“Occupy while you’re raising money and thinking about what to do,” says Jess Steele. “Don’t sit around kitchen tables forever writing funding bids: get on with being in the space and creating the benefits along the way.”

This is the guiding ethos behind Hastings Commons, the community-led regeneration organisation in the East Sussex seaside town, in which Steele was a founding investor – now maintaining the title ‘commoner-at-large’. Over the past 12 years it has turned derelict buildings in White Rock – a neighbourhood that ranks among the most deprived in England – into affordable homes, workspaces and social infrastructure. Property in the area was historically cheap – owing, says Steele, to “a terrible road, a terrible railway, and a terrible reputation”.

More recently, concern has shifted from dereliction to gentrification, accelerated by the Covid pandemic, when living by the seaside became more appealing to those in big cities who now had the option to work remotely. Demand – and rents – have risen accordingly, as has the number of households in temporary accommodation. Hastings Commons’ response has been to take buildings into ownership under a Community Land Trust model, capping rents on both homes and workspaces.