The evidence page
The state of green Hastings
Every number we could source about how green Hastings actually is, linked to where it comes from and dated. Where nobody measures something, we say so instead: an unmeasured town is easy to make claims about, and that is exactly the problem.
The council's net zero promise
2030
Declared 2019 · refreshed strategy agreed January 2026
Hastings Borough Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and committed to a carbon net zero, climate-resilient town by 2030. A refreshed strategy was agreed in January 2026 — and the council's own climate pages now say Hastings "may not reach net zero by 2030". Saying so out loud is to its credit; the gap between promise and trajectory is the point of measuring.
source: HBC Climate Change Strategy (2022) and the council's current climate pages (data year: 2019–2026; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Independent climate scorecard
32%
Up from 24% in 2023 · Climate Emergency UK assessment
Climate Emergency UK's Council Climate Action Scorecards give Hastings 32% for 2025, up eight points on 2023 but with weak sections for biodiversity (9%) and planning & land use (15%). A third-party assessment, not a government statistic — which is rather the point.
source: Council Climate Action Scorecards: Hastings Borough Council (data year: 2025; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Household recycling rate
29.5%
England 42.0% · South East 45.7% (2024/25)
Hastings sent 29.5% of household waste for reuse, recycling or composting in 2024/25, against 42.0% for England — by our calculation from the same DEFRA table, the 35th lowest of 294 English collection authorities. In 2010/11 the figure was 25.7%: fourteen years, four points. This is the single worst mainstream green number the town has.
source: DEFRA, Local authority collected waste management, annual results 2024/25 (data year: 2024/25; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Air quality
0management areas
No legal exceedances in 2024 — but NO2 rose at 9 of 14 monitoring tubes
Hastings has no Air Quality Management Areas (the Bulverhythe one was revoked in 2017) and its continuous roadside monitor recorded no breaches of legal limits in 2024. Two honest caveats from the council's own report: NO2 rose at 9 of its 14 diffusion tubes in 2024, against the national trend; and DEFRA judged this corner of the South East short of PM2.5 monitoring — a new national station on the West Hill is due to publish data from around September 2026. We'll read it when it does.
source: HBC Air Quality Annual Status Report 2025 (2024 data); EA West Hill AQMS residents' briefing (June 2026) (data year: 2024; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Homes with solar panels
1,489installations
≈3.7% of households, vs ≈5.8% across England (our calculation)
1,489 solar PV installations (7.2 MW) in Hastings at the end of 2024. Set against the borough's roughly 40,500 households, that is about two-thirds of the national take-up rate — our division of DESNZ's own installation and household columns — in one of the sunnier corners of England.
source: DESNZ Regional Renewable Statistics: renewable electricity by local authority, 2014–2024 (data year: 2024; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Energy efficiency of homes
68median EPC score
England median 69 · band D vs band C
The median Hastings home scores 68 on its Energy Performance Certificate, one point below England's 69 — but that point is the difference between band D and band C. Old, draughty, beautiful housing stock is a Hastings signature; so are the heating bills.
source: ONS, Energy efficiency of housing in England and Wales, 2025 edition (data year: to March 2025; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Households in fuel poverty
11.1%
England 9.9% (2024) — 4,797 Hastings households
One Hastings household in nine can't affordably keep warm, above the England rate. Every retrofit and insulation argument on this site is a poverty argument as much as a carbon one.
source: DESNZ, Sub-regional fuel poverty in England 2026 (2024 data) (data year: 2024; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Tree canopy, worst ward
7.5%Castle ward
UK urban average 17.3% · leafiest Hastings ward (Ashdown) 36.3%
Hastings is not short of trees — it is short of trees where poorer people live. Ward surveys put Castle at 7.5% canopy and Central St Leonards at 9.7%, less than half the UK urban average, while the eastern wards sit far above it. The town's green inequality, visible from space.
source: Forestry Commission / Forest Research, UK Ward Canopy Cover dataset (i-Tree surveys 2019–2022); UK urban mean from Forest Research's canopy webmap publication (data year: 2019–2022; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Bathing water classifications
Good / Excellent
Hastings Pelham Beach: Good · St Leonards: Excellent (2025)
The Environment Agency's 2025 classifications rate the borough's two designated bathing waters Good (Pelham) and Excellent (St Leonards). Classifications are annual and backward-looking; for what the sea is like today, the live estimates at Swim Hastings are the canonical place to look.
source: Environment Agency bathing water quality data, Hastings Pelham Beach and St Leonards (data year: 2025; confirmed 2026-07-31)
lives at swimhastings.uk
Carbon footprint per person
2.2tonnes CO2
England ≈3.8 tonnes per person (our calculation from the same dataset)
Hastings' territorial emissions work out at about 2.2 tonnes of CO2 per person for 2024, roughly 43% below the England figure computed the same way, and down by more than half since 2005. Honesty requires saying why: a compact coastal town with little industry and below-average driving. It is a real strength to build on, not a trophy anyone in particular earned.
source: DESNZ, UK local authority greenhouse gas emissions 2005–2024 (June 2026 release) (data year: 2024; confirmed 2026-07-31)
Every figure above names its source and the year it describes. Where the honest answer is "nobody measures this", we say so — an absence of measurement is a finding, not a gap in our homework. Spot an error? We correct in public.