Labour has stormed to victory in Brighton and Hove after securing its first majority on the council at an election since 1999.
The Greens and Conservatives came close to being wiped off the political map, securing just seven and six seats respectively.
The Brighton and Hove Independents now have two seats after Bridget Fishleigh held her seat in Rottingdean and West Saltdean ward and was joined by Mark Earthy. Independent councillor Peter Atkinson kept his seat in North Portslade.
Wish ward councillor Bella Sankey, who took her seat in a by-election last December, was elected as the new leader by her Labour colleagues.
She takes over from the former Green leader Phélim Mac Cafferty who lost his Brunswick and Adelaide seat as Labour wiped out the opposition in formerly safe wards.
The Greens managed to cling on in West Hill and North Laine and Round Hill and two seats in Preston Park.
Conservative group leader Steve Bell and deputy leader Dee Simson both lost their Woodingdean seats to Labour.
Party stalwart Dawn Barnett also lost her Hangleton and Knoll seat in another clean sweep for Labour.
The Conservatives managed to cling on in two seats – Patcham and Hollingbury and Westdene and Hove Park.
The turnout across the city was 40.8 per cent.
Good Luck Bella, we have high hopes for you and Labour. Just make sure you do not make the biggest Green mistake and that is NOT listening to what communities actually want.
It’s just a return to the party that have run B&H longer than anyone else.
Madeira Terrace didn’t suddenly start collapsing when the Greens came to power. Graffiti isn’t new. Cityclean is a Labour project run by their sponsors in the GMB.
If you look at their record in power they can proudly claim they’re not responsible for building the i360, any bike lanes , valley gardens project or anything else
Jon
Correct, however closure of M T was started by the ‘Greens’ around 2012 and finally fully closed by 2016. This council had the opportunity more than once to get funding for restoration but chose the VG and other projects instead.
I would like to point out that the Valley Gardens project was the brain child of one Labour councillor Gill Mitchell.
And what a waste of money it is too….
Situation Normal All …….
Great news, best of luck with it all Bella. Time for change.
A change would be to a Conservative council, not to a slightly less woke left-wing council.
If it looks like a Blairite, sounds like a Blairite then it probably is a Blairite
Absolutely. More of the same to come, I reckon, from a bunch of woke, left-wing do-gooders..
Imagine it is 2023, and being called someone who does good, or being aware of local and global issues, and being socialist, is thought as being an insult.
What’s the opposite? Something pretty nasty.
Big, big error in the small/partial litany of the many failings of Labour during their many years in office since the Shadow Year of 1996-97, and mostly in autocratic power since April,1997, as offered by Commenter Jon above.
The lunacy of the Valley Gardens project (reducing the A23 main road, which also is meant to serve our neighbouring communities, as a feeder route to and from the A259 coast road), from four lanes of general traffic,down to only two lanes, has long been a pet project of Labour!
With neither Labour nor the Greens seeming to have even got close to proposing an ‘Alternative’ to mitigate that inexcusable throttling of the capacity of the major A-road, which the A23 is!
The most logical alternative (for which a Conservative Gov’t and a Tory Hove Borough Council must take the blame for not implementing decades ago) is to extend the Hangleton Link southwards, with a combination of open culverts and shallow tunnels, down to join the A259 Coast road.
A second chance was missed, when Gov’t (taxpayers) money for highways improvements was on the table. That opportunity was apparently nixed by Labour’s Lord S J Bassam who, for reasons not yet openly apparent (property development profits, possibly?), did not want the proposal for a new stadium for The Albion to be built on available land at Shoreham Harbour to be facilitated by such an excellent new access road.
So that highways money went instead to help tunnel the A3/M3,under Box Hill, near Guildford in Surrey!
But it remains entirely feasible for our City’s new Labour Council to re-commence design work on extending the Hangleton Link down to Shoreham Harbour, so there’s something worthwhile for all of us to push for!
Main advantages are a much improved route for lorries into, and from, the Port.
Additionally, by altering the signage on the southbound A23, near The Pylons (surely we can find a bit of capital money to at last build the ‘missing’ third Pylon, as a matter of civic pride?) to lead visiting traffic into our City westwards along the A27, then down the Hangleton Link to the A259, to then turn east towards the Palace Pier.
It being well recognised that drivers coming into a less-familiar location like to turn left into almost any side road they like the look of, to park because they’ve arrived.
So, by constructed the long-mooted multi-level deep underground car park under Grand Avenue (from where there are excellent bus services into Brighton) that’d mean fewer private vehicles entering Brighton, and less frustration for our valuable visitors.
Hopefully a win-win solution to make (almost) everybody happy?
But right here, right now, Valley Gardens phase 3?
The very first thing Ms Sankey and her Group need to do is to immediately freeze everything the Greens, with the complicity of Labour, have agreed to (even as the contractors are probably gearing-up to start work)!
The present proposals were developed, on extremely dubious extrapolated calculations of potential ‘Benefit’ (as, coincidentally(?), the disastrous i360 also was!), in a dodgy effort to just about meet the Cost/Benefit ratio imposed by HM Treasury’s Green Book rules, on a projected budget of some £7m.
But, not long ago, Labour and Green councillors agreed with each other to extend that initial budget by many millions more of taxpayers money!
So what was of highly-questionable Value-for-Money at a cost of £7m is self-evidently falling far below HM Treasury rules at the current significantly higher cost (as there’s been no magical jump in ‘Benefits’ from the scheme to justify that higher spend, it seems?).
Solution for the incoming Labour team, and for our City?
A ‘VG3 Lite’, which:
– Keeps northbound buses in front of the Royal Pavilion, and brings southbound buses down that same piece of road, to the old bus-stop on the west side of the War Memorial (thus avoiding the lunacy of the dog-leg routing of buses from the west side Marlbotough Place across to the east side of the Old Steine, which also involves trying to merge with general traffic on that east side, which is often congested at peak times!),
and:
– Extend the cycle lane down from VG2 on a central spine (between the bus traffic to the west, and the general traffic to the east with, at the front of the War Memorial in what will be a low-traffic area, a choice for cyclist to head east or west, or to follow a diagonal route across to Pool Valley, from where there is a choice of zebra crossings over to the South Coast Cycle Route,along the sea front),
and:
– Retain the very efficient Palacr Pier roundabout, but route northbound A23 traffic up the eastern side of the Gardens, whilst closing-off all but a narrow width of the present west side roads to all except vehicles serving premises on that side (and with no through route to Castle Place/North St etc).
With the redundant road areas being used to extend the amount of ‘Event Space’, as compensation for scrapping the originally-planned ‘Event Space’ on the road in front of the Royal Pavilion.
And as to the purported anguish of some cyclists with regard to the Palace Pier roundabout?
Come on riders, get real, please! Anyone with, say, 20 minutes to spare during the day can see how very fluently westbound regular cyclists, coming,from Marine Parade, get themselves on to the northbound A23. Generally by using the pedestrian crossings (even cycling across them, naughty, naughty!); whilst those coming eastwards along the South Coast Cycle Route can either continue east along the tranquility of Madeira Drive to the choice of cycle routes leading to Rottingdean etc. And coming in from Hove, and places to the west, there’s been plenty of chances to cross the A259 safely in to Brighton, such as in to East Street or Pool Valley etc.
Thus, Ms Sankey + Team, please start work immediately on showing that you’re all really worthy of the enormous confidence placed in you by City voters last Thursday!
What we need is for the ‘powers that be’ to stop everything and think bigger and properly about a coherent plan for the whole city. All we have had for very many years is tinkering in various areas, which has rarely, or never, worked because nobody seems capable of proper strategic planning.
Not holding my breath because, very obviously, there are no council officials or councillors capable of formulating such a stratagem.
Brighton does lack a housing strategy at the moment, this is true. A cohesive plan would be very useful.
Spooky similarities here to the elevation of Jason Kitcat. He too was elected at a by-election about five minutes before rising without trace to become leader of the council, with limited connections to the area.
Vote first, and then ask yourself who exactly these people are who are running things.
Hmm, Bella Sankey, is this the same Bella who led a campaign to stop the deportation of convicted rapists, murderers and attempted murderers a few years ago ?
Is this the same Bella who wanted to be an MP and stood in Hastings and Rye and Arundel some time ago?
Worryingly is this the same Bella who is quoted as saying terror attacks are a “price we should be willing to pay”. And against the freezing of assets of suspected terrorists.
So all the people, children and other innocents maimed, killed and injured in the various attacks is okay apparently ‘the price we should be willing to pay’
Seriously deluded woman and a real security risk imo.
Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Unfortunately, a society free enough to be worth living in is necessarily free enough that the suicidally driven will be able to cause harm. There’s no combination of factors that will give perfect security without total tyranny.
Well this is what you get with a party of woke do-gooders, run by ‘Sir Softy’
You get reprieve for rapists and murderers when we should be hanging them.
Technique
Bang on agree.
“Eye for an eye, and we all go blind.”
Time (but not much) will tell.If the first words that come out of Ms Sankey’s mouth when she’s actually got her feet under the table are connected with human rights, refugees, City of Even More Sanctuary and all that, then we’ll know we’ve got yet more of the same stuff we’ve had for far too long.
And if she doesn’t call for an urgent audit of what’s been going on with contracts, finances etc under the Greens, then we’ll also know we’ve got more of the same – but with a huge majority.
Does anyone think this leadership vote, which apparently took place in an impromptu huddle after the count, was a tad hasty? Just asking.
Hmm, yes, mart Burt commenting above seems to have done everyone a big favour by investigating Ms Sankey’s background.
Local warning signs were apparent just a few weeks ago, when she was shouting and stamping her feet to such an extent that she got the exceptional situation of a special extra Full Council meeting being held, to discuss the billeting by the Home Office of adolescent asylum-seekers in a Hove hotel.
So far so apparently laudable except that …. , the most guilty party in that distressing situation of child abuse (a lack at the least of ‘Care & Protection’ for the youngsters) was our very own City Council!
And to what extent was Ms. Sankey heard to point her finger-of-blame at our B&H City Council? All the more egregious because, as indicated, by Commenter mart Burt above, her employment in recent years has been in fields where she should have been aware of every aspect of Childrens Act legislation, surely?
So what should BHCC have done, beyond pathetic bleating to the Home Office once Peter Kyle MP had widely publicised the arrival of the youngsters in Hove?
Well, anyone who has heard anything about the stringent procedures for adopting a child, or becoming a foster-carer, is likely to recognise that an early step our Council should have taken was to investigate each member of the team from the Home Office’s contractor (MITIE?) as to their suitability to act as a ‘Corporate Parent’ to each of a small group of named youngsters.
Other than the rare possibility of a MITIE worker already being an adoptive parent, or a foster-carer, it’s more than likely that none of the on-site staff had been formally assessed as being
persons fit to be responsible for children under 18 (or even under 23, where no parent or close relative is nearby?).
Therefore our City Council should have worked with our neighbouring councils to take each of these youngsters into the care of our Social Services?
Expensive? Yes, absolutely – but our council’s Social Services appear to have a long-standing duty to protect every child physically located in our City, even when the ‘abuse’ is being committed by a public body.
Just for context; if a girl younger than 16 is involved in sexual activity in the bedroom of a City hotel then both the Police and Social Services need to step in, to either re-unite her with her legal guardian(s), or to take her into care if none can be found.
Naturally the high cost of BHCC taking over 200 young asylum-seekers into care should never be a reason for our Council to ignore its legal Childrens Act duties to protect these vulnerable youngsters!
And the high cost of meeting that legal duty of care? Just send the bill for doing so to the Home Office (which might actually cost that Department less than whatever extortionate amounts they might already be paying to MITIE and to the hotel?).
Thus, and to the great discredit of Ms Sankey as a person, the reasonable conclusion of her loud flag-waving is that it seems to have been much more about creating political-capital against the Home Office, than about doing the right things to protect these youngsters (whom officialdom might still be abusing in other locations, which would have been less likely had BHCC met its legal obligations towards protecting these vulnerable youngsters within days of their arrival in Hove, surely)?
Which raises an important question – did Ms Sankey abstain from highlighting the failings of our Council because she wanted to, for whatever reasons; or was she directed to do so by seniors from a resurrected New (Blue?) Labour Party?
Which leads to the next question: were her 37 colleague Councillors persuaded to elect her as Leader of our City council,by ‘Dark Forces’ from higher up in the national Party? Such as by the Svengali-like Lord Peter Mandelson, perhaps (even if filtered down through the likes of Lord Bassam and /or Peter Kyle MP etc)?
Looking at the 38 Labour councillors, and making a choice from those who’ve already held office as a City Councillor, only one person appears to have the needed combination of energy, intellect, Council experience, and the true social mind-set which a putative ‘Peoples Party’ needs, and that person is Cllr Theresa Fowler, surely?
As as Deputy Leaders both Cllrs Jackie O’Quinn and Amanda Evans could serve well; ideally with a place for Cllr Les Hamilton in a less arduous post as a senior Honorary Deputy, perhaps?
And to round-off with an additional aspect of the (mis-)use of taxpayers money. We residents pay the Council Leader some £40k per annum (+ pension contributions?), but we, the people, are never invited to any open public meetings to question and to debate the levels of pay for our Councillors!
Those with knowledge of the internal workings of the mainstream political parties will recognise that whomever is Leader of the B&H City Councillors will have a major task in ‘co-ordinating’ the actions of each of their 37 other Party colleagues! Some might liken that task to one of: ‘Trying to Herd Cats!’.
In such a context it would seem to be much more reasonable that we City taxpayers only contribute £20k pa to the Leader’s allowance, for the general work actually done visibly for the benefit of all of us (hopefully!); with the other £20k for keepingthe Leader’s 37 Party colleagues in line coming from Labour Party coffers, and/or from donors and well-wishers etc?
Based on the early years of an autocratic Labour majority in our City democracy could be heading again in to a nose-dive – so a close watch is needed to see if Ms Sankey will exercise her great powers in a social, and financially prudent, way?
If not Peter Kyle MP and Russell-Moyle MP just might not survive the next General Election?
R
The responsibility for the billeting of refugees here, and the duty of care towards them, lies directly with the Home Office.
What made Bella Sankey’s calling of a full council meeting over this reprehensible was that it was an attempt to pin this on the Green admin. Given her background she must know that it really had nothing to do with them.
By all means make any politician accountable for the things they are responsible for, but don’t try to pin stuff on them that’s not within their remit.
Clive,
Nope, if you care to check the councils website, you will discover that Green Leader Phélim Mac Cafferty signed an agreement with the Home office back in 2021 to help provide assistance to refugees with BHCC taking on responsibility for their care.
In a damning report, his deputy Hannah Allbrooke complained that BHCC had no knowledge of any persons being housed here in Brighton and it was a complete surprise to her yet somehow had been sending e-mails to the H O for months to address the problem.
So BHCC certainly knew about the placements and had agreed to house them and therefore were in the councils care, end off.
I’ve found the article for your attention.
KEY POINTS ** **
BHCC website dated **19 August 2021**
Community and equalities
Headline : Council leader declares his solidarity with Afghan refugees.
Leader of the Council Phélim Mac Cafferty has declared his support for the newly announced Afghanistan Refugee Resettlement Scheme and ongoing **commitment** to being a City of Sanctuary.
“Brighton & Hove has a proud history of solidarity and welcome for refugees and the city council stands **ready to help** Afghan refugees and support the desperately needed Afghanistan Refugee resettlement scheme announced by the government.
“The tragic scenes from Afghanistan as thousands of people flee in fear for their lives and those of their friends and family are truly horrendous.
“Worse still, it’s clear the takeover of the country by the Taliban will only place the rights and lives of millions of people at serious risk in the weeks and months to come. We know that over three million people have already been displaced.
“We send our solidarity and support to all those affected, including Afghan and refugee communities **already here in the city.**
“The council is **already** working hard to support refugees including through the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Scheme, and the government must swiftly establish safe passage for some of the most vulnerable.
“However, as we await details of the new resettlement programme, we join others in asking for the government to deliver a truly supportive scheme for refugees.
“We support calls made by the City of Sanctuary network and others, urging the government to adequately resource the new settlement scheme and financially support councils who want to do everything possible to welcome refugees fleeing horrific circumstances.
** “We’ve already challenged the Home Office** on their lack of funding and support for local councils seeking to support asylum seeking children and it’s vital proper resources are put in place. We also continue our calls for a mandatory rota for supporting asylum seekers, so that all councils play their part.
“I know that the horrifying scenes over the past days have caused shock and outrage for many different reasons.
Brighton & Hove City Council is a **signatory** to the City of Sanctuary Local Authority Network statement of solidarity for the People of Afghanistan.
Therefore Clive, BHCC knew very well where the poor soles had been placed so it doesn’t wash with me that Hannah had no idea where they were unless of course, her leader and herself failed to communicate or she was just telling fibs.
So the question is, if she was unaware of the placements, how come she been sending complaints to the Home Office for months concerning the funding back in 2021/2 ?
Either I don’t understand your argument or it doesn’t add up. The council expressed a willingness to take refugees from Afghanistan. The Home Office, in the particular case that led to people going missing, did not tell the council they were there, according to the ex-council leaders. Writing emails to the HO asking for resources does not indicate knowledge that a particular set of refugees were present – how could it?
You think the ex council leaders were lying, but you have no evidence for that. I think you’re just giving vent to your own prejudices.
Clive,
Did you not read the article I posted for your attention.
The clues are damning for BHCC.
First this council signed an agreement to house refugees and therefore take full responsibility for their care.
You say : *The Home Office, in the particular case that led to people going missing, did not tell the council they were there, according to the ex-council leaders.*
Yes according to the council leaders.
Okay the dates are significant here, August 2021, the council confirmed they had been writing emails to the HO asking for resources.
The article also confirms that they were aware of victims being here otherwise why make the statement **already here in the city.**
I don’t just think the ex council leaders were lying, we all know they were and have done on a number of issues.
You say I have no evidence, but I’ve already proven it.
How can they claim they had no knowledge yet demand finical assistance for ‘those already here’.
You think I’m prejudice, you’re entitled to your opinion and I respect your view, but given the evidence that is clear to see and provided perhaps your blind to the facts.
Note all that. I found it rather disturbing that the only thing that has been reported about her since she got elected last year was about the ‘children’ in the hotel. Fair enough to weigh in on all that as a local councillor, but a council leader has to take a very much wider view about the interests and wellbeing of the population as a whole and there is no evidence of that yet.
I hope we’re not in a situation where 37 Lab councillors blindly follow the leader like sheep, but with the very hasty ‘election’ we might be.
Bella wont last as leader. She is not up to the job. Several in the Labour group are and it will only be a matter of time until a better leader is chosen. Some are already galvanizing support….
it is weird she was parachuted in as leader after only serving as a councillor as a matter of months ahead of way more experienced people. She has twice tried to stand as a MP previously and I have a feeling she feels leading Brighton Council will look good on her CV for next time. I hope she will concentrate on improving basic local services and cleaning up the town – where the Greens failed so spectacularly,
Perhaps we can stop being a city of sanctuary – we have enough sanctuary now thank you.