‘We don’t want to be the next Brighton. And even if we did, we couldn’t be anyway’

Adem Isozu is not happy.

The sun may be shining outside on the 1980s-style, red-bricked pedestrianised high street but it is also blowing a gale and people hurrying from bargain shop to bargain shop before the dark clouds in the distance arrive just aren’t in the mood for fish and chips. Isozu has worked in the New Kingfisher cafe on the main pedestrian thoroughfare from the town centre in Hastings to the pebble beach for most of the past 10 years. Judging by the menu and the dish of sausages and filleted fish on the counter, it isn’t hard to tell what sells in the famous old seaside town. But not today.

“I have been here since 1997 and things used to be much better,” he says. “Now the kids here are all drinking and smoking outside the cafe. Business is not as good as it used to be.”

Isozu – who came to the East Sussex coastal resort from Turkey looking for work – feels let down by the council as he says there is not enough for his two young children to do in the town. He fears for their future if they stay on the South Coast as “there just aren’t any opportunities here”.

Hastings council and regional development agency South East of England Development Agency (SEEDA) are all too aware of these concerns. Indeed, they echo much of what was said by a select committee of MPs in a report into seaside towns in March this year: deprivation, isolation and poor quality housing being the principal conclusions. But the council and SEEDA are engaged in a new battle for Hastings. In 2002 they launched a £341m regeneration strategy entitled “Making Waves” whose aim was to transform what had then slipped to one of the 30 most deprived towns in England. Five years on, is the strategy having an impact?

Some of the residents Regenerate spoke to weren’t convinced. “I’m not really aware of any change to be honest,” says 28-year-old care assistant Kerry Ewens, who has lived in the

We have a story to tell now and can show people. They’re not just plans – anywhere can do plans

Keith Saddler, Sea Space

St Leonard’s area of Hastings all her life. “The council needs to provide more community centres and more for the homeless to do so that they don’t hang around the seafront drinking all day. We also need more jobs.” Her 51-year-old mother Sandra Carrick is more concise: “The council don’t do nothing round here. ‘Making Waves’? Never heard of it.”

Things perk up however when we meet three teenagers killing time outside Hastings’ impressive new railway station. Jo Wilson,

16, does most of the talking for the group: “It definitely looks a lot prettier around here now. The station is nice now and Alexander Park looks a lot better with the new statues. I’ve definitely noticed things changing.”

Having said that, the three of them can’t wait to leave. “We have just finished school and are heading to college after the holidays. There is a [further education] college in Hastings on arts and technology but we’re heading to Eastbourne as there’s more choice there.” A reason for the apparent eagerness to flee to Eastbourne becomes clear when the smallest of the three, Richard Allen, 16, says: “There are plenty of bars there and a skateboard park to go and hang around in.”

As we walk into the town centre passing one of several sites being developed by local regeneration company Sea Space – jointly set up by principal partners Hastings council and SEEDA – we encounter 60-year-old postman Alan Hampton. “There has been a lot of change recently,” he says. “It’s giving us a bit of a competitive edge against Eastbourne.” Perhaps Hastings’ fierce rival isn’t going to have it all its own way after all.

But Hastings isn’t just waging a local battle for its young people with nearby Eastbourne. Through Sea Space it is setting its sights on bigger prizes: it wants to lure well-heeled individuals and hi-tech creative and financial businesses to the ancient town

If the council do what they say they’re going to do, Hastings will be a much better place to live’

Adem Isozu, resident

Keith Saddler is the man charged with drawing up the strategy. He is something of an old-hand at large-scale regeneration, having spent 15 years working in London Docklands.

If he can help build Canary Wharf, then the deputy director of Sea Space is definitely someone you want in your corner. So what are his plans?

“We don’t want to be the next Brighton,” he says over lunch in a new seafront cafe called Smiths in the formerly run-down St Leonard’s part of town. “And even if we did we couldn’t be because it’s a city with a motorway. Also, because we are so relatively isolated here, we’re not going to get huge factories or distribution centres. But you can circumvent the transport issue through technology. What we are doing just now is bringing down as many companies as possible and just showing them what we’ve got. We have a story to tell now and can show people that things are coming out of the ground. They’re not just plans – anywhere can do plans.”

He cites the cafe where we are having lunch as an example of the type of business he is looking to attract: “They have come here from Brighton and have been going for about a year.” He gestures round the room at the packed lunchtime crowd: “They have created this market – it simply wasn’t here before in St Leonard’s.”

Later we are on the pleasure beach having a quick shot on the arcade machines, killing time before our train back to London. We are along the road from the New Kingfisher cafe where Adem Isozu works whom we met that morning, and the new vision for Hastings seems a world away from the fish and chips and sickly sweet éclairs that he serves. As we trudge past through the wind and rain, I catch his eye. “We keep hoping it’ll get better with the regeneration,” he says. “If they do what they say they are going to do, then Hastings will be a much better place to live.”