Financially Troubled Hastings Borough Council To Sell Properties

Hastings Borough Council is to move ahead with the sale of several properties in an effort to improve its troubled finances.

On Monday (August 7), Hastings cabinet members approved plans to put four council assets up for immediate sale.

These were:

• Upper Wilting Farm, an agricultural holding in Rother;
• 12/13 York Buildings;
• and two parcels of land with outline planning consents at Bexhill Road and Mayfield E.

Collectively, the sale of the assets are expected to bring in around £3m, money the council says would be reinvested into funding its capital programme and to reduce its external borrowing.

Cllr Maya Evans, cabinet member for regeneration and climate change, said:

"In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to be disposing of assets.

"You never dispose of assets, that is almost rule number one when you are saving and trying to create a profit. 

"But we have to. We are in a housing crisis, we are in a cost of living crisis, we are in a climate emergency.

"We have to start taking radical action now in order to not go bankrupt."

Before agreeing the asset sales, cabinet members had discussed a Local Government Association (LGA) report into the council’s finances.

Enabling the sale of council assets was one of 13 recommendations made in this report.

As part of its response to this recommendation, the council has employed the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) to undertake a review of the council’s property portfolio. 

The asset sales come ahead of the completion of this review, something which came in for criticism from Green Party councillor Claire Carr.

Cllr Carr said:

"Why is this report before cabinet without any proper business case attached? 

"[It runs] counter to the recent training that we were given by finance and the CIPFA guidelines on making financial decisions in our current financial circumstances, particularly as the asset review is still ongoing and no guidance has been sought on these items."

Council leader Paul Barnett (Lab) took a different view. He said:

"It is great that CIPFA are doing the asset management review for us [but] we have hundreds and hundreds of properties for them to analyse and tell us the detailed options on.

"That, in my book and as far as I am concerned, does not mean we sit on our hands and do nothing about those properties whilst the review is going on. 

"These [asset sales], to me, make real sense.

"We are able to generate significant income for the council, at a time when that in itself is could be critical to decisions that we make … over the next few months. 

"But it is not just about the money, it is about the services.

"I am not going to go on at length but I am confident that the housing sector will deliver affordable housing for us, on sites that we sell, faster than we can."

Both the Bexhill Road and at Mayfield E site in Hollington have outline planning consent for residential development.

The council had been planning to develop this land as social housing itself, but councillors heard how these projects were deemed to be too challenging to proceed with given the authority’s limited resources.

Chief executive Jane Hartnell said the council hoped to sell these sites to a social housing provider who could then build them out, but could not guarantee this would be the case.

The Upper Wilting Farm site is made up of 188 acres of farming land in Rother.

Cabinet members stressed that the land is within the strategic gap of the Rother Local Plan, meaning it has no immediate potential for redevelopment as housing. 

The final site, 12/13 York Buildings, is a mixed retail and residential building in Wellington Place.

It is Grade II listed and the council recently spent more than £1m renovating and converting the building’s upper floors into six flats. 

The council had been planning to use these flats for social housing, but ultimately decided it was unsuitable for this use.

Cllr Evans said the council expected to make a profit on the project despite the redevelopment costs.