How to solve System.Net.HttpStatusCode error ?

See more:

C#

ASP.NET

WebResponse

I am trying to implement status code response from the web request and I am currently experiencing the following error on the line of code below:

error --> Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Net.HttpStatusCode' to 'int'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)

statusCode = ((HttpWebResponse)e.Response).StatusCode;

Entire code:

public static string WRequest()
        {
           string URL = "########";
           string method = "POST";
           string postData = newTemplates.createXMLIssue();

            string responseData = "";
            int statusCode;

            try
            {
                HttpWebRequest hwrequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(URL);
                hwrequest.Timeout = 60000;
                hwrequest.Method = method;
                hwrequest.KeepAlive = false;

                if (hwrequest.Method == "POST")
                {
					//additonal code
                }

                // Attempt to receive the WebResponse to the WebRequest.
                using (HttpWebResponse hwresponse = (HttpWebResponse)hwrequest.GetResponse())
                {
                    statusCode = (int)hwresponse.StatusCode;
                    if (hwresponse != null)
                    { // If we have valid WebResponse then read it.
                        using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(hwresponse.GetResponseStream()))
                        {
                           // XPathDocument doc = new XPathDocument(reader);
                            string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
                           // XPathNavigator xml = doc.CreateNavigator();
                            //responseData = xml.ToString().Trim();
                            responseData = responseFromServer;
                            reader.Close();
                        }
                    }
                    hwresponse.Close();
                }
            }
            catch (WebException e)
            {
                string message = ((HttpWebResponse)e.Response).StatusDescription;
                statusCode = ((HttpWebResponse)e.Response).StatusCode;
                responseData = "An error occurred: " + message + statusCode;
            }
            return responseData;
        }
    }

Any hints, to where I may be going wrong, would be very much appreciated. Many thanks.