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This week in Hastings

This week in Hastings is a weekly email from Open Hastings: what the councils published this week, and what you can still act on. This is its web edition. The facts are rebuilt with every update, so they can be newer than the last email.

Issue 1, Sunday 1 November 2026. A printable sheet for a noticeboard or anyone who doesn't go online, and the week in five lines as plain text.

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The Local Plan: comments close on Thursday 12 November

Hastings Borough Council's consultation on the pre-submission draft of its Local Plan, the Regulation 19 stage, closes on Thursday 12 November 2026, 11 days from this issue.

The plan names 34 sites: 23 for homes, with 1,131 net new homes between them in the plan's own figures, 9 for workplaces and 2 for Gypsy and Traveller pitches. By ward, each ward linking to its sites:

Old Hastings, Silverhill, St Helens and Tressell have no site placed in them.

Comments at this stage are called representations. They go with the plan to an independent inspector, who asks whether it is legally compliant and sound. The council's consultation page says how to send one; our Local Plan page explains the stage and has a page for each site. Open Hastings doesn't suggest what to say.

What you can still act on this week

Soonest closing first.

Every consultation

What was decided

Every decision

Committees, from minutes newly on the record:

9 planning decisions on the council's decided lists of the last ten days: 7 granted and 2 refused.

Every planning decision in the last ten days (9)

New planning applications by ward

13 new applications on the council's weekly lists. By ward: Central St Leonards 4, Ashdown 2, Baird 1, Braybrooke 1, Castle 1, Gensing 1, Old Hastings 1, Ore 1 and Wishing Tree 1. New homes, changes of use and large schemes among them:

Every new application this week, by ward (13)

Ashdown

Baird

Braybrooke

Castle

Central St Leonards

Gensing

Old Hastings

Ore

Wishing Tree

Money

August 2026, payment by payment

By the date on each payment, Hastings Borough Council paid out £3.0m in August 2026 (668 payments), the latest month in its published files.

The council's August file lists 885 payments totalling £5.9m: £3.0m dated in August, £1.0m dated in earlier months, £265k dated in later months and £1.6m dated after the day we collected the file, which no month on the site counts.

The largest payments that month, as the council describes them:

Coming up

Council meetings in the next fortnight. Anyone can attend, apart from items an agenda marks as exempt.

Every meeting ahead
How This week in Hastings is made

Every line is assembled from the record by fixed rules, with no commentary. The editor, Laurie Harrison, chooses the lead each week and may add a few words of his own above it; the facts under it come from the record. A committee decision's headline comes from its checked summary, with its verb from the same fixed list as the decisions page, so nothing proposed is described as decided.

Named in the email: applications for new homes or a change of use, any that name a use class (such as a house in multiple occupation), and any stating 10 or more homes or 1,000 m² or more of floorspace; largest first, up to five. Every other application is counted in its ward and listed on this page.

Each application is counted in one ward: the ward of the postcode in its address (the ONS Postcode Directory); without a postcode, its street's ward when the street is all in one ward, or else the ward at the street's point on our map.

Payments are counted by the date on each one, as on the spending pages. A council file can carry payments dated in other months, so its own total can differ; the Money section says by how much and why.

The email is drafted from this page's facts and read by a person, who presses send. Something wrong? Write to editor@openhastings.com.