Councillors pass a £1.1bn budget aimed at protecting services

Council tax will go up from April after councillors voted through a £1.1 billion budget for 2022-23.

Brighton and Hove City Council is putting council tax up by 1.99 per cent, with a 1 per cent “precept” for adult social care making a 2.99 per cent increase in total.

Once the precepts for the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner and East Sussex Fire Authority are added in, the increase will be 3.12 per cent.

Brighton and Hove’s £1.1 billion budget for the coming year will pay for hundreds of services including schools, children’s social care, adult social care, housing, rubbish and recycling collections, street cleaning, parks and libraries.

Most of the money – the £845 million revenue budget – will cover the day-to-day running costs including staff pay and pensions.

But £223 million has been set aside for capital programmes including housebuilding, the Valley Gardens revamp and heritage projects such as work on the Victoria Fountain, Madeira Terraces, Royal Pavilion Estate and Stanmer Park.

The council tax is expected to raise £164 million, with a further £71 million due from business rates. Meanwhile, fees and charges should raise a further £177 million.

Much of the council’s budget – about £416 million – is funded by government grants, many of them ring-fenced for schools and housing benefit.

What councillors spent five and a half hours wrangling over yesterday (Thursday 24 February) was how to find relatively modest sums for “discretionary” projects from the council’s £200 million “general fund”.

When work started on the coming year’s budget last July, officials and councillors were trying to bridge an estimated shortfall of £18 million.

By the start of the meeting yesterday, they had closed the budget gap to just under £2 million, with councillors saying that the process of identifying savings and cuts had been “painful”.

For the first time, the council set a deficit budget, and will dip into “reserves” – the council’s savings – to fund that deficit. Officials called it “financial smoothing” – and their aim is to pay the money back into reserves over the coming four years.

Other councils have set deficit budgets with bigger sums at stake.

Green councillor David Gibson said that Brighton and Hove’s budget had avoided cuts to services where possible and protected the vulnerable to prevent false economies.

He said: “We are spending on homeless prevention. Every household prevented from becoming homeless is healthier – and it also saves the council the costs of dealing with homelessness.

“We are investing in ‘Housing First’ which improves the lives of the most vulnerable. It reduces repeat homelessness and saves money overall for public services.

“Even though across the country 100 libraries are estimated to close each year, ours are still open. Our nurseries are still open. Youth services are protected.

“In the UK in 2017-18, 366 swimming pools closed. Ours are still open – and we are developing a sports investment plan.

“Despite all the pressures, council staff are working incredibly hard providing lifeblood services for residents – and we have striven to protect these services.”

Councillor Gibson highlighted plans to invest £95 million in housing, saying that it would create jobs and lead to more than 150 new council homes being built locally.

Any surplus left at the end of the financial year would help fund holiday vouchers for children on free school meals and discretionary hardship support.

Green council leader Phélim Mac Cafferty said that councillors were defending public services against a barrage of austerity cuts after 12 years of Conservative government.

Austerity had taken £100 million out of the council’s budget, he said, adding: “The pandemic has driven a surge in need for council help, with huge demand for children’s services and to support marginalised adults.

“We calculate it will cost £7 million this year alone to ensure children’s social services and adult social care can meet demand.

“Despite the onset of omicron just a few months ago, no further funding has been made available to address covid-19 costs this year.

“Programmes like ‘Everyone In’, that proved it was possible for ministers – overnight literally – to take homeless people off the streets, have been scrapped.

“Off the back of this comes rising fuel bills and a cost of living crisis that I’m angered will affect those already hit by hardship.

“The council stands ready to help but we need fair resources to support residents who need help now.”

Councillor Mac Cafferty said that the government had pushed council tax as the solution to funding local services and social care but he believed that it was a “regressive tax”.

The council tax reduction fund would be extended to provide more support for the poorest families.

The joint Labour opposition leader Carmen Appich said that residents would pay more council tax for less.

She presented five Labour sets of proposed amendments to the budget, including plans to extend a free swimming scheme to all under 18s across the area, including at the Saltdean Lido.

Money from parking permit price rises will go towards four more street cleaners and a driver.

Councillor Appich said: “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.”

The joint Labour opposition leader John Allcock welcomed investment in the “Housing First” programme to give homeless people a place to live.

He also emphasised the importance of reversing a proposed cut by restoring £48,000 in the budget for the Arts Award to help young people supported by a family coach or social worker. He also spoke in favour of reversing a £30,000 cut to youth grants.

Councillor Allcock said: “Labour also want to see basic council services restored. We’ve heard residents’ concerns about the service delivery crisis, particularly with regard to street cleanliness, refuse and recycling.

“Labour will continue to challenge the Green administration to make much-needed improvements while recognising that government-imposed cuts make it extremely difficult to maintain vital services.”

Conservative councillor Alistair McNair put forward six amendments from his group in a speech that criticised the budget as “set against a backdrop of waste and mismanagement”.

He said that the council had to bring in private contractors to clear weeds after the council banned pesticides and to clear rubbish from the streets after the bin lorry drivers strike.

Councillor McNair said: “Unfortunately, as this budget makes clear, it is the taxpayer that has to pay for these policy mistakes, waste and general mismanagement.

“And plans have now been announced to hike council taxes and fees and charges once again and reduce services in some areas, hitting the poorest in the city most, at a time when they can least afford it, while squirrelling money away into green pet projects.

“The council has been pouring your taxpayers’ money down the drain and now has created a budget black hole for the city which is growing at the same rate as the sinkhole in Old Steine Gardens!”

Conservative leader Steve Bell said that it was easy to criticise his party for the cuts from central government without mentioning the hundreds of millions in grants for housing support, rough sleeping and education.

He said: “None of the good work with the government is ever mentioned or the help provided to the city … just total criticism because they do not accept the policies on which we stand.

“The policies on which we stand will always be standing up for the residents of Brighton and Hove to ensure their heritage, to ensure their freedom, to ensure their voice is heard.

“Not just the soundbites that come out of the protest parties or protest groups in the city. We speak for the silent majority. We listen to the silent majority.”

Amendments passed

The Green amendments passed were

• £200,000 from any improvement to the year-end financial position to provide food support for children on free school meals during holidays and towards housing and council tax support discretionary funds

…

Joint Green and Labour amendments passed were

• £27,000 to be restored to councillor ward budgets to bring them back up to £1,000 per councillor to support community projects
• £15,000 for insect-friendly community-led planting schemes
• £30,000 to be restored to youth grant funds
• £48,000 a year for the Youth Arts Award programme
• £43,000 a year to fund a planning programme manager to speed up the creation of policy documents for a liveable city centre and affordable housing
• £40,000 recurrent funding from 2023-24 for “Housing First” support
• £45,000 annual support towards discretionary payments, food provision and holiday vouchers for children on free school meals

…

Labour amendments passed include

• providing four street cleaners and a driver, additional toilet cleaning on the Western Esplanade and improvements to Stanmer Park Road
• increasing resident parking permit surcharges by £50 to £170 for a second car and by £100 to £340 for a third and subsequent car to raise £200,000
• free swimming for under 18s
• library fines for children to be scrapped in favour of an incentive model to pay off overdue fees by reading more library books
• increase charges for civil ceremonies and weddings
• increase building control fees and pre-application planning fees
• increase Visit Brighton fees by 5 per cent
• increase commercial hire for parks for medium-size organisations
• increase charges to use Madeira Drive for events
• freeze parking charges in parks and concessionary charges for sport
• allocate £3,000 for CCTV at Hove Station footbridge
• increase charges for crossover applications
• retain the 50 per cent bulky waste collection discount for low-income residents
• reduce the £28,000 saving on the mayor’s chauffeur to £17,000 and review the civic office security and transport arrangements
• save £11,000 by scrapping printed committee papers for councillors

…

Conservative amendments incorporated in a later joint Labour and Green amendment

• £35,000 from the Carbon Neutral 2030 to fund “fish bins” – large sculpted depositories for recycling waste plastic on the seafront
• £17,000 towards retaining opening hours and staff at community libraries
• £8,000 for street lighting or security cameras to improve public safety