No money for St Mary from Town Deal
HUGH SULLIVAN
Provisional Town Deal projects to redevelop the Priory Street car park and the west wing of the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre were withdrawn at the end of the year resulting in a surplus figure of £6.9m to be reallocated between other projects.
As reported by HIP back in February, a community consortium promoted by Hastings Commons and Hastings Creatives saw an opportunity arising from this prospective reallocation to submit a scheme that would expand the existing Castle project – still described by the Town Deal website as the “flagship” of its overall programme – to include redevelopment of St Mary in the Castle. Under the scheme, this arts venue, once a church within the castle walls before its rock base crumbled, would become the main visitors’ entrance to the castle, connected by a lift or escalator up the rock face.
It was reported to a meeting of the Town Deal Board last Thursday (27 April) that the merits of this scheme had been “considered” by its investment panel, but that “clear guidance was given” (it’s not explained by whom) that it would be treated by the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) as a “new project”, excluded from benefiting from the £24.3m overall award to Hastings. DLUHC were said to have confirmed this later in February. Instead, the whole of the £6.9m was to be re-directed to the existing Public Realm and Green Connections (PRGC) project, thus increasing the latter’s overall budget from £2.9m to £9.8m. It seems that this alternative expansion, though apparently transformed in scope by the reallocation, was not classed as “new”, because the original scheme designed by consultants Arup had budgeted for up to £10m expenditure.
“Quite in the dark”
The PRGC project is led by East Sussex County Council (ESCC) as highways authority for the streets affected. Board members complained to co-Chairs Graham Peters and Carole Dixon that the Arup designs for it were given to ESCC over a year ago but have never been displayed either publicly or even confidentially to Board members. Jess Steele took no issue over the rejection of the St Mary scheme, notwithstanding her personal involvement in it. She did, however, question the lack of transparency in relation to the favoured project. “I’d really like to see the initial designs,” she said. “I’m aware that Arup has worked on it for quite a long time. There must be some interesting stuff – maps, pictures, precedents, what’s inspired it…This is a big amount of money, it’s our major project, and yet I feel really quite in the dark about what it actually involves. That doesn’t feel very comfortable.”
John Bownas of Love Hastings, another Board member, was equally critical. “Most of us still haven’t had a sight of [Arup’s document]. I’ve got no idea what’s in it, and yet we’ve got to sign off millions of extra pounds to deliver it. I just feel we’ve been kept in the dark”.
Ian Sycamore, External Funding manager at Hastings Borough Council (HBC) and seemingly a member of the Town Deal investment panel, replied: “Now that the project seems to have been established, we’ll work on that. We could bring something to the next Town Deal Board meeting.”
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