Data health

Whether this record is working, and what it can't see. If a source breaks, we would rather tell you than show you last month's version of the town without saying so.

Sources

Two kinds of source feed this record. 41 are collected by the server itself, every few hours or every week. 38 of them are working now, and 37 are fetched, fresh and complete. 50 more are files of figures and maps read on our computer and shipped with the site; 50 are up to date, and 4 need reading again.

Where the data comes from

Each source answers three questions. Fetched: did its last run work? Fresh: has it worked within the time it should (a day for most, since the server reads them every six hours)? Complete: did the last run read everything it was meant to, and does the record hold something from it? A source is only "ok" when all three are yes. "Partial" means the last run was cut short, and "no records" means it holds nothing when it should.

The last full rebuild of the site took 3 min 45 s (slowest: section pages built 82 s, street, ward and organisation pages 30 s, paper pages 10 s), finished Sun 1 Nov 2026. It runs after every harvest.

Baked data

Figures from national statistics, maps and the councils' own files are read on our computer and shipped with the site, so they don't show up in the list above. 50 of 50 are up to date. The publishers were last checked for a newer release on 27 October 2026.

4 need reading again:

Plain-English summaries

Of the meetings in the last 60 days, 5 have their minutes on the record, and 5 of those have a checked summary on Decisions. Cabinet, Full Council and Lead Member minutes are summarised first. 5 papers in all are waiting for a summary.

The council hasn't published the minutes yet:

• Licensing Sub Committee, Wed 9 Sep 2026 (Hastings Borough Council), 53 days ago
• Audit Committee, Thu 10 Sep 2026 (Hastings Borough Council), 52 days ago
• Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Thu 17 Sep 2026 (East Sussex County Council), 45 days ago
• Place Scrutiny Committee, Wed 23 Sep 2026 (East Sussex County Council), 39 days ago
• Full Council, Wed 23 Sep 2026 (Hastings Borough Council), 39 days ago
• Full Council, Tue 13 Oct 2026 (East Sussex County Council), 19 days ago
• Planning Committee, Wed 21 Oct 2026 (Hastings Borough Council), 11 days ago
• Planning Committee, Wed 21 Oct 2026 (Hastings Borough Council), 11 days ago

How places are matched

Street and ward pages show food hygiene ratings and planning appeals by fixed rules on their addresses (OPENHASTINGS.md §23). These counts show what the rules miss.

Food hygiene ratings. Of the 946 premises on the Food Standards Agency's register, 796 are placed on a street, and 761 of those on a street with a page here. 680 are placed in a ward by the FSA's map point. 127 have no address (mostly mobile caterers and home businesses, which the FSA doesn't publish), and 23 have an address the rules couldn't place.

Planning appeals. 13 of the 13 appeals in the committee's reports are placed on a street by the address the report quotes.

The Planning Inspectorate's decided appeals. 93 of the 100 are placed on a street by the site address the Inspectorate gives; not placed: TPO-10879; 38 Birch Way, HASTINGS, TN34 2JZ; Land Between 42 & 45 Tackleway (rear of Zion Cottage), Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3BU; Land South East Of Junction Of Church Street adjacent to Arlington Cottages, Hastings, East Sussex, TN35 5BY; 18 Marina - Flats 1 & 3, ST. LEONARDS-ON-SEA, TN38 0DP; Garages Adjacent 12 Watermans Close, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 2JP; Land Rear of 111-114 Marina (adjacent to Sussex Road), St Leonards on Sea, TN38 0BS.

Hand-kept links

The signpost pages (who to contact, do it online, new to Hastings and the rest) hold 211 links to other bodies' pages, each opened and read by hand on the date recorded.

All of them were checked in the last 90 days.

Hand-kept closing dates

"You can still act on" holds 3 dates and notes copied by hand from other bodies' pages (config/deadlines.yaml), each with the day it was read.

All of them were checked in the last 90 days.

Help now’s cards

Help now holds 36 cards, each read on its provider’s own page, a partner’s list or a public body’s page on the day recorded. A card expires 90 days after that.

Translations, each checked by a person before it is published:

• Romanian: a draft waiting for a translator, not published; 36 of 36 cards translated from the English they have now
• Polish: a draft waiting for a translator, not published; 36 of 36 cards translated from the English they have now
• Russian: a draft waiting for a translator, not published; 36 of 36 cards translated from the English they have now

No card has expired.

Council service pages

Read from the councils' own pages on the iMac and shipped with the site (car parks, toilets, bins and the tip, the register office, school admissions dates, the cemetery's fees, property to let).

• Hastings Borough Council's service pages (car parks, toilets, beaches, cemetery, property to let): read 14 Oct 2026, 18 days ago.
• East Sussex County Council's service pages (the tip, school admissions, the register office): read 12 Oct 2026, 20 days ago.

Search

Readers pressed “Didn’t find it?” after a search or an answer 0 times in the 30 days to 1 November. Only the words searched for are kept, for 90 days.

The search's 4 links for things this site doesn't cover were all checked in the last 90 days.

Who is told when something breaks

Alarms are not switched on yet. When a source fails or needs attention, this page shows it, but nobody is sent a message, so a problem can sit here until someone looks.

What this record cannot see

Every archive has holes. These are the ones we know about:

• Council payments under £250 — Not published. Hastings Borough Council publishes every supplier payment over £250, so the spending page is a floor: smaller payments, and what the council receives, are not on the record.
• Public contracts before August 2026 — Partly visible. Contract notices are collected from both national services, Contracts Finder (for smaller contracts) and Find a Tender (for larger ones), but only from when collection began, so earlier contracts are not on the record. Below-threshold notices reach Contracts Finder at the buyer's discretion, and Find a Tender notices state where their organisations are based rather than where work is delivered, so a contract performed in Hastings by a non-Hastings firm for a non-Hastings body is invisible to us. A Hastings firm appointed to a multi-supplier framework is also not counted: the published value there is the whole framework's ceiling, and no share of it can honestly be attributed to one firm. The money page shows only what we can see, and says so.
• Grants filed under a wider area — Partly counted. We include a grant when the funder recorded it against Hastings, or when the organisation that received it gives a Hastings postcode. Money filed under East Sussex, the South East or nationally, to an organisation based outside the borough, is invisible to us, which is why the money page shows a minimum rather than a total.

How we handle being wrong

Corrections are made in place, with a note saying what changed, and they are logged on the about page. To tell us about a mistake, use "Something wrong with this page?" at the foot of the page, or write to editor@openhastings.com.