In September 2019 Friends of the Earth ranked every council in England and Wales on the basis of their performance on climate change.
After eight years of Green and Labour administrations in Brighton and Hove, how did our city do?
Here are the results … Friends of the Earth ranked Brighton and Hove City Council’s performance on climate change in the bottom quarter of the 339 local authorities in England and Wales.
Some 258 local authorities (76 per cent of councils in England and Wales) performed better on climate change than Brighton and Hove City Council.
Only 49 local authorities received a lower performance score on climate change than Brighton and Hove City Council.
This is a poor result for our “Green” council to reflect on – and things have lately gone from bad to worse.
Green policies have hit the environment hard. Since this survey was conducted, Brighton and Hove City Council’s performance on climate change has taken a number of further hits from poor council decisions.
Several parts of the city are now heavily polluted and gridlocked as a result of the experimental traffic orders brought in and maintained in vote after vote by the Green/Labour council.
Local wildlife and ecology has been hurt by the Greens’ housing development policy.
In 2020 the Labour/Green Council voted through a plan to build on 16 urban fringe sites, a move that led to consternation from the Sussex Wildlife Trust.
The conservation charity correctly pointed out that there was no need to do so given the brownfield sites available.
The council has recently cut through a section of Europe’s longest “green wall” along Madeira Drive, planted by the Victorians, in a move that still hasn’t been properly explained by the Green committee chair.
And it was recently revealed in Parliament that Brighton and Hove has a shocking recycling rate by comparison to other local authorities – almost half that of neighbouring West Sussex County Council.
Why are the Greens failing to deliver on climate change? After all, the Green Party talks a lot about climate change and likes holding Citizens’ Assemblies and other talking shops.
The evidence clearly suggests that over its two administrations in the city, including their current coalition with Labour, the Greens have taken the city backwards on this metric.
The Green Party, which used to be an environmental party, has now morphed into an unrecognisable entity, focused on an extreme social ideology over everything else.
Brighton and Hove City Council has set itself a target to become carbon-neutral by 2030.
This is extremely unlikely to be achieved by the Greens, whose policies are now creating more pollution – not less – in this city.
Councillor Steve Bell is the leader of the Conservative group on Brighton and Hove City Council.
Beat in mind this is also one the most poorly maintained cities in Britain with rubbish overflowing on just about every major street. Historically the green party was a protest party focused on advocacy. Sadly there is a long distance between being an advocate and actually being a good administrator of services. People should be voting for stable administrators of services who have some forward looking vision to meet future needs. That said, most parties fail on either one or the other, lack of vision or lack of administrative ability.
The Greens are like spiteful, petulant children. They are ruining Brighton
I have as much respect for the incapable and incompetent Green council as I have for a bottle of cheap, stinking cooking-oil from Lidl…
They ruined Brighton when they were in power before and then Kitcat ran away. One would have thought that the Greens would be pariahs for a very long time, which they should have been. Unfortunately, no lessons were learned by the people who kept on voting Green, it seems. And Labour made such a mess with their Momentum agenda, suspensions etc, that they let the incompetents back in power again. Not that it made any difference, as they were both equally incompetent and in cahoots with each other. When will voters ever learn that others reap what their fine ‘principles’ sow.
Both Conservative planning councillors Joe Miller & Carol Theobald approved housing on a site 55% over legal pollution levels. It will expose the new residents to pollution levels that will cause serious illness and also likely worsen the pollution in the surrounding area due to the building design reducing air flow. The bus stop that will expect to experience worse pollution in front of the new building 5-8 London Road serves patients from the medical centre and primary school children at St Barts school. Where you then Steve Bell and your conservative colleagues?
This is immature and misleading rhetoric on the topic of pollution. It can cause serious illness and death. I expect a greater level of responsibility from councillors.
Pollution is serious and has been way too high for way too long and I would really like it if you did something constructive about it. Instead you oppose emission free active travel schemes and approve housing that will worsen the air flow and air pollution in densely populated areas.
Ripping out cycle lanes and encouraging people to drive everywhere is really going to help, isn’t it, Tories?
Demnocratically removing one cycle lane is not encouraging people to drive everywhere, (because the cycle lane quite clearly failed to encourage a switch to active travel). If the Green Policy is every cycle lane is working and good no matter what the usage is then no wonder the council is to the bottom of the green performance table.
Keeping cycle lanes that are hardly every used is not helping either, Georgia. The resulting daily chaos on Old Shoreham Road is incredible.
Meanwhile, the Greens ought to rename themselves as the Marxist Party, since so many of their policies relate more closely to old Soviet Russia than to the environment.