Face masks representing four East Sussex County Councillors (left to right: Ian Hollidge, Paul Redstone, ESCC Council Leader Keith Glazier, Gerard Fox) tied to the fossil fuel monster outside Lewes station, Tuesday 9 July 2024 – just before the ‘Cut the ties!’ procession to County Hall. Photo: Steve Lewis
Outrage over Tory plans to suspend May local election
The Conservative leader of East Sussex County Council (ESCC), Keith Glazier, is planning to use government’s recently announced shake-up of local councils as a pretext to suspend the May 2025 local elections. Erica Smith reports.
Shortly before Christmas the government announced that it wanted every region of England to get a mayor, in major redesign of local government.
This announcement has been controversial, as it could lead to the end of see the end of Hastings Borough Council along with Eastbourne, Wealden and Lewes local Councils.
But now it has emerged that the leader of East Sussex County Council (ESCC), Keith Glazier, is planning to use these proposals as a pretext to suspend the May 2025 local elections for East Sussex County Council (ESCC) for two years, sparking even greater outrage.
Graphic: Hastings Green Party
‘An undemocratic power grab’
The Leader of Hastings Borough Council, Julia Hilton, has condemned the Tory plans and led the Greens’ calls at County for an Extraordinary Full Council meeting. This meeting will be held this Thursday (9 January).
According to Councillor Hilton: ‘The Conservatives have been hanging onto power at ESCC by a thread since 2023. If the elections are cancelled, not only would we be stuck with them for two more years, but they would be the ones to decide who leads the creation of a new mega-council, sweeping away Hastings and all the other district and borough councils in East and West Sussex. This is an undemocratic power grab.’
Councillor Hilton explained further what the Government’s local authority reorganisation and devolution plans could mean for Hastings in her Leader’s column in December (see below).
Hastings Greens are urging members of the public to write to the government asking them to refuse ESCC’s request to cancel the elections’ and have created an online webtool to help them to do this.
They are also encouraging members of the public to attend Thursday’s (9 Jan) meeting at County Hall in Lewes, which is scheduled to start at 10am.
The issue will also be discussed at the Hastings Borough Council cabinet meeting on Monday 6 January at Muriel Matters House, which will begin at 6pm (and will also be livestreamed from the Council’s website).
A graphic created by Divest East Sussex
‘Tens years resisting meaningful climate action’
Hastings Greens aren’t the only ones registering their opposition.
Local climate campaign Divest East Sussex (DES) – which has spent the last eleven years trying to get ESCC to stop investing local people’s pensions in the giant fossil fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis – has also been encouraging its supporters to oppose the suspension.
According to DES, such a move ‘would allow a dying Conservative regime’ which ‘has spent the last ten years resisting meaningful climate action … a further two years in power’ when the electorate should be choosing new councillors and leaders.
Over 100 people have already sent DES’s template email to the government, opposing the move.
‘DEVASTATING FOR THE TOWN’
According to the Leader of Hastings Borough Council, Julia Hilton:
‘After reading all 118 pages of [the] white paper on the shakeup of the councils, my overall impression is of the serious undermining of local democracy. If these plans go ahead, by 2028 at the latest, the Hastings council, which has been in place since medieval times, will cease to exist, and the whole of East Sussex will be served by a single council. Now, some of you may say, so what. As long as my bins get collected and streets are cleaned, I don’t care who does it. But, if the shake-up takes place, who will you talk to locally if the essentials don’t get taken care of? It seems bizarre, to say the least, to remove the layer of government whose representatives actually live among the people they serve… Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner claims this reorganisation will mean “fewer politicians”. But district councillors are first and foremost community activists, and work hard to help people solve their everyday problems. The workload won’t get any lighter, but there will be far fewer of us to take it on. Rather than cheer our impending demise, Angela Rayner would do better to celebrate our contribution and promote such local volunteering, democracy, and active citizenship.’
Meanwhile, according to the leader of the Hastings Independents, Paul Barnett, Labour’s plan for local mega-councils would have a ‘devastating’ effect on Hastings.
A 20 December Facebook post on the Hastings Independents page quoted its leader, Councillor Paul Barnett, as saying: ‘We all know the poor service Hastings gets from the County Council. Just look at the state of our roads, youth services, and adult social care. Now, they expect us to believe this distant mega-authority will suddenly deliver for Hastings? It’s a scam! A Labour Government pretending this providing more local powers, but it’s the exact opposite.’
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