The furtive coalition arrangement between the Greens and Labour, revealed in an exclusive report by Brighton and Hove News, has already undermined faith in democracy in the city.
As articulated by the Conservative whip, to have a party hold itself up as the city’s official opposition while at the same time being part of a coalition arrangement to govern the city clearly undermines the spirit of democracy and generates its own questions about why certain allowances have been claimed.
But the content of this agreement also raises questions about the practical impact of this deal on policy formation and decision-making in the city and how this has affected the lives of residents.
An example from this year shows the impact that this deal has had.
City Plan – a cautionary tale
The City Plan Part 2 is one of the most significant policies that Brighton and Hove undertakes. It is a 10-year development plan for the city including where housing will be built.
It is required to meet the city’s minimum housing targets and affects all parts of the city including green spaces. It is a document many residents care deeply about.
On Thursday 23 April a special council meeting was called to consider this important document.
The Conservatives, having scrutinised the proposals and carefully looked at the figures, came to that meeting with new information for councillors.
The Conservatives presented data showing that how, taking into account recent planning decisions, just the brownfield sites in the plan would easily met the housing targets that the city was required to meet.
This meant the “urban fringe and its ecology could be spared.
The Conservatives put forward the proposal that the 16 urban fringe sites, that would only contribute 930 of the 16,000 proposed new dwellings, should be removed from the City Plan Part 2. These are figures which have never been disputed by the council.
Given that councillors from other parties had previously expressed their desire to protect the urban fringe from development – some in cast iron pledges to their constituents – we thought that the Conservative proposal would be welcomed and win support from the other parties.
But to our surprise this didn’t happen. On the night, Labour and the Greens seemingly ignored the new evidence and simply voted the plan through.
This catastrophic decision was the last time the council allowed was allowed any debate on the matter. Residents’ petitions and deputations were later disallowed from discussion at council meetings.
The decision had been made – but had not taken into account all the evidence.
Tory housing minister Robert Jenrick seems to have scrapped his housing algorithm which took away local control and forced councils to build where they didn’t want to.
But it’s only been scrapped in rural Tory council districts