The following article appeared in the Summer 2007 edition of c'llr. - the national magazine for councillors:
Today, Hastings is the most deprived borough in the south east: Jeremy Birch’s ward, Central St Leonards, is the most deprived ward in Hastings. But with such an unenviable position in the deprivation league table, Councillor Birch is surprisingly up-beat.
The reason for this is that Hastings is picking itself up and dusting itself down and Central St Leonards is showing signs of a brighter future not very far around the corner.
Until the 1970s, Central St Leonards could have been thought of as to Hastings what Hove is to Brighton – the genteel neighbour. St Leonards owes its existence to James Burton, the man who created London’s Regent’s Park. Burton wanted to design and build a new town on the coast – result, St Leonards. His legacy dominates Jeremy Birch’s ward, with a seafront colonnade, gardens (currently being restored) and terraces of Regency houses.
But it is the ward’s regency and Victorian heritage that has been a contributory factor in its problems. Many of the large houses along the seafront and in other parts of the ward are houses of multiple occupation (HMOs), a trend that started in the 1970s.
“The nature of the accommodation attracted people who were not economically active and who often had other problems, such as mental health issues”, says Jeremy Birch. “ And I think it’s fair to say that other authorities saw us as a place to move people to, shifting responsibility. That’s meant we have a very transient population.
“One the main elements of our regeneration strategy is to achieve a more stable population so that more residents have a stake in the area and are more able to contribute to the local economy. One of the ways we are doing this is by declaring St Leonards a Housing Renewal Area.
“We are also working with a local housing association to improve the management of the HMOs. While we can and do use our regulatory powers to tackle things like fire safety, there isn’t much we can do to get absentee landlords to deal with problems such as noise and nuisance. Many of the landlords get the rents paid straight to them through housing benefit direct payments, so they don’t really have an incentive to care. The housing association has funds to buy street properties, so we hope that will add to the general improvement.
“Property prices are still relatively low here. A house that would cost £400,000 in Brighton would be about £250,000 here, but there are signs of change in parts of the ward and the growth of a more a stable core population.”
Central St Leonards has very little scope for building new homes, but signs of a recovery are there to see, with developers converting old buildings into modern flats.
The council has been making improvements to the street scene. “We have been improving the feel of the street. For example, Kings Road, a street of Victorian properties that mostly have flats above shops has been decorated and has had up-lights installed, as has the architecturally significant Royal Victoria Hotel – another James Burton building. This type of improvement, though relatively small scale, helps to give people more pride in the place. At the same time it makes the area more attractive to people from outside, including investors.
“And there are plans to do more work. Kings Road will be made more pedestrian friendly and the plan is for the square in front of the railway station to be redesigned by artists as part of our last Single Regeneration Budget funded project that will involve specialist, local artists and the community.”
Jeremy Birch says that there are probably about 70 asylum seekers living in the ward – down from a high of 800 a few years ago. “But we do have a more cosmopolitan population, which I think is one of our strengths and attractions. Alongside traditional local shops such as bakers, greengrocers and butchers, we have ‘world’ shops, with delicatessens selling a range of great food. Some people who came as refugees have settled here and enhanced our community.
“I see our ‘local’ shops as a big selling point to attract people to visit and live in the ward. We don’t have big supermarkets, which may be a problem for some, but I think many people prefer to shop in small local shops. We are trying to get a project up and running to get people to shop in St Leonards. We hope we can use our successful LEGI [Local Enterprise and Growth Initiative] bid which has a project based around local produce and local producers.”
A small boost to the local economy has resulted from the relocation of the council’s housing department to a converted Victorian primary school in the ward. That’s meant 100 council staff exercising some spending power in local shops and cafes.
And Jeremy Birch points to the growing number of places to eat as another sign that things are getting better. “We now have a good choice of cafes and restaurants, particularly along the seafront. That shows confidence in the area.”
“We are looking to increase the number of visitors to the ward. Until the 1970s there used to be five or six big hotels here, now there is only one. I think we have to accept that largely the days of people taking their two-week summer holidays here will not return, but we do have a good number of day visitors and the challenge is to get them to extend their stay here to weekend breaks or similar.”
The ward should also benefit from other major developments in the borough, such as the £60 million redevelopment of Hastings College of Art and Technology and the new University Centre Hastings linked to Brighton University which will eventually bring 2,000 students to Hastings.
Hastings has a system of neighbourhood management boards. The borough is divided into four areas – it was felt that wards were too small for effective neighbourhood management. Jeremy Birch chairs one of these boards. “I think the system is good for holding service providers to account. The boards monitor progress against the community strategy and Local Area Agreement priorities.
“We have recently introduced a system which gives us quite detailed profiles of each area. This means that we can focus the work of agencies even more keenly within each area – for example making sure the police tackle the areas with the most problems.”
There’s a long way to go before Central St Leonards can be compared to Hove again, but it’s moving in the right direction and beginning to carve out a clear identity for itself that builds on its heritage and embraces a modern, cosmopolitan world.
And as Jeremy Birch puts it: “You know the population is getting more stable when you are out canvassing and the person who answers the door is the person whose name is on the register!“
