Local government only works when the basics work. Residents of Rother want their planning applications processed on time. They want food inspections done properly. They want answers to their questions without having to chase. They want to believe that the Labour/Liberal Democrat/Green-run District Council have their eye on the essentials. Over several years, anyone following Rother District Council’s scrutiny meetings will have noticed a pattern that should worry every resident in Bexhill, Battle and rural Rother. Service performance is slipping. Staff vacancies are persistent. Pressure on frontline teams is growing. Culture problems are whispered about far too often to be ignored. The public is being told that improvement is under way, yet the evidence in committee papers often shows the opposite.
This is not about attacking individual officers who are working hard. It is about recognising what Rother’s scrutiny commitee itself has highlighted – that there are deep problems with how the council is managed and how some teams are functioning. These problems ultimately fall on elected members and senior leadership to address.
Failing to hit basic performance targets
If residents knew how far from target several core services actually are, they would be rightly frustrated. At scrutiny, Councillors were told that only three quarters of Freedom of Information requests had been answered on time. That gap is not a small slip. It reflects a system that has not been properly maintained or managed. Officers admitted that FOI tracking had been hampered by outdated manual processes and late internal responses. For a council that often talks about transparency and public engagement, this should set alarm bells ringing.
Environmental Health tells a similar story. The council is meant to be hitting 90 percent of scheduled food inspections. Instead, the figure reported was only 64 percent. That is not a marginal miss. It is a collapse in capacity. The explanation was a single senior vacancy in the team. If the absence of one person can drop a vital public health function by a full third, that reveals chronic fragility in the service and raises serious questions about long term workforce planning.
The planning service remains one of the biggest areas of concern. Backlogs in validation, delays in decision making and low rates of applications completed within statutory timeframes have all become regular features of scrutiny reports. Councillors have discussed the reliance on deadline extensions, which mask delays rather than solve them. A planning department is meant to be the engine that drives local growth. When it falls behind, residents suffer, businesses suffer and the whole district loses momentum.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has also found fault with Rother’s enforcement processes in at least one case, concluding that the council failed to follow its own enforcement policy and to keep proper records and explanations for its decisions. In that case, the Ombudsman required the council to apologise and to remind staff to record rationales and adhere to policy requirements.
Parish Councils in Rother have raised concerns that the District Council’s enforcement service is not just overstretched, but operating on such a limited basis that officers discourage them from reporting anything other than the most serious of heritage cases. Parish representatives say they have been told in meetings with district officers that there is little point submitting enforcement information unless it relates to a Grade I listed building or another case judged to be of exceptional importance. If that is the advice being given to frontline community bodies, it confirms a deeper problem in how the District Council is managing its statutory enforcement responsibilities. Parish councils are meant to be partners in identifying breaches. Instead they are being quietly signalled that most of their efforts will go nowhere.
Even customer service performance data has been incomplete. Reports have shown that the council could not measure how many enquiries were resolved at first contact because its telephone system was not providing usable information. For a modern council, failing to capture such basic performance data is astonishing. It suggests a management culture where operational oversight has slipped.
The workforce is stretched and it shows.
Almost every public sector organisation is under staffing pressure, but Rother appears to be facing something more structural. Several key roles have remained unfilled or have required temporary agency cover or major outsourcing, with some planning decisions being worked on by those located hundreds of miles away from the district. When vacancies become chronic rather than occasional, something deeper is wrong. Either the roles are unattractive because workloads are unmanageable, or the culture in those departments is discouraging new recruits.
Scrutiny discussions have hinted at both. Councillors have been told that teams are carrying heavy caseloads and that temporary solutions are being relied on with no guaranteed end date. Officers have spoken openly about the impact of sickness absence, stress and difficulties retaining experienced staff. Residents experience the consequence in slower services, missed targets and long delays.
Concerns raised in the wider Local Government Association peer review paint a troubling picture. Staff told reviewers that shared legal services were under strain, with significant delays in advice and enforcement work. Legal services underpin every enforcement action, every planning decision and every regulatory process. If that team is struggling, the whole council slows down.
Behind the numbers is something more human. Council officers generally choose public service because they care about their communities. When performance dips this sharply, when positions stay vacant this long and when multiple teams report similar problems, it is fair to question whether the working environment is giving staff the support they need. There is now a steady stream of anecdotal reports that some teams are operating in a poor culture where pressure is high, morale is low and people feel unable to challenge decisions. These accounts should not be dismissed. They deserve investigation, not defensiveness.
Management accountability is missing
The root of these failures is not in the front line. It rests higher up. Senior management should have been the first to notice failures in FOI tracking, gaps in customer service data and plunging inspection rates. They should have acted long before scrutiny committees had to ask questions. Instead, the pattern looks reactive. Problems are being acknowledged after the fact, with assurances that improvements are coming soon. Residents have heard that line many times over the past year. Improvement is promised, then delayed, then re-promised.
A council cannot fix systemic problems with words. It must fix them with leadership. Leadership means identifying risk early, supporting staff properly and being honest about where systems have failed. It also means accepting that culture matters as much as process. If staff do not feel listened to, if temporary patterns become permanent and if weaknesses are quietly tolerated, no amount of policy reform will repair the damage.
Residents should also question whether councillors are being given the full picture. Scrutiny committees exist to challenge and probe. When reports are incomplete or performance indicators are removed rather than improved, it undermines the entire accountability process. A mature management culture welcomes scrutiny because it makes the organisation better. A defensive one presents only enough information to get through the meeting.
Why this matters for residents?
It is easy to think these issues are internal and distant. They are not. Every missed target connects to real outcomes for real people. A delayed food inspection can affect the safety of a local business. A planning backlog can derail a home improvement or stall an employer trying to expand. A poor workplace culture can drive out good staff and leave the council dependent on expensive agency workers. A slow or opaque FOI process weakens public trust.
Residents pay for these services and have every right to demand better. They should expect a council that can manage staff effectively, maintain core systems, recruit successfully and carry out the essential functions of a district authority with competence.
The wider political question
For Reform UK locally, this is not about political point scoring. All parties should want Rother District Council to perform well. But pointing out failure is a legitimate and necessary part of democratic accountability. When the evidence in scrutiny papers shows widespread underperformance, when staff morale appears fragile and when service quality is slipping, silence is not an option.
There is a strong case for a full independent review of service management, workforce culture and long term staffing strategy. Residents deserve transparency. Staff deserve a workplace where they can thrive. Councillors deserve accurate information. The current situation does not provide any of these with confidence.
Reform UK in Bexhill and Battle believes that local government must operate with discipline, professionalism and respect for residents. That means confronting problems honestly and insisting on better. The point is not to criticise for its own sake. It is to restore trust in a council that has lost sight of the basics. Ultimately, good services depend on good management, and good management depends on a healthy culture. At the moment, too many signs suggest that Rother is struggling on both fronts.
The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it
Residents will hope the council does not wait until the next set of performance papers to realise how serious the situation has become.
In the end, residents are the ones who pay for this decline in service quality. If enforcement is weakened, if planning delays become normal, if staff morale continues to fall and if the culture inside Rother District Council remains clouded by poor management, then the district will continue to drift. This is not inevitable. It is the result of choices made by those who lead the council and by the political groups who support the current direction.
Voters have every right to ask whether the council as it stands is capable of changing or whether a different kind of leadership is needed. Reform believes in strong local accountability, clear service standards, disciplined management and a workplace culture built on respect and competence. Residents deserve a council that works for them, not one that brushes aside concerns or allows long running problems to become normal.
When the next round of local elections for District Councillors approaches, people across Bexhill and Battle should think carefully about who they want shaping the priorities of their district. They should ask whether the current management style is delivering the services they expect, or whether a fresh approach from Reform UK is now the only way to bring the change the area needs.
