Specially Successful September

Councillor Jeremy Birch speaking at the Composers' Festival

"This morning I opened the refurbishments at Summerfields Leisure Centre and the free family fun day. Then I visited the Moveable Feast community garden open day and enjoyed the lunch. In the afternoon I dropped into the Hullabaloo at St Mary in the Castle and also enjoyed the Bodies in Urban Spaces event in the town centre as part of our Coastal Currents Arts Festival. This evening we were all wowed by the aerial performance of As the World Tipped on the Stade. What other town of our size can offer anything like this? Hastings - Famously Cultural and Famously Fun"

That was my comment about just one breathless September Saturday.

The previous night I had opened Coastal Currents and reminded everyone just how important the town’s cultural success is to our all-round regeneration. And this year’s Coastal Currents really has been a great success.

The weekend before I had opened our eighth seafood and wine festival which again was a great success. My rather corny speech concluded with “Hastings – Famously Fresh and Famously Fishy."

The weekend before that I was one of the opening speakers at the International Composers’ Festival at St Mary’s. How pleasurable it was not just to applaud the music and the musicians but the composers too who were with us in the audience.

I have also had a chance this month to appreciate the rich mix that now makes up our town. I spoke at the start of the Intercultural Organisation’s football tournament with players from many different backgrounds participating and I opened the Hope G  multicultural older people’s day. And of course September has seen the start of Black History Month with Afrikaba locally.

And the understanding of the importance of business has also been to the fore with our vacuum engineering cluster fair and I spoke at the evening reception for delegates stressing the Hastings – Famously Innovative theme.

It might have been an especially busy September but with so much positive activity in our town surely an improving future is ours.

An Autumn of Action!

As the night’s draw in and Summer holiday memories fade away, Hastings Borough Council is gearing up for a period of intense activity during the Autumn months.

First of all we’ve just launched our Switched-On Hastings scheme. The aim is to secure cheaper energy bills for local residents. Anyone that pays their own household electricity or gas bills including those on pre-payment meters can register their interest in the scheme. By providing the largest possible number of registered residents we will aim to get the best collective deal out of an auction with the energy companies.

The lowest tariff wins the auction and this is then offered to those who have registered. Once the auction has taken place on 16 October, personal letters and emails will be sent to each registered resident explaining what the lowest offer is. There is no obligation to accept the offer but hopefully there will be some significant reductions on offer.

Then by later October new collection arrangements will kick-in for all our waste and recycling. Leaflets preparing everyone have already started to go out. The changes will include doorstep collection of glass, the acceptance of nearly all plastics, tetrapaks etc in the recycling and the distribution of 7,000 seagull-proof bags to most properties in the black bag areas.

These changes will be coming in from 21^st October although the new boxes for glass and the seagull-proof bags should be distributed before then. The aim of these is to almost double Hastings recycling rate to 50%. The aim is also to improve street cleanliness by having our waste in bins or in the new seagull-proof bags.

On 18^th October with the police we will be launching a ban on the sale of the heavy duty beers and ciders – above 6.5%. The ban will affect all off-licences in Central St Leonards, the town centre and the Old Town. Although it is a voluntary ban it will be backed up with the power to review the licenses of any establishment that doesn’t join in and then attracts nuisance and anti-social behaviour.

At our cabinet on 4^th November we are going to be discussing registering all privately-rented property in the town to give the council more control over housing conditions and the management of rented properties, whether large or small.

Linked to this we are preparing to convene a conference before Xmas of seaside towns along with London boroughs to discuss the potential problem of families on benefits being sent out of higher-rent areas into places like Hastings.

And we are working up the plans to introduce electronic signs to indicate which car parks are full and directing drivers to the other car parks, improved signage for pedestrians to find their way round the town (including from car parks once they’ve parked), new paving for the town centre to get rid of the patchwork of black top and red top and improvements to the shopping area.

Pretty quiet time all in all!