15th June

At the meeting of their Policy, Resources & General Purposes Committee on 3rd June, Rye Town Council agreed to award us a grant of £816 towards establishing an outreach centre at Tilling Green Community Centre. This supplements the grant from the NPower Wind Farm Project Fund. Local volunteers have been trained and the Information Point will open next month. We are very grateful to Rye Town Council for this grant which will help us extend our services to this area of Rye.

1st April

As you may be aware, the government has decided to abolish the Financial Services Authority. With effect from today, we are authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Will you be affected by Universal Credit?
The Government is bringing in Universal Credit to replace some of the different benefits currently available with a single payment. It is being phased in from October this year. If you are in receipt of any sort of benefit, this could affect the amount you will receive. It will be paid monthly in arrears so it will certainly affect your household cash flow. Do you need to start saving that bit extra now to help manage the change? Remember that a regular savings record with the credit union could mean that we can help you cope with the change with a loan.

East Sussex County Council have comprehensive information about the changes and how they might affect local residents on their website. Follow this link

Are you ready for welfare reform?

6th March
The AGM for the year ending 30th September 2012 will take place on Wednesday 20th March 2013 at the Southwater Area Community Centre, 1/2 Stainsby Street, St Leonards (just behind Warrior Square station). It will begin at 7.30pm with light refreshments available.
This is your once-a-year chance to hear what your board of directors has been doing and to influence the future of the credit union. We look forward to seeing you.
It is very important that enough members attend the AGM for the meeting to go ahead so please make every effort to be there. If you are likely to have difficulty getting there, please contact the office and we will try and arrange transport for you.

25th February

New Information Point starts next Wednesday, 6th March. Following the closure of the Silchester Road Information Point at Christmas we are pleased to open a new one courtesy of HARC, BHT and Citizen's Advice 1066. For details see here.

9th January

Happy New Year

SCAM ALERT: If you receive an email informing you that you have won a prize in the UK National Credit Union lottery, delete it. It is a scam. There is no UK National Credit Union lottery. Further details can be found here

14th December

There was an interesting debate on Credit Unions in the House of Lords yesterday. Watch it here or read it here

8th December

Regrettably the Community Information Centre in Silchester Road will close just before Christmas and not reopen in the New Year. They have kindly housed our Tuesday Information Point for a long time and always provided a warm and friendly welcome. We are currently looking to find an alternative location in the same area for this very popular Information Point and will let you know when we have any news.

17th November

We have decided to discontinue our Information Point at the AmicusHorizon office in Chiltern Drive. Instead we will be present at other Amicus offices later in November and December. See the Information Points page for details.

9th November 2012

Money Guardian last Saturday included an interesting article

Credit unions offer payday loans alternative by Patrick Collinson in which he referred to Hastings & Rother Credit Union. You can read the article here. As a result, our website received a lot of hits directly from the Guardian website.

15th October

Tomorrow we are giving a presentation to the Rye Partnership which is keen to promote the credit union in their area. We are also planning to start a 3-week series of Information Points at AmicusHorizon Housing Association local offices in Hastings, St Leonards, Rye and Battle shortly. The details will be posted when available.

28th July

Hastings Borough Council vows to support credit unions, cap lending rates and oppose payday loan companies.

At its meeting on 25th July, members of Hastings Borough Council voted unanimously for the following motion:

'This council is concerned about the use of high-interest credit by residents including the availability of payday loans on the high street.

'It calls on the Government to consider:

(a) the introduction of caps on the total lending rates that can be charged for providing credit;

(b) creating a new planning use class giving local authorities the power to refuse applications for high street credit agencies where they could have negative economic or social impacts on communities; and

(c) the promotion of credit unions throughout the country as community based organisations offering access to affordable credit and promoting saving.'

In proposing the motion, Cllr Michael Wincott (Labour - Ore) said: “On the day that we learn that the UK recession is deepening, the people of this town need protection. Protection from legal loan sharks (officially known as payday loan companies)…. Companies clearly making a profit from the misery of others and helping create a cycle of poverty…. Capping charges is the right thing to do…

The government has told us that local people should have more power to influence what appears in their neighbourhood. By creating a new planning class where we can decide if a new loan shop would negatively impact its residents - we would have that power.

Introducing this new class would be the right thing to do."

He also called for the government to fund a publicity campaign in support of credit unions to give them a chance to compete on a level playing field with the likes of wonga.com. Powerful speeches from both Conservative and Labour members supported him.

You can view the debate on HBC's Youtube site. It starts 20 minutes in to the recording.

12th July

Apologies to all those who have been trying to contact us over the past few days.

On Monday 2nd July, we moved the office up two floors in the same building and needed BT to transfer the phones and broadband connection. We were left with a phone that could make calls but not receive them for several days and have been without broadband access until today. In addition we haven't been able to access our BT account in order to leave a message on this website. All emails sent to our account have been returned to sender undeliverable so could you please now resend them if you haven't already managed to speak to us. We apologise once again for the inconvenience this has caused.

28th April

We had a successful AGM in March at which a number of rule changes were agreed following changes in legislation and also to increase our income to help us on the road to becoming self-financing. These are explained in a special Newsletter which will be available shortly. At the Board meeting which followed Richard Street was re-elected President for the 10th year, Les Clarke became Vice-President and Georgiana de Lussy was re-elected Secretary.

27th February 2012

Our AGM will take place on Monday 26th March at the Community Information Centre, 16 Silchester Road, St Leonards starting at 7:30pm. All members are encouraged to attend and both hear what has been going on over the past year and help influence what happens in the future including some rule changes. All members will receive a Newsletter with further details within the next few days.

15th February

This month, the Information Point at the Isabel Blackman Cafe will be on Thursday 23rd instead of the usual Tuesday.

20th January 2012

With effect from Monday 6th February, we will no longer be able to accept or pay out cash at any of our Information Points. This is for the safety of our volunteers. If this will cause you any problems, please contact us.