1The problem

Pelham Place car park is the centre of the Hastings seafront: 276 spaces, 18 disabled bays, 20 motorcycle bays and 5 charge points, on the A259 between the pier and the Old Town ¹. It is the first thing the sea sees of Hastings and the first thing Hastings sees of the sea.

Here is the odd part: Hastings solved this exact problem nearly a century ago. Carlisle Parade car park, a few hundred metres west, opened in 1931 as the first underground car park in the country — built by borough engineer Sidney Little precisely so that parked cars would not block the sea views ². The town that pioneered hiding seafront parking now keeps its largest seafront car park in the open, in the best spot it has.

The council knows the seafront is severed from the town. Its own 2018 town-centre plan says the busy A259 with limited pedestrian crossings "acts as a barrier to movement between the seafront and town centre" ³, and the Town Deal programme reports that 75% of visitors bypass the town centre in favour of the Old Town ⁴.

And the land is not ordinary council property. Pelham Place car park belongs to the Hastings & St Leonards Foreshore Charitable Trust, whose founding conveyance of 1893 holds the foreshore in trust for the "common use benefit and enjoyment" of the public ^{5 6}. Storing cars is one reading of that purpose. We think a better one is available.

2The evidence

The retail evidence keeps pointing the same way. Living Streets' Pedestrian Pound review (2024) finds pedestrianised centres record higher sales, and collects the case studies: weekend pedestrianisation in Shrewsbury lifted takings by 25%, and retail vacancy in Bognor Regis — a fellow south-coast seaside town — fell from 13% to 7.5% after public realm improvements ^{7 8}.

Traders' fear of losing car-borne customers is real, honestly held, and measurably miscalibrated: in studies from Los Angeles to Nancy and Berlin, business owners underestimated the share of customers arriving on foot or by bike by roughly a factor of three ⁸.

The health evidence is unusually relevant to this town. Large English studies link living near the coast to better general and mental health, and a University of Exeter analysis of nearly 26,000 people found the mental-health benefit of the coast is largest for the lowest-income households ^{9 10}. Hastings has plenty of low-income households and a mile of coast. The question is what we put between them.

Greening the space is not decoration. Forest Research reports that well-chosen trees and green infrastructure can cool urban air by 2°C to 8°C in heatwaves ¹¹ — and the council is already trialling exactly this: the We Dig Hastings pilot at Denmark Place, with Transition Town Hastings and Great Dixter's gardeners, is testing climate-resilient seafront planting to shape the town-centre landscape designs ¹².

Nearby towns have run the experiment. Folkestone reopened its Harbour Arm as a public promenade after a £3.5m refurbishment; 80,000 people came in its first summer and numbers grew every year after ¹³. The honest caveat comes with it: deprivation in the streets behind Folkestone's harbour has persisted despite the footfall ¹⁴. Footfall is not prosperity. That is an argument for building a free public space for residents, not a leisure quarter — and it is why our proposal is a park, not a development.

The policy door is open. The draft Local Plan's town-centre policy commits the council to "changing our approach to parking" in the best-connected part of town and to better links between town centre and seafront ¹⁵ — yet the draft plan's site allocations, which we have read end to end, contain nothing for Pelham Place ¹⁶. The stated strategy and the largest seafront car park have not yet been introduced to each other.

3The proposal

Trial it before anyone commits to anything. For one summer season, close the eastern half of Pelham Place — roughly 140 spaces — and let the We Dig planting team, local groups and the events lawn have it ¹². Measure everything: footfall, trader takings, parking occupancy at Priory Street, which is the council's own stated overflow when Pelham queues ¹⁷. If the numbers say we're wrong, we will publish them and say so.

Keep step-free parking for those who need it, at the front. All 18 blue-badge bays stay on the frontage at grade in any scheme, full stop. The obvious alternative does not work for wheelchair users: the council's own page says Carlisle Parade's steep ramp makes it unsuitable ¹⁸. A greener seafront that pushes disabled visitors half a mile away has failed on its own terms.

Make the charity whole. Pelham's parking receipts help fund the Foreshore Trust, whose income of about £1.9m a year comes mainly from car parking and seafront entertainment and which gives small grants to local groups ^{19 5}. The council, as the Trust's sole trustee, is legally bound to act in the charity's interest — so the proposal must carry its replacement income (events, concessions, and the trial season's own takings) on its face, not as an afterthought. A campaign that ignores charity law deserves to lose.

Put the site in the plan. The Local Plan's next stage should give Pelham Place a site allocation that matches the council's own stated strategy: public realm first, parking approach changed, seafront reconnected ¹⁵. When that consultation opens, our toolkit will be ready.

4The honest counterarguments

5What you can do today

When the Local Plan's next consultation opens (it is imminent — the current stage closed in April 2026 ¹⁶), respond and say Pelham Place should be allocated as public open space. Our toolkit will have the points ready.

Get your hands in the actual dirt: the We Dig Hastings planting at Denmark Place is the pilot for everything this case argues for ¹², and Transition Town Hastings is part of it. Join via our action page.

Walk it and count. Next time you pass Pelham Place, count the people enjoying the sea from the middle of the car park. Send us the number, and a photo, when you join. We are building the before picture.