Labour have swept the Green leader of Brighton and Hove City Council and his deputy from office in the local elections.
Andrei Czolak and Jilly Stevens won both seats for Labour, defeating council leader Phélim Mac Cafferty and deputy leader Hannah Allbrooke.
The votes were recounted before the result was declared, with only six votes in it.
With only two wards left to declare, Labour was looking at a landslide with the Greens almost wiped out.
The result was
Jilly Stevens (Labour) 1,141
Andrei Czolak (Labour) 1,047
*Hannah Allbrooke (Green) 1,041
*Phélim Mac Cafferty (Green) 901
Chris Woodley (Brighton and Hove Independents) 550
Dave Hall (Friends of Brighton and Hove) 266
Richard Latham (Conservative) 203
Keith Sharpe (Conservative) 162
Claire Lachlan (Liberal Democrat) 154
David Maples (TUSC) 79
Turnout 38.04 per cent
Good riddance!
The Green vote collapse is actually quite shocking.
But well done to voters in proving to naive councillors that delivering basic services comes first, over spaffing money on the stuff you would like to see.
Where will labour get the cash for that exactly? Central government are to blame not the greens. See every non Tory council in the UK.
Billy does example of how a little assumption can cause quite a misunderstanding.
Agent provocateur
Last time I checked, BHCC have never told us our bins were missed through lack of funding, what they told us was, no staff, no vehicles, Brexit, Covid, wasn’t us, it was our contractor, we didn’t know, our new vehicle was too big for the road and list of excuses goes on and on.
I appreciate the harm done by savage Tory cuts to all councils but, in Brighton, a relatively rich council, we also see extra money spent of stuff that is Green-wish policy ahead of budgets for basic services.
So this is like irresponsible parents buying new trainers they want, ahead of putting food on the table for their kids. In failing to budget properly, the Greens spent loads on their preferred schemes, but then suddenly found they had no money to keep the public toilets open.
I’m not suggesting Labour will have an easy ride on spending, going forward. But basic services have to come first. In my road in Hove we have blocked drains, because the sumps haven’t been cleared in two years or more.
Billy Short
Bang on agree.
Brighton and Hove Council Tax Band C £1980. LB Kensington and Chelsea £1280. LB Tower Hamlets £1450
Yes, and what do we get for our CT? Naff all.
And don’t for a minute think that things will improve under the new regime; all that has happened is one bunch of woke do-gooders has been replaced with another bunch of woke do-gooders.
Well we don’t yet know what we will get.
What the incoming Labour councillors do know is that residents want to see better delivery of basic services.
Last week’s vote was in their favour, but clearly also against the way the city has been run in recent years.
I wish people like you, Billy, understood how the system works. .There is very little council tax to work with. The central government grant is gone. There is however a possibility to bid for various sums of money for particular projects and councils all over the country are having to bid for sums of money to get specific projects, organised and then realised. And none of that money can go on essential services which have to be paid for out of council tax.
Sadly, 20% of Brighton and Hove residents are students who do not pay council tax but use all the services. Another large group are pensioners and very low paid who are you do not pay council tax either. It is a lower wage economy so we are stuffed.
Valerie
A lot us understand fully how the system works.
Councils are given a budget that we all know is not as much as they would like. The Council then allocate those funds into the various pots.
You are correct, grants etc are available for projects that BHCC can apply for, they don’t have too but they choose too. You are correct when you say they are only for the project it’s meant for.
If we look at the Hove project, we have a grant of £9m, the project is now £13m, so where does the rest come from ?
Partly from third parties, donations and contributions, then there’s loans and top ups with council taxes.
Just do a little research and see how much extra BHCC had to put in to top up various projects, VG1/2 for a start.
How much extra is Western Road, Marina, VG3 and where is the money coming from.
Now lets look at Elm Grove LTN, ‘Greens’ told us the money was ring fenced, yet suddenly it’s been diverted to toilet refurbishment meaning they lied in the first place.
BHCC took away a well run and organised School to Home contract yet decided to mess around with it and failed and cost this city a million pounds to sort out.
BHCC have no excuse to miss on a regular basis basic service’s, rubbish collection and recycling to name just two.
Quick to spend money on none vital bike sheds yet can’t be bothered to help fund a park and ride, the excuse they gave, they were scared people would actually use it. Unbelievable.
Excuses this council comes out with for failures are, they have no staff due to Brexit. That’s a great one, have they forgotten that they’ve managed to employ staff to patrol our streets dishing out fines for BBQ’s, parking two inches out a box, diving into people’s rubbish to see if a business has put something in a bin that they shouldn’t have, threats of fining businesses for graffiti, see the pattern here, quick to employ staff to collect monies yet can’t get staff for actually doing basic work.
No Val, whatever shortfalls in budgets there are, incompetence in management is clear for most of us to see. They want to run before they can walk.
There idea’s are good, but they should have got the basics right and they haven’t.
Excellent planners too, at this very moment we have projects running at Brighton Marina, Western Road, Sea Lanes, about to start Hove, then of course we will have VG3 and Marina to Old Steine and the arches too, just as the summer kicks in and no doubt fouling the whole of the city up.
Too many projects that incidentally have all needed or will need additional funding from our council taxes and don’t forget, we are already £2m short for the next 20 odd years to fund the i360, or have you forgotten that.
The ‘Greens’ got wiped out due to the destruction of our city and failure to listen to its residents.
Lets see how they perform.
Valerie. I wish you understood how the system works! Far better to do that than to lecture to others. That’s exactly why the greens lost
You repeat the fallacy that students do not contribute to the council. Yes, students do not pay council tax (this was all agreed after all the problems with the poll tax). However, the government provides a grant to councils to help offset this. So students are not freeloading.
As for money being in pots that can’t be spent, well yes some is. But an awful lot isn’t – as was shown by the Hanover LTN when it was moved back to basic services. So the council was spending on “nice to haves” before the “must” services. And people knew that
Much green spending was done without listening or proper consultation. And that has led to details being missed – important details that have left disabled people and others feeling excluded.
The style the greens managed the council was terrible. They spoke and didn’t listen. People have seen this and don’t like it. We may well agree with green ideas (I certainly do) but dislike the methods used by many of the green councillors. Something the greens need to reflect on – how are they so disliked as a group? If they don’t change, then other areas (including their first majority council) will soon regret and push back too
Valerie you say “Another large group are pensioners and very low paid who are you do not pay council tax either. It is a lower wage economy so we are stuffed.
Only the 20% of pensioners who receive pension tax credits are entitled to receive help with their council tax and then that can vary from next to nothing to all of it. I’m a pensioner and I assure you that I have to pay the full whack of council tax and receive very little back for my money…
Apart from the free bus pass that comes out of the Council budget …
Spot on Billy
Who would have thought announcing a ULEZ, pushing an unpopular LTN and announcing a forthightly bin collection would be so damaging – EVERYONE.
We still need the LTN AND ULEZ regardless so look forward to labour still making them happen.
Agent provocateur
We don’t need anything until we get a park and ride up and running to address some of the problem.
LTN wasn’t popular among those who were to live in it. Hanover – was 3 x green. Greens work for an LTN there. Now 3 x Labour. Think that says all you need to know on LTN support
Yes, we do need changes to reduce pollution. But there are already proven and less divisive ones. Park and Ride is top of the list, but there are other options too such as helping more to move to electric with better charging options, more incentives etc
I left Brighton and Hove last year for a better quality of living and found it in Northern England. I spent 34 years living and working in the City and from the beginning, I loved my City.
Unfortunately, the historical parts of the City like Madeira Lift, Marine Parade from Brighton Pier to Black Rock and Old Steine began to gradually fall into disrepair and Green / Labour Coalition did nothing.
Still hear about the work that’s supposedly to start to the Marine Parade, the Madeira Lift and Black Rock when I sometimes check the Argus News online. Talking and no action.
I feel people have been let down by Green / Labour Coalition for years since I have lived there. Brighton and Hove is a Historical City and it’s been left to decay a very long time.
I have visited beach resorts in Wales and in Northern England and they are in better condition than Broken Brighton and Hove. In fact any other place even Blackpool and Southport are not in a decaying state.
Anyone in the British Isles who voted Green should see what Green Party has left Brighton and Hove. In a decaying and decrepit state. No wonder Brighton and Hove was inappropriate to host Eurovision. The City is decrepit.
Another thing. Labour Councillors will have to sift through all of the evidence that Brighton i360 is a disaster. I went on it once and it was boring. If Brighton and Hove wanted a Tower so badly, why didn’t they think about CNN Tower like the one in Toronto and Berlin???
The cleverest solution would have been to keep the Brighton Wheel, similar to the London Eye instead because at least that would have made a profit.
All I can say is that the folk of Brighton and Hove are to blame for voting Green in the first place. They reap what they sow in the end of the day.
Who are you going to blame now? For the things you thought were the Greens fault but was actually down to Tory central government?
Agent provocateur
The Tories haven’t run BHCC for a few decades?
The Greens are responsible for running B&H, so local problems are down to them, no body else. Poor recycling, poor rubbish collection, poor liaison and treatment of it’s residents and businesses failure to listen to what we want and waste of our money on schemes and ideas that cause more problems than they cause.
People who voted are to blame. People vote that’s why after the votes are counted, the Candidate with the most wins. Conservatives are not to blame. It’s down to individuals who vote. It’s simple. Blame yourselves.
Fantastic news that the Greens are toast.
If you are a decent sports person you can revel in your win, but you can also have some sympathy and empathy for those who lost. The Greens have been swept from office, but maybe we should appreciate that they tried, whilst living in their own cultist sect or perhaps deafened by a self-congratulatory echo chamber.
Today, the Greens have done quite well nationally, as a protest vote which collects together the people who care about the environment but who also want some change from the elitist status quo.
We were way ahead on that idea in Brighton and Hove, but we have now had TWO Green council administrations who have both failed to deliver on basic services – and who have made some spectacular non-green and money-wasting economic decisions. So we got rid of them. Again.
We still have a Green MP who, actually, is quite good at both local problem-solving for her constituents, whilst also talking in Parliament about global and national climate and environmental concerns. It’s not surprising that she sometimes distances herself from her own party.
I think the problem the Greens have when running local services, is that they don’t know how to run local services. And that may not be their concern anyway.
I voted Labour, but we do need change, including in the way our local council offices are run, sometimes in the hands of lobbyists. Council workers should actually be public servants, nothing more.
I personally would love to see some proper green change, but not the fake-green cosy irrelevant stuff.
You don’t solve a climate crisis by creating a new local traffic jam. You don’t serve your voters if you make recycling difficult and then leave the streets unweeded. You don’t pat yourself on the back with a new or duplicated cycle lane that slows down public transport. You can’t say that saving one tree is a win, when you allow huge areas of green belt to be bulldozed.
No way do you install private bike sheds ahead of cleaning public toilets.
The new administration – and our council offices – need to be brought back in line in delivering basic services. The Brighton and Hove we all love needs to live again, as a welcoming place for all – and not as a test bed for untried fantasy ideas.
Hey Billy, one of the most cogent and insightful pieces of political writing I have seen for quite some flippin time. If you don’t want to be a politician please continue to be a political commentator. Very grateful for you perspective.
I have no sympathy or empathy for the Greens, who should rename themselves the Disaster Party. But I do sympathise with all those residents of Lewes who do not know yet what horrors are in store for them, having voted them in. They obviously did not pay any attention to the mess that the Greens made while they were in control in B&H.
I voted Labour for the first time at a local election. I hope they just listen to what residents want. No new schemes just clean streets, weeded parks and public places and a city safe and pleasant to live in. We’ve had enough of stupid new schemes that just distract from the basics. If not goodbye Labour in a few years.
Some what ironic on the day the greens were tossed out in B&H that they became the largest party in next door Lewes (where the Tories lost all 19 of their seats)
Maybe voter idiocy floats around like a poisonous gas? Poor Lewes🤦♂️
We all have fallen for them at some time or other. Lewes will learn the hard way.
We should all go to Lewes, take photographs and enjoy the last few days of it being a haven from the serial incompetence on the coast.
Given the damage that Phelim has wreaked on the city during his tenure, it gives me enormous pleasure to see him go. He was never suited to public office, far too brittle. Tonight I am feasting on green tears. They are delicious. Proper job time now laddie.
Hooray ! Good riddance
The voters in Lewes should have been paying attention to the mess that the Greens have made of Brighton & Hove. Sadly, they don’t know yet what they are in for. But for us residents of B&H, it is time to celebrate. Good riddance to the most destructive group of morons this once lovely city has had to endure.
I just walked past the apparently abandoned road repairs on Upper North Street. There is a sign there that says repairs will be completed by May 5th (?!)
Nobody has been seen working there for weeks.
Says everything you need to know about the current state of affairs in Brighton!
Let’s see if anything will change now Labour is in…
(I confess, I remain to be convinced)
Wasn’t the damage on Upper North Street caused by buses rerouted from Western Road during its modernising?
Now Upper North Street is closed, hundreds of buses a day are being re-re-routed through the Seven Dials and Dyke Road.
Before long, potholes will appear there, and then where will buses go?