You and I and the other 95,000 Hastings inhabitants have no vote in the election that will happen tomorrow (17/2/20). Just 23 Labour councillors will choose the person who will lead our town for the next few years. Will we see puffs of white smoke coming from Muriel Matters House?! It bothers me that the character and loyalties of the individual chosen tomorrow will be so important. In reality the impact will be felt in structural terms: the balance of power between councillors and officers, what happens to the discredited ‘regeneration agency’ Seaspace and its progeny, how long the council… Read more…

The decision to sell the former power station site at Ore Valley to a private developer rather than to Heart of Hastings community land trust is finally sinking in for me, a fortnight after it was announced. This is how I felt about the place in February 2017… https://jesssteele.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/i-am-losing-my-heart-to-ore-valley/ Ore Valley has been let down from above over and over again. We were determined not to do that but to work through the Bottom Up Development team and with an approach led by talking to local people, on site, at events around the area, online, and on their doorsteps. Between… Read more…

Contracts have been exchanged for the purchase of the Observer Building in Hastings. Completion is expected on Weds 13th Feb 2019.  The new owner is White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures (WRNV) (*1), a community-rooted developer owned by three socially-driven organisations, with voluntary covenants in the Shareholders Agreement to retain capped rents in perpetuity. Sounds really dull! Why does this matter? The Observer Building is a symbol of early 1920s optimism: a great big beautiful strong proclamatory edifice built out of pride to tell the stories of the town. Hard not to like… On the other hand, Robert Tressell’s name for the local… Read more…

I gave this talk today (25/1/19) to 200+ students at Helenswood School, Hastings, as part of ‘Get Hastings Reading’ (see end of post for slides) Hello, thanks for having me. My daughter came to Helenswood. She’s doing her A-levels at Bexhill College now. So I was thinking about what I would have wanted her to hear when she was your age… I think it’s: try to get ready for a future you can’t see yet. My sister always wanted to be a doctor. Well at first she said she wanted to be “a nurse in Africa” but our Dad said… Read more…

Jericho Road Solutions is 1,000 days old today, and I’m determined to carve out a little time to reflect on the experience and some of the lessons so far. It’s been an honour to work with ambitious, stubborn, creative leaders in communities across the country, to support them to take action on what matters to them. For me the focus is usually on buildings that are precious to local people but are for some reason ‘stuck’ – through delinquent ownership, unviable renovation costs, conflictual politics, dysfunctional land markets, or any combination of circumstances too risky for the market and too complex for… Read more…