REPORT PROMPTS COUNCIL SELL-OFF
HUGH SULLIVAN
A meeting of the cabinet of Hastings Borough Council on Monday evening approved the sell-off of four property assets. Amongst them are two plots of land – at the rear of 419-447 Bexhill Road and off Bodiam Drive in Hollington – which have outline planning permission for house-building. A third, York Buildings at Wellington Place, is a flagship housing renovation managed by the Council for prospective social housing.
12/13 York Buildings
The sales, which are together expected to raise around £3m, follow the publication of a Local Government Association (LGA) Peer report into the council’s finances.
Earlier rumours floated in Private Eye and other media suggested that the conclusions of the report might force the Council to declare insolvency under section 114 of the Local Government Act. That’s not the case, at least in the immediate future. The report advised that the Council “has the means to address the budget and savings problems if it works together to swiftly implement the cost reduction programme, and promptly realises planned savings”.
However, the peer review team declared themselves “very concerned about the council’s financial sustainability, the low level of unallocated revenue reserves and the record on achievements of savings and overspends in housing”. Spending over £5m (and rising) in providing temporary accommodation for over 1,000 people was unsustainable.
“SLOW PACE”
The Council was also criticised for its management style. “The Council must find a way to maintain programme management discipline whilst working at pace. The peer challenge team found that the current pace of decision-making and implementation on key projects is slow, which is delaying the achievement of key savings. Agile decision-making, implementation and delivery are critical to the Council’s recovery.”
In a key passage the report referred to interviews “in which the peer challenge team heard that the political leadership is passionate about housing issues but does not consider the financial situation sufficiently. One interviewee stated that: ‘compassion from the political leadership is not balanced to the reality of the financial position’.”
In a press release issued before the cabinet meeting, a Council spokesperson said that selling the development land at Bexhill Road and Bodiam Drive “would allow social housing to be built more quickly than if the council was to develop them”.
COUNCIL OVERSPEND
As to 12/13 York Buildings, which is a grade II listed building, three upper floors have been converted to six one-bedroom flats above the Millets store on the ground floor. The anticipated cost of the renovation was £780,000 but over £1.1m has been spent. The spokesperson said: “The Council has been working on ways to use the flats for social housing, but it has been concluded that, due to the unique nature of the property, it is unsuitable for this. The proposal is to sell the whole building, including the retail unit. This would mean income for the council through the sale of the building and also savings as the council would no longer be responsible for the costs and management of the listed building.”
The fourth property to be sold off is a farmhouse and nearly 200 acres of associated farmland at Upper Wilting Farm on the edge of the Combe Haven Countryside Park (within Rother rather than the borough of Hastings). Much of the land is designated as an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). It’s also within the ‘Strategic Gap’ in the Rother Local Plan, designed to restrict built development, so has no immediate potential for housing redevelopment purposes.
Council leader Cllr Paul Barnett, who also holds its finance portfolio, said ahead of the cabinet meeting: “We believe that selling these four assets is the best way forward for the Council in terms of raising revenue to help with the financial situation and, in the case of Bexhill Road and Mayfield E [the land off Bodiam Drive], that the sale of the land will mean homes are built more quickly than we could build them. The housing crisis is the Council’s top priority. Any additional finances we can raise will help us address this and also ease the pressure on our budgets.”
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I am disappointed but sympathetic to the Council in this situation. the requirement to provide temporary housing for homeless people is absolutely right but the costs have been rising exponentially and is the major cause of the financial problems faced by Hastings – and many other – Councils. The government rightly expects councils to do this but does not back this up with the resources needed and, possibly even worse they operate policies and support economic practice that has created the housing problem in the first place. After the war, with a bankrupt country, the government initiated a mass housebuilding programme, mainly of prefab houses to provide the emergency housing people needed. There is plenty of land – Crown land for example – that could be used for prefabs which would not only make the financial situation for councils easier but would reduce the stress and provide the security for people who are made homeless – so often through no fault evictions (Section 21), And think of the money that would be saved for the public purse if families were secure – think in terms of educational achievement and future earnings, of improved health and so on. So yes the Council could make decisions more swiftly and that would help but the financial problems are largely caused by the massive cuts that have been imposed on local authorities and huge increase in demands from people who have faced the brunt of the assault on poor people by this government.