Coastal town Hastings calls for housing crisis solutions

Ciaran Jenkins: For the second report of our Sea Wall series, looking at the coastal towns of England and Wales, we’ve been to Hastings on the south coast.

The constituency has become emblematic of the UK’s housing crisis, with millions spent on temporary accommodation and homelessness soaring.

A marginal seat, Hastings and Rye was held by the Conservatives in 2019, and on the new boundaries, they would have a majority of just over 3,000 votes. Kiran Moodley has this report.

Hastings has a new battle on its hands. Since the pandemic, this seaside town has become the perfect place for Londoners to relocate. But that has pushed up prices and shrunk the housing stock.

Jess Steele, CEO, Hastings Commons: Just four years ago, there were only 78 households in temporary accommodation in Hastings. Now there are 570 and that is costing the council £5 million a year out of their £12 million a year budget.

Jess Steele runs a group trying to solve that crisis. Her team takes on derelict buildings, with a plan to turn them into community hubs with flats that have their rents capped. It’s a model they want to replicate across the town.

Jess Steele: It’s not just about building more houses, it’s certainly not about building more expensive houses. And this is the problem that, if you just carry on doing what we’ve always done, then you get what you’ve always got.

And her group has already had success. Adam is one resident who has hugely benefited from this scheme.

Adam: It was a real lifeline in a scary situation. I’ve struggled with my mental health and physical health, and being here has been essential, really, to my wellbeing.

Kiran Moodley: So is housing your number one priority when it comes to voting?

Adam: It’s one of a number. Since 2010, in many different areas, I feel like everything has just declined massively. So for me the priority is removing the Tories.

Hastings is a marginal seat that sits among the sea wall. The Tories swept coastal towns of England and Wales at the last election, winning three quarters of the constituencies. But now, under the new boundaries, exclusive polling for Channel Four News shows that Labour is 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the sea wall. I got out my trio of deckchairs to get more of the mood from the town.

Kiran Moodley: How are you feeling about the election?

Voter 1: I’m really glad that it’s been called. Definitely need a change of government.

Voter 2: I think Rishi Sunak is a nice guy. I think he’s been trying to calm things down.

Kiran Moodley: What are the issues that are important to you?

Voter 3: The biggest issue is homelessness. I just spent a year homeless with my dog.

Voter 4: The rents have gone up. That’s affected me personally.

Voter 3: More and more people are living paycheque to paycheque.

Voter 4: It’s been difficult. We have to cut down. I used to get two bags of grapes, now one bag of grapes.

Voter 5: Ideally, I’d like to do Green because I do agree with a lot of their policies and stuff. But I know that there’s a smaller chance of them getting in.

Kiran Moodley: Do you think there’s any politicians out there now who do care about any of that?

Voter 3: For me, I want go for that Reform Party.

Kiran Moodley: Nigel Farage.

Voter 3: One vote, put it in there and see what happens.

Kiran Moodley: It sounds like you’re excited about voting.

Voter 3: Not really.

Such is the frustration with the town’s state of affairs that it’s become a musical. A song recalls a time in the 19th century when residents took to the beach to protest at the high cost of housing. It’s an issue that never goes away.

Bob Tipler, publican and producer, America Ground The Musical: It certainly was a problem then and it’s a problem now. I don’t remember it being such a big problem when I was growing up in the 70s, but now everyone seems to talk about it, apart from all the parties that seem to be vying to get into government. It seems to be the elephant in the room that’s not on anybody’s agenda at the moment.

Kiran Moodley: What do you want to hear from the political parties about housing?

Bob Tipler: I want to hear something big, something inventive. Like what happened after the war. We built shedloads of council houses to house people. They seem to be busy courting the haves. And they don’t really seem to, nobody seems to be that bothered about the have nots.

To stop the housing storm from doing any more damage, the people in this town want concrete solutions. But are the national campaigns listening to what’s happening down at the local level?

2024 GENERAL ELECTION CANDIDATES
HASTINGS AND RYE CONSTITUENCY

Phil Colley
Workers Party of Britain

Paul Crosland
Independent

Nicholas Davies
Communist Party of Britain

Helena Dollimore
Labour

Lucian Fernando
Reform UK

Guy Harris
Liberal Democrat

Sally-Ann Hart
Conservative

Becca Horn
Green