Hastings councillors have raised fears about being subsumed into a new East Sussex council under a county-wide mayoralty as part of a huge local government shake-up.
This May’s elections may not take place as a result of the reorganisation, with the potential for mayoral elections next year and elections for the new council in 2027 instead.
And if Hastings ends up in the same council area as Brighton, members said they feared the former would be “stuffed” as the city would “get everything”.
At a cabinet meeting yesterday, members of Hastings Borough Council discussed proposals which could see the authority disbanded as part of the creation of new mayoral and unitary authorities.
These proposals, which were set out in a white paper from Deputy Prime Minster Angela Rayner last month, could result in the abolition of East Sussex’s current two-tier system of local government where powers and responsibilities are split between district, borough and county councils.
East Sussex County Council is due to discuss the issue later this week, with its cabinet due to decide whether it requests to be included in the Devolution Priority Programme — a scheme intended to rapidly set up the new mayoral authorities.
Hastings Borough Council’s meeting was intended to set out its views ahead of the county council’s decision.
Council leader Julia Hilton opened the meeting by setting out her understanding of the next steps. She said: “The current proposals are that West Sussex and East Sussex and Brighton and Hove are all going to make a request to be in the priority list for creating a mayoral authority and the related local government reorganisation that goes with creating a mayoral authority.”
Cllr Hilton went on to set out how the mayoral election (if fast-tracked) would be expected to take place in May 2026, with the new unitary authorities (which would sit under the mayoral authority) seeing elections the following year. She said the current expectation was for a single unitary authority to cover all of East Sussex, but that the details of this had not yet been agreed.
The potential reorganisation could lead to the county council’s next elections (due to take place this May) not going ahead — a potential outcome, which Cllr Hilton said she opposes.
Cllr Hilton said: “The legislation only allows for those elections to be postponed for a year — the reality is that they will be postponed for up to three years because of the processes of electing a shadow unitary authority and all the other related elections.
“I and our MP, Helena Dollimore, have made it very clear that neither of us are in favour of what is in fact the cancelling of elections … and we have written to the minister to make that clear. Four out of the five district and borough leaders in East Sussex have also made it clear that they do not support the cancellation of elections to make what is the most radical change in local government for decades.
“The current county council does not have a mandate to do that and should not be allowed to continue without having elections in May with a mandate to then make decisions about what comes in its place.”
This view was shared by Labour’s Danuta Kean, who said: “We absolutely cannot allow a minority administration to basically push itself into continuing in power until … 2028, which is just appalling.
“There is no overall control there. We know the Tories like having prime ministers who aren’t elected but I think when it comes to local government and to who is running our counties, when we are seeing such a mess made of spending … we have to give our electorate a chance to be heard over that.
“We absolutely cannot have that election cancelled.”
Conservative councillor Mike Edwards took a different view. He said: “Many of us, I think perhaps even many of us in this room, would agree that local government is bust, for a variety of reasons mainly financial.
“It is not the democratic element of it that is bust necessarily, it is the financial … [and] I don’t see this being the cure for it.
“I am slightly dismayed to see the communication you have been sending out madam chairman about this being a Tory East Sussex stitch-up. I thought we were trying it clean, be grown-up and just talk about it as a concept to start with. You are turning it into a political issue already.”
He added: “The elections that you want to maintain for next May, really should be overtaken by the events that are set in train by this Labour government.”
Other councillors took issue with the wider picture of the potential reorganisation.
Cllr Paul Barnett, leader of the Hastings Independents group, said: “My interpretation of the government’s proposal is that it is the end of Hastings council, whatever you say, that is what it looks like and I think you are being naive if we didn’t think that is what is intended, along with 125 other district councils across the country.
“With that goes … the end of representation, democratically at a local level for residents in those 125 districts, not just Hastings.
“This is a white paper. It is out to consultation … something they have never tried before and they may well decide to do differently as comments come back. It feels to me that Hastings is in danger of waving a white flag to a white paper.
“We mustn’t do that. We won’t be thanked by the people of Hastings … especially the most vulnerable people who desperately need representation, as we all know, at a local level. We won’t be thanked by them if we don’t go down fighting.”
Cllr Judy Rogers (Lab) argued for other forms of reorganisation to be considered. She said: “We have to accept that currently the higher tier, the county councils, are failing. They are failing us, they are failing the residents, they are in a mess, which is why the devolution bill is coming in.
“What I am really concerned about is the fact that we seem to be accepting this Sussex unitary, that may or may not include Brighton. If it does include Brighton, well then we are completely and utterly stuffed, because Brighton will get everything and we will get forgotten even more than we are.
“What I want to see us doing is not just accepting it, but looking at what is there. I want to see more emphasis on that. We are a coastal town, there are coastal towns all round Sussex and Kent. We have links already through the Cinques Ports with a number of coastal towns.
“We have our own issues as coastal towns, which are not recognised in Lewes … so I want to see us standing up and working with other places of a similar [geography], not just accepting a Sussex unitary [authority].”
