The Observer Building: A New Future Unveiled
White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures (WRNV) have announced they have exchanged contracts to purchase the Observer Building at 53 Cambridge Road for a total price of £ ; WRNV is a community-rooted development company that has transformed Rock House next door…
Local Greens Seek Climate Emergency Action
Over 750 businesses and individuals in Hastings and Rye have signed up to the contents of a letter circulated by the constituency Green Party calling for Hastings Borough Council (HBC) to declare a Climate Emergency and begin “meaningful action” to…
A Barrage On Facebook
The Facebook page of the White Rock Hotel has a section for reviews – 328 of them ‘recommending’ the hotel at last count. The vast majority of postings are indeed complimentary, praising its family- and dog-friendly atmosphere, pleasant staff, quiet…
Jerwood Bust-Up
As reported in the national press and websites last weekend, the Jerwood Gallery at the Stade looks likely to lose virtually its entire permanent collection of around 300 artworks and much of its funding in November, following a very public…
Marine Court Seafront Retail in Troubled Times
Marine Court, the vast art deco building in the shape of a Cunard ocean liner, dominates the St Leonards seafront. Erected in 1936-38 and housing over 150 flats in its 14 storeys it was, when completed, the tallest residential block…
Spillage People
How Recycling Points Made Fly-tipping the Easy Option Several years ago, in Cornwallis Gardens where I live, Hastings Borough Council installed three recycling points. Whilst they were somewhat incongruous, the general consensus was that the encouragement of recycling was a…
Pier Sale: The Reckoning
A formal account of the sale of the pier to Sheikh Abid Gulzar last June has finally been released into the public domain by the administrators of the Hastings Pier Charity, Adam Stephens and Finbarr O’Connell of Smith Williamson. It…
Preaching to the Converted
Kent Barker, HIP co-Political Editor, listened to Jeremy Corbyn speechifying in Hastings last thursday St Mary in the Castle may not have been a proper church for years, but there was more than a hint of an old time revivalist…
Fly-tipping – Can You Help To Stop It?
By David Dennis Fly-tipping is the disposal of specific types of unwanted rubbish, called ‘controlled waste’, by illegal means. This includes garden and household waste, domestic items such as fridges and mattresses, and commercial waste such as builders’ rubble, clinical…
Back To School – Retired Language School Director Back In Business
Reg Veale, former principal of Embassy English Language School in St Leonards, has revealed that he is renewing the business under his own brand, titled Majors Study Tours. Embassy, which had been operating from Gensing Manor in Dane Road since…