Why is hastings deprived

Upon exiting the train station and travelling down the Station approach one can encounter a shoplifter scarpering away from the shopping centre. One man against thirty. As one approaches the shopping centre, one can see an example of how bad Hastings is, the shopping centre is partially open air and the middle is lined with benches to rest upon.

A group of forty or so can be seen sharing one can of stolen cider, and one packet of ten cigarettes. Moving on from the Shopping centre. One arrives at one of the inhabitants favourite places, McDonalds. Excellent primary and secondary schooling with extra tutoring where needed are key to opening up life chances, but we have to go way beyond this. When Brighton University decided to pull out, after millions of pounds of investment, why was there no real effort to get another university to open a satellite here?

Or, using our reputation as a creative town, why did the Council not try to get a leading arts school to take over the campus? Instead, they raised the white flag and shamefully allowed us to become Britain's shortest-lived university town. And that help must be accompanied by well-designed council housing, decent neighbourhood-based facilities and by apprenticeships and jobs. Art and sport matter too as they do so much to build confidence and self-esteem.

Why, for example, were the opportunities to work with Hastings United not taken forward when they were presented? And why can't we just get the Hastings Greenway done, with all the public health, community access and sustainable transport benefits it would bring? Hastings Borough Council needs to seriously up its game and be the radical and strategic lead organisation joining up the services that disadvantaged neighbourhoods need, in nicely designed, green, fit for purpose buildings.

This is where the regeneration millions should have been going. Not to carpet long-empty office blocks like Priory Quarter.

I have written elsewhere recently that Hastings Pier winning the Stirling Prize for architecture back in appears to have been a missed opportunity in respect of kick-starting a Borough-wide commitment to good design, especially since we have an incredible architectural heritage here in Hastings and St Leonards. We only need look at this year's Stirling winner - new council housing commissioned in Labour-held Norwich - to see what is possible. Instead, what do we see here? An Ore Valley Community Land Trust team evicted from long-unused land in order that one of the nation's big estate agents could market the site for mainstream commercial gain.

This is a bizarre case of pulling the lifeline on a community-led project in a poorly served area offered a chance to make its own future on a site that had been empty for decades. Now the likely outcome is another bog-standard housing estate by a mainstream developer. Let's hope the affordable housing requirement is enforced this time. The Council's overriding aim must be to try to provide excellence in our deprived neighbourhoods, not just moan about central government, and accept sub-standard materials due to sub-standard revenue grants.

Everything he says is half-true: "Bottle Alley" is only half a mile long; the name wasn't locally coined to epitomise its alcoholic associations but because the rear wall is glazed with broken bottles. And above it is a promenade, the sight of which of an early summer's evening, when cyclists and joggers and buggy-pushers and — well, promenaders — avail themselves of the opportunity to be beside the sea beneath a canopy of sky, is more intoxicating than the Special Brew consumed beneath.

Had Michael only asked and had I the courage to move to Hastings by the time he'd visited , I could have taken him on a walking tour from which he would emerge unblemished by infelicities — and quite possibly nosing in the window of an estate agency.

It would have been a blinkered half-lie, but different from his. Still, the numbers tend to bear him out: seaside towns have high levels of unemployment and substance abuse, teenage pregnancy and benefits dependency, as well as low levels of educational attainment and professional qualifications. There is a minister for Coastal Communities but no minister for, say, Spa Towns ; substantial development grants are awarded not always making any obvious impact ; and think-tanks are commissioned to investigate and make recommendations, such as the Turning the Tide report, published by the Centre for Social Justice in It concluded that "both larger and smaller seaside towns are, on average, more disadvantaged than England as a whole", and that "the proportion of working-age people on out-of-work benefits in the five towns considered here ranges from 19 to 25 per cent against a national figure of In the seaside town of Rhyl, that figure was almost 70 per cent.

One common denominator is a long-held charge against some councils — and their alleged collaborators, local landlords — that they've used seaside towns as "dumping grounds" for people whom they'd otherwise have to house at greater expense in their own boroughs — resulting in visible social and personal dislocation. The Turning the Tide report says: "Vulnerable people such as children in care and ex-offenders have been moved in as authorities take advantage of low-cost housing as large houses have been chopped into houses in multiple occupation [HMOs].

Almost the flagship of such a phenomenon is Hastings's Devonshire Road, close to the station. An unkempt terrace of Victorian houses, the pavements are typically strewn with rubbish, and police and social workers are frequently in attendance. Such events are by no means the Observer's staple fare — more indicative is the headline "St Leonards bin fire now put out" — but still, Devonshire Road is a depressing thoroughfare.

There are so many different landlords and leases on Devonshire that there really isn't a lot we can do. And if we were to get rid of all the tenants, would we not then be guilty of 'moving them on'?

In all sorts of senses, there's nowhere further for them to go," says chief executive Jeff Kirby as we sit in the offices of his property development company, the Flint Group, which hovers above the town, its station, the old civic buildings, the super-cut-price houseware shop called ESK, and beyond the castle and the funicular. Jeff studied architecture at the Bartlett School, part of University College London, before setting out in property development in his native Canada as well as "Germany, Turkey, Romania, Ukraine and Russia, through a vertically integrated platform including development, construction and fund management".

His offices — from which can be seen the best panoramic views of Hastings in all its glorious shades — are truly "lofty": youngish-looking, well-dressed people listen to hip music and drink coffee, cocooned by funky interior design, cool prints and ambition. His long-term vision was to refurbish the building entirely, creating units of student accommodation but also a restaurant, bar and art gallery.

Meanwhile, he has generously made it available on a sort of pop-up basis as an exhibition space, bar and vintage market. Jeff is a Buddhist, which may be relevant in that, as he points out, it makes little sense from a purely commercial perspective to develop property in Hastings because the returns are so much lower than they are elsewhere; but, he says, he likes the town and there are things he can do here to make a difference. The vision for the Observer Building, however, was predicated on Brighton University — which has a campus in town — maintaining and growing its presence.

And shortly after I met Jeff, the university announced that, on account of low demand for its courses, it would be commencing a phased withdrawal from Hastings over two years.

Which came as a blow to almost everyone — not least, I expect, Jeff. If this was Shoreditch, we could turn it into luxury flats. But with property values as low as they are in Hastings