Council Cabinet “Refreshed”
Hastings Borough Council (HBC) leader Paul Barnett has reshuffled cabinet roles. He has taken the finance and equalities portfolio for himself, moving Cllr Simon Willis to housing and community development, while deputy leader Cllr Maya Evans shifts to regeneration and climate change.
Other cabinet positions remain unaltered: Cllr Andy Batsford leading on health and culture; Cllr Ali Roark on environment; Cllr Judy Rogers on planning and governance, community safety and disability access; and Cllr John Cannan as chair of the charity committee.
No explanation has been given for the changes save for a statement by Cllr Barnett that they “will refresh the cabinet for the challenging year ahead”.
Prime challenge is clearly in balancing the council’s revenue budget against mounting wage inflation and energy costs, and an ever-rising tide of expenditure on housing the homeless, as the numbers in need increase and rent levels likewise. A Financial Monitoring Outlook (FMO) Report for 2022/23, which the cabinet are due to consider at their meeting on Monday 3 July, contains a calculation that the overspend on homelessness last year was £2.385m, and that £1.290 of this had to be financed from reserves.
The only bright note in the accompanying Treasury Management Outlook Report, which will also be presented to cabinet at the meeting, is that rising interest rates more than doubled the projected returns received on council investments during the year (over £1.14m, exceeding the budget target by £638,000).
Given the financial squeeze, Cllr Evans’ task within the regeneration portfolio seems almost entirely dependent upon the council’s success in accessing external funds.
The Town Deal projects which should be making major progress in the current year are largely beyond HBC’s remit, but a council spokesperson has confirmed that plans for a new health and leisure centre at Summerfield will form the basis of a proposal to be submitted in the next round of Levelling Up funding promised by DLUHC (the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities).
In the meantime: improvements to community facilities at Broomgrove are proceeding on the basis of funds provided by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund; discussions with Homes England are said to be “still on-going” with regard to support for “the wider regeneration interests in the town centre, including Station Plaza; while “technical and survey work is on-going by the developer” at West Marina.
Neither Cllr Evans nor anyone else at the council has responded to questions concerning its own development of hotel premises to be operated by Premier Inn on the former car park site off Cornwallis Street. Planning approval was given for the building in February 2022, and expenditure on the project during the 2022/23 financial year is noted in the TMO Report as £238,000, which doesn’t include a loss of £70,000 (and continuing) as a result of the car park closure. However, no building work seems to have been undertaken yet, save for a symbolic patchwork of surface drilling.
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