I never do that well with the dark nights of January. After the sparkle and celebration in December, I usually spend most of the month looking forward to the spring but I think this winter feels bleaker than usual.
Last week, our local NHS declared a critical incident, alongside many others across the country. Spurred on by high numbers of people needing access to NHS services, the critical incident is a warning sign for a government ignoring an NHS in freefall.
NHS Sussex said that part of the problem stemmed from an increasing number of people being admitted to hospital with flu and covid – a reminder that the covid-19 pandemic is sadly very much not over.
Saturday 31 December marked two years since Brexit. New research from the London School of Economics found that the cost of Brexit added £210 to the average household food bill from 2019 to 2021.
Brexit has also led to staff shortages – and with a tighter labour market, businesses have struggled to find the staff they need. On top of this, they’ve seen their capacity reduced.
The BBC reported that some hotels nationally are restricting room vacancies because they can’t find housekeeping staff – and restaurants cannot open for as many days as owners want because there aren’t the staff for kitchens or waiting tables.
This of course then contributes to the rising costs of bills. These are the very businesses likely to be worst hit by the removal of the government business support package.
While this can’t all be blamed on Brexit, it’s hard to ignore that it is causing avoidable pain to household budgets.
All of these issues are hitting Brighton and Hove City Council too. We have seen over recent years a real struggle to recruit people into manual jobs due to these shortages in the labour market.
We are also, like the NHS, experiencing rising demand against lower budgets in which to operate.
In the last days before Christmas, the government gave us our present of the local government financial settlement. Sadly, it is even worse than we expected it to be.
This puts at risk the essential services that many households need right now to help them cope with these rising costs.
No councillor entered politics wanting to cut spending in the way we are now being forced to do thanks to the cocktail of Tory-induced inflation and austerity.
Unlike the government, we have to set a balanced budget every year. And while we can often find ways to find “capital” money, which helps us complete big projects like Madeira Terraces, it’s the recurring funding that is more difficult to find.
Over the next two months, we will work collaboratively with councillors of all parties to find good ideas that help us meet our budget challenge.
However, I am really concerned about the hollowing out of public services that these continued savings mean – and the implications for the longer-term resilience of the most vulnerable.
As Greens, we will continue to prioritise early-intervention “spend to save” measures but the cuts we are being forced to make now threaten this, meaning demand for services could balloon further down the line.
We have already had to make a cumulative £200 million of savings to the council’s budget over the past 12 years. That is £200 million of vital services that this city no longer has, despite the increases in fees, charges, business rates and council tax.
Much of this money is going to pay for care for adults and children. Your parking fees, for example, primarily pay for the cost of bus passes for people over 60 or with disabilities.
There is so much more we could do as a council if we were given the power to raise charges ourselves.
In Scotland, councils will be permitted to raise a tourist levy in legislation to be introduced this year, yet councils in England are not.
This small fee on top of a hotel bill could fund all the services that support the visitors we welcome to our city, meaning that the funds we are currently spending on those services could prevent a saving having to be made elsewhere. Yet we are not trusted to do this.
And this is just one example. It’s one I know some people are particularly familiar with as it’s very common in other European countries.
The reality is we have one of the most centralised governments in Europe who want to gut the services that councils provide out of an ideological drive to shrink the size of the state.
This shrinking means that less support will be available to those who need it. The Chancellor’s claim that “the lens” through which the government will reduce its spending and increase taxes is a “compassionate Conservative government” is ringing very hollow.
Councillor Hannah Allbrooke is the Green deputy leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.
Wasted 25k on neon lights, neon lights!
Up and down the country councils have been under funding pressure. Most have found solutions. The greens have just moaned and tried to score political points. In doing this they are giving the best reason not to vote for them
It looks likely that we will have a Labour-run council later this year and, a year or so after that, a Labour government. Whatever you think about Labour that will at least fix the blame game that’s been played locally for years. It will be down to a single party to fix it all. That, at least, will be progress. We will get more action (hopefully!) and less blame/words.
It would be hard to do a worse job than the greens. In the article above they make numerous factual errors. NHS budgets are rising, not falling. The current government certainly hasn’t shrunk the state – tax levels are the highest for generations. There is also a claim that the council can’t tax tourists. It does already – gaining millions from parking fees, fines for bus gates and so on. And will a tourist levy help or cost jobs? In a cost of living crisis seems harsh to add yet more costs to those holidaying locally – and will make trips abroad and air flights more attractive. But that level of thinking, appreciating consequences, is beyond green-party thinking….
We need better. And soon. But thanks greens. Thanks for the i360 and the decades of service costs from that (government costs over 12 years of cuts, £200m from this article, i360 nearly £50m so far!). Thanks for the green wall, and for those polluting, expensive neon lights. Showing the council really does still have money and energy to burn!
The Green Party is now a complete busted flush summed up by this miserable apologia of a manifesto from Allbrooke.
Take just one example. She TOTALLY misses the point about the NHS. The appalling Tory record on health comes in spite of more expenditure and not on the back of “lower budgets” as she claims. And didn’t it occur to her that you need a rather more sophisticated argument about health than hers when anyone can walk up the Eastern Road and see £500 million of investment in front of their eyes.
The Green Party take us for idiots and as Starmer wisely said today we cannot simply spend our way out of this Tory incompetence.
Let’s face it. The only people to blame are the Greens. They’ve wasted so much on pointless vanity projects. Thank God we have the opportunity to remove them in May
“Tory induced inflation” – I didn’t know that the Tories influence was so global and if that is true they must be the most powerful political party in the world..
It is all too easy to dissect the parroted false rhetoric that the greens spout.
Lol that maybe true this may but the greens will try and pull a fast one by wanting to carry on this not so secret coalition with labour just to still have power
Tourist levy. Is she having a laugh. We already have one. It is called the highest parking charges outside zone 1 in London. What about the council generating more money so for instance instead of installing 250 bike storage units leaving these spaces as pay and display bays to generate money for the council. Another idea what about not spending £200,000 on woke critical race theory consultant run courses in schools. Or they could outsource Brighton council jobs to cheaper areas in the country as at the moment we have the worst of all worlds. Terrible council services with very expensive offices run with no staff in them as the staff have decided not to go back to work in their offices. They are still however being paid on Brighton wages. What about outsourcing the parking office to Liverpool for instance or the Philipines.
Absolutely, but the Greens are still trying to justify their woeful existence, very badly. I tried to get into their websit the other day, just to see what amazing (!) candidates they might be puting up for the May elections, and my internet security systems (two different systems on two different machines) didn’t want to know and wouldn’t let me in because their security certificates had expired. So they’re rubbish at their own IT and rubbish generally. Maybe we could outsource the Greens to Brazil or somewhere, where they might get a taste of something rather different from their dream world in Brighton and Hove. Antarctica or anywhere where they might experience some kind of reality way outside of their B&H comfort zone.