The council is being asked to declare a cost-of-living emergency as people face “surging” energy bills and rising prices.
Labour members are also calling for the council to move to a “full crisis-footing” – akin to the coronavirus pandemic and climate emergency.
The opposition Labour group plans to seek backing for the moves at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (20 October).
Labour councillor Gary Wilkinson intends to put forward a seven-point plan at the meeting.
He has drafted a motion that said that Britain was heading into recession with inflation at more than 10 per cent – a 40-year high – and rising interest rates.
As costs went up, he said, the real value of people’s pay had fallen by 3 per cent up to August this year.
To help families, Labour wants the council to take into account rising childcare costs when distributing money from the Household Support Fund and to seek out any grant funding for childcare costs.
The Household Support Fund includes £2.1 million of government funding, topped up with £400,000 from the council.
The bulk of the money goes towards providing supermarket vouchers worth £15 a child for families who receive free school meals. The vouchers are given out during the October and February half term holidays and the Christmas and Easter holidays in the current school year.
Money is also going to a local discretionary social fund, community organisations, the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, food clubs and children’s centres.
Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn, who is expected to second the motion, said: “The impact on pensioners, children, people with health and mobility issues and those who are only just getting by, or not, is going to be particularly harsh as a warm home and nutritious food are vital to them.
“I don’t think we want to go back to the days, only a short time ago, in the 1990s, when many pensioners lived in one room – as it was all they could afford to heat – and lived on soup and toast.
“A high percentage of pensioners only have their state pension to live on and it will not be enough to deal with fast-moving rampant inflation even if the triple lock is adhered to.
“It’s why it’s so important for the council to work to ensure that pensioners are claiming pension credit if they are eligible for it and any other benefits.”
The council is also asked to promote awareness campaigns to give people advice about where they can find help.
Last week, the council’s Policy and Resources Committee backed a Labour proposal to organise a “cost of living crisis summit” to find ways to help people in the long term.
Councillor John Allcock, the joint Labour opposition leader, called for a summit to bring together various organisations including big private companies to help build “community resilience” and provide support for residents.
The meeting of the full council is due to start at 4.30pm on Thursday (20 October) at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Perhaps the Labour-Green council could start by looking at not increasing council tax this year and instead look at concentrating on delivering statutory services, reducing unnecessary costs, and increasing revenues.
For example, do we really need 25 staff in the communications group posting pro-council propaganda on social media?
What about cancelling the £8m allocated last week for various schemes to increase biodiversity – none of which seem to have any monitoring or pre-defined success criteria?
Do we really need to implement LTNs that require council tax support, and that residents don’t want but, just support the Green Party’s anti-motorist obsession?
Oddly the town hall in the photograph has been abandoned, because the council 3 years later are still working from home on full pay-the whole wfh thing is a scam, have to agree the councils vanity projects are a farce consultation is just paying lip service !
Meanwhile look at the buses after 7pm all just running empty, the council are subsidising that !
The bike sheds
The bike lanes in
Nigel Hughes
Incorrect, the buses are run under a commercial basis, ie the bus company run their buses at their own cost.
However, some council owned routes 47/52/37 to name a few do run but paid for out of a different budget.
I agree, take away the unproven ideology of the Greens and Labour and spend our money wisely.
Suggestions please…
On a postcard to Conservative Central Office.
Katy
Easy, Request Central Government to suspend BHCC and put them in special measures. Insist BHCC suspend all proposed projects and concentrate on delivering legally required basic services.
Insist on an immediate audit of current spending and proposed spending.
That will do for a start.
Good luck with that. Central Government is too busy putting itself into special measures. Most projects are mainly government funded and no power to stop. Current and proposed spending information is already available.
Improvements to basic services I’ll give you
This is a council that put £18 million aside last year for their carbon neutral fund. If they really want to find money that those that really need it, (because lets be honest LTN’s and bike hangers are not going to do that), they can.
Crisis?
The Council is already in crisis – it is incapable of delivering basics services, whilst rolling out its own agenda, against the best interests and wants if the residents
Having looked at the ‘legal’ criteria for putting councils into special measures, I can’t see any real grounds in those criteria for doing it, although it most certainly should be done. However, assuming what Phoebe Barrara says above is true about the council employing 25 communications staff, who don’t communicate anything meaningful at all, then I think we have to look at the employed senior people on the council, their £13m overspend and do something about them. Traditionally, even here, councillors would get rid of very senior employees who messed up big time, but no sign of that with the Greens.
The only solution seems to be to get this lot out next May and vote for anyone who will put a magnifying glass on what has been going on with the senior employees. Not much hope of that, but it is time for major change, starting with a town hall clear-out.
The communications position is now filled but the job advert is still available on various job recruitment sites – https://jobs.localgov.co.uk/job/164070/head-of-communications-and-public-relations/?TrackID=18