to earn £30 million every year. With this, you won’t even need centralized government funding. Hastings would be self-sufficient. Seems obvious to me. Also, don’t reopen St. Mary’s Castle as a venue space; it’s failed as that for many, many years and would run at a loss. Instead, open it up as a zoo or reptarium, a place of multiple exhibits for vivariums, paluderiums, and exhibits for exotic plants and reptiles. Use the place as an attraction for everyone to enjoy at all times of the day, rather than just for a select few hundred on nights with performances. Use it to increase the status of Hastings and encourage people to come to the town. Make the Hastings big three and turn it into Hastings’ top four attractions. (I have proposed this idea before but with no reply from the council.) This is a wonderful town, very diverse and unique. Don’t just give our money to third-party NGOs who pocket half the fund for themselves and use the other half to make a subpar project. That’s just how I feel, but I believe that the consensus is others feel it also. Use the funds to attract more funds. Thank you for your time.
Save iconic places such as St. Mary in the Castle. Clean up and refresh the seafront and the town center; it looks dreadful.
Save St. Mary in the Castle. Encourage developers to turn redundant and derelict property into homes rather than build in green spaces. Address the appearance of seafront buildings and overall street cleanliness. Fund initiatives to reduce street sleeping and street drug use. Secure bicycle parking throughout areas.
Spend part of the fund to regenerate the old Debenhams building and create a major art hub/performance space/music studio/youth club in the center of the town.
St. Mary’s in the Castle should be a youth-led community center, with a work-based approach teaching hospitality.
Supporting activities and out-of-school activities for kids aged 14-21 to challenge them and give them life skills, explore their creativity, and gain careers in their passions.
Surely the town center needs regeneration. Businesses should be helped with reduced rates to encourage larger stores back. Kids are bored, hence turning to crime and disorderly behavior. Community projects aimed at children should be prioritized. Start at the bottom of the chain, and it will filter through to the next generation. Kids these days are awful, and without targeting this group, the rest is fruitless.
The central part of Hastings from the east end of George Street to Trinity Triangle (excluding Wellington Square, which is generally in good condition) needs intensive work to bring it to an attractive proposition for locals and visitors alike. The current ‘Owen’ or Debenhams site needs to be used creatively as a mixed food court and shopping concession and/or arts space. There are many Hastings residents, new and old, who could make good use of this space for commerce. This is just one thing that could extend the attractiveness of the area reaching across from Trinity.
The Old Town is our greatest tourist asset. The site at 43 George Street is still undeveloped and an eyesore. Is there any way the council can speed up this process? And any initiatives which get new businesses to occupy empty shops would be welcome. Apart from that, pavements need attending to—particularly between the Market Square and the Priory center, and in front of Pelham Place—accidents are frequent.
The seafront desperately needs to be more attractive to visitors to bring tourism/money to the town. This will mean small, independent businesses will thrive and, thus, so will Hastings.
The town center of Hastings is so run-down, unattractive, and uninspiring. This could be improved by repairing and decorating exteriors of buildings and more green space. The rents for people to open new shops and businesses in the town center are prohibitive for most independent people, not part of a chain. The proposed rent for Owens at the moment is ridiculous, for example.
The town needs to look at improving affordable housing and ways to support local SMEs. Crime needs to be addressed; there is an increase, and policing or CCTV needs to be increased. There are too many empty shops, and we need to look at attracting large stores back to Hastings, especially focusing on the old Debenhams and Peacock stores, which are both empty and need consideration in what can be done to change that!
The Y Centre has an urgent need for a new roof. We already provide volunteering, youth job training, a new youth skills course for self-employment, and so much more. We need to get rid of a white asbestos roof so we can have solar panels to save on electricity, then we can go for more sustainable heating, etc. Please champion our roof! And if you want to visit, call me .
There needs to be major investment in the public realm: street lighting, bollards, pavements, street furniture such as benches and litter bins. The current planters are nice, but more low-maintenance trees (that don’t pull up the pavements) are needed. Remove the grotty phone boxes in Harold Place. It would also be nice to revitalize the seafront decorative lighting so the promenade is lit from West Marina Gardens all the way through to the Old Town.
This is so difficult as, of course, all the above suggestions are good. I don’t envy your decision on where the money should go.
Transport, specifically active travel, is included in the list of potential spending areas but not included here at all. Hastings needs to do much more to break car dependency and get people moving.
We do not need a grand showpiece (re)development; we need to focus on renovating and improving what we have and presenting a town that instills pride in the population. Think decent stone paving, iconic street furniture, tidy well-maintained public spaces, properly enforced pedestrian areas. Fix the little things, and the big stuff will follow.
We need to attract big employers with decent wages. The town would be ideal as a setting for a university, for example. We need to improve public transport to encourage more use of buses, trains, and bicycles. The infrastructure in the town center is appallingly mismanaged, with no coordination between services when repairing roads or restoring pavements. Many streets in town are often strewn with rubbish. How can we attract visitors when they don’t even have a public toilet near the beach in the center of town anymore? There is a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the community; why not tap into it to gather the enterprising ideas needed to help Hastings flourish again. There are other things, but it would take a list as long as my arm to go through now.
We need to make the town center more attractive to visitors, residents, walkers, and cyclists. Cars dominate the environment when it could be shaped to enhance the community.
While I think housing is important, I don’t think this money should be spent on it, mostly because £2 million is, in reality, not a lot of money and would therefore make minimal difference to an area that needs proper investment. In terms of anti-social behavior and crime, I do not support any spending on policing-type initiatives but do support spending on facilities and projects that might provide an alternative, such as youth clubs, mentoring, education, and training.
I would really love to see St. Mary in the Castle restored into an operating theater/arts center—it’s such a unique space.