#34: Devolution Is Only As Local As It Feels

The Sussex And The City Podcast

– Episode #34

Devolution Is Only As Local As It Feels

Host: Richard Freeman
Guest: Cllr Julia Hilton – Deputy Leader, Hastings Borough Council

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🔍 Episode summary

Richard is joined by Cllr Julia Hilton, Deputy Leader of Hastings Borough Council and one of Sussex’s most outspoken voices on local government reorganisation and devolution.

Julia brings a fiercely place-based perspective, shaped by her background as a landscape architect, artist and community organiser. The conversation is unapologetically Hastings-first; not as a brand or 'policy problem', but as a lived place with strong neighbourhood identities, deep inequalities, creative energy and a long memory of top-down regeneration that hasn't landed well.

“We don’t just accept the status quo. We always want to test stuff … bringing that creativity and that sort of slight edginess to parts of East Sussex that can feel a bit comfortable.”

Together, Richard and Julia dig into what devolution could actually mean for Hastings, and what it absolutely must avoid. They explore the risks of losing local knowledge through council reorganisation, the dangers of chasing abstract growth metrics, and why things like retrofitting homes, buses that work, and neighbourhood trust may matter more than glossy skills strategies with acronyms nobody asked for.

This is a conversation about power close to the ground, and whether Sussex’s next chapter will be written with towns like Hastings, or merely about them.

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🎯 Why this matters

“What people want to see in Hastings is … really good quality council housing and affordable housing, upgrading our council stock, celebrating our heritage, celebrating our green spaces, and making the most of all those … Pretty much everyone will agree on that.”

Julia’s argues that devolution without trust, local knowledge and meaningful measures of success risks repeating the mistakes Hastings has already lived through.

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🧠 Topics covered include:

• Hastings’ topography — and how hills, green space and fragmentation shape communities

• Why regeneration has often felt done to rather than built with

• The erosion of trust through endless consultation with little change

• Political pluralism in Hastings; and what it says about trust in politics

• Skills, climate work and retrofitting as realistic economic pathways

• Youth employment in a small-business, seasonal economy

• The risk of devolution becoming a “hustle for our patch”

• Why transport and housing are the non-negotiable delivery tests

• The danger of losing neighbourhood knowledge in a new unitary system

• Hastings’ role as a challenging, creative force in the Sussex story

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📚 Further reading and references

• Hastings Borough Council – shaping places portfolio

• Index of Multiple Deprivation – East Sussex profiles

• Get Sussex Working Plan
  
  

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🎧 Production credits

Host: Richard Freeman
Guest: Cllr Julia Hilton
Sound design / editing / original music: Chris Thorpe-Tracey
Production management: Letitia McConalogue
Produced by: always possible

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📣 Get involved

Want devolution that actually reflects lived places?
Want Sussex leadership shaped from the ground up?

👉 https://sussexandthecity.info — episodes, resources and events.