Here is an edited version of what the joint Labour opposition leader, Carmen Appich, said as councillors met to set the council tax and Brighton and Hove City Council’s annual budget today (Thursday 24 February) …
I am hugely disappointed that we are having to propose yet another maximum increase in council tax and adult social care precept, without getting anything extra for our residents.
Instead, we must make huge savings, again, and increase fees and charges, just like last year, the year before and the year before that.
We did not become councillors so that we can say to you year after year, pay more and you will get less, did we? I’m sure no one in this room did.
Local government has just not been given any sort of priority by successive Conservative governments, except for when they want us to deliver something quickly – like responses to the pandemic.
This situation makes me very angry, and a little sad, and worried for our residents, and this situation clearly cannot go on.
In the context of sharply rising costs of living and especially rising fuel bills we are more than aware that the planned local tax increases will be hard to swallow and a stretch for many of our residents, whether they are working or not.
We hear of rising rents, too – rents in some parts of London are now cheaper than in our city. How did this happen? And why have we not got any additional funding to compensate our residents?
Focusing now on the city council and this budget: it was good to see that the administration changed their minds about some of the originally proposed savings – in particular around the community safety team and the reductions in some of the early years areas, particularly the day nursery opening hours.
The investments in priority areas of the corporate plan, which we all signed up to in 2019, are all sensible, and I want to highlight the investments in “Housing First”, warmer homes, parks infrastructure and zero carbon projects.
Labour councillors pushed for the business case for domestic abuse accommodation within the city and also for the provision of drugs spiking test kits, which have been included in the list of investments, which I also commend for approval.
Turning to our (proposed) amendments, we are proud to be able to announce that we have found funds to enable us to extend free swimming to under 18s across all public pools across the city – and to introduce free swimming for young people at Saltdean Lido for the first time (though the details of that are still to be worked through with the Lido and its contractors).
There is a huge take up of free swimming by under 16s and we hope that the expansion to under 18s will have a similar impact on our young residents’ health and wellbeing.
We are also planning to abolish all library fines for children and, instead, ask them to come back, bring back the book and borrow another, reading their way out of the fine.
Both these measures will benefit young people and families in the city and our most deprived families most.
We will employ more street cleaners, to enable us to improve our basic services. Sadly, the funds available didn’t reach as far as we wanted, but it will be a start.
With a team of four additional cleaners and a driver, we should be able to see an improvement, particularly when they work during the growing season alongside the weeding teams that are part of the proposed investment programme in the administration’s budget proposals.
Investing money in the Western Esplanade and seafront toilets is a must for our busy seafront – again, this isn’t as much as we would ideally like, but at least it will allow for more frequent cleaning, keeping these very busy toilets open for our residents and visitors, while we redevelop that stretch of seafront with the funds that we have successfully bid for.
We will invest in our Stanmer Park access road, to ensure we link this up with our “Whole Estate Plan (Downland)” investment, which is also part of the investment plan in the administration’s budget proposals. The road is in a perilous condition, and almost impassable for bus traffic – access to Stanmer is an important part of the Downland strategy.
Our proposal to instal CCTV at Hove Station footbridge will improve security for all users.
And our proposal to reduce savings in the civic budget asks for a review as we are not convinced by the arguments for savings put forward in the budget report.
So how are we proposing to fund all of this? Well, we have identified some additional income we can raise.
Firstly, through additional charges levied on commercial users of city facilities and visitors. Secondly, on planning and building control fees. Thirdly, on vehicle crossover applications. And lastly, on increasing parking charges for second and third cars further.
Coming to our joint amendment (with the Greens), this is (to be funded by) new money, which has come about through a small increase in government grant and an increase in bus lane fines.
There had already been discussions around the arts award and the ward budgets, following our comments at the budget Policy and Resources Committee.
We were pleased to hear that the Green group listened to the debate and to our residents and were prepared to propose a joint amendment with not only those two items, but also reversing the proposed savings in the youth-led grants programme.
We also fully support plans for an additional programme manager to strengthen planning policy documents and planning advisory notes in respect of liveable city, affordable housing and energy efficiency in buildings, as well as further investment in “Housing First” in 2023-24 and further support to those suffering hardship.
When I first started looking through the Conservative amendments I thought, ok, they are pretty much in tune with what we have already identified as problems in the budget – issues around library savings, streetlighting and other public safety measures, fly-tipping … then I realised that they haven’t found new money to finance this.
I carried on reading and found myself in some strange nightmare – abolishing trade union facility time? Really?
Also setting up a pot of funds that cannot be spent by cutting other funding that can be spent – on zero carbon initiatives which, when I last looked, were (the Conservative) government’s priorities?
Seems our Conservative colleagues think that the climate crisis can be deferred by another year or even longer to 2023-24 when we have a new administration. Well, good luck with that one.
Let me make it clear, we support the Madeira Terraces restoration but we do not need to invest any additional monies in them at this stage, as the chief finance officer has already pointed out in his comments at Policy and Resources Committee two weeks ago and in his comments at this meeting.
In summary, this is another difficult year. We have done what we can to try to deliver as fair a budget as we can with our amendments.
