Plans to relocate Hastings Register Office are set to go in front of a senior county councillor.
On November 10, Cllr Claire Dowling, East Sussex County Council’s lead member for transport and environment, is due to consider proposals to relocate the service to new premises in Hastings Library in Claremont.
In a report to Cllr Dowling, council officers say the relocation would be expected to result in savings of around £100,000 per annum. The cost of relocation would come to around £125,000.
The report reads: “This proposal offers value for money and would deliver an improved and enhanced library and registration office. The proposal can be delivered within the existing budget, due to forecast additional ceremony and citizenship income for this financial year and will achieve on-going revenue saving. The proposals will make the best use of library buildings.
“The proposal allows the service to refocus the current council ceremony venues offer to meet customer demands and establish a ceremony room at Hastings Library. In addition, the Service would continue to support the local economy through the current 34 approved marriage premises in Hastings.”
The proposals, if approved, could result in the loss of several ceremony rooms from the service’s current premises at Hastings Town Hall in Queens Road — a building the county council leases from Hastings Borough Council.
Currently, the town hall building has three ceremony rooms. According to the service’s website, the smallest of these three rooms has space for 15 people, while the largest has space for up to 60 people.
The service’s website says these capacity figures include everyone except the ceremony registrars, so a wedding held in the smallest of the three rooms — the Mayor’s Parlour — would have space for a couple plus “up to 13 guests”.
In a report to Cllr Dowling, officers say Hastings Library would only have a single full-time ceremony room if the service is relocated.
The report says this space would have a maximum capacity of 10 people, but notes how this figure would include two ceremony registrars. In effect this would mean a wedding held in the library would only have space for the couple plus six guests.
Officers say a larger ceremony space would be available on the building’s ground floor, but the report says this venue would only be available when the library is closed (on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons). This space could have capacity for up to 60 people, the report says.
In their report, officers say the current ceremony rooms within the town hall are considered to be “underutilised”.
They say this is because the three rooms could potentially accommodate as many as 5,475 ceremonies each year, while the service had only conducted 273 ceremonies in 2022/23, 216 in 2023/2024 and 219 in 2024/2025.
The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) report a total of 3,051 marriages and civil partnerships taking place across the entirety of East Sussex in 2022. The existing rooms are available for other types of ceremonies.
If the relocation moves ahead, officers note how the council would need to secure planning permission for a change of use of the existing library building. The council may also need to secure listed building consent, the report adds.
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