The first step toward restructuring political decision-making at Brighton and Hove City Council goes before councillors next week.
The council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee is expected to back a move to a cabinet system from the current arrangement with policy debated by committees then subject to a vote.
The proposed set up would mean that most policy decisions would be made individually or jointly by one of 10 cabinet members, including the leader of the council.
Decisions would be made or announced in public unless the matter was exempt under the same rules that currently apply.
The change is due to be debated at Hove Town Hall next Thursday (14 March) and, with a clear Labour majority, is expected to win the committee’s backing.
The proposed cabinet would meet monthly and two scrutiny committees – a People Overview and Scrutiny Committee and a Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee – would be able to review decisions.
The proposed overview and scrutiny committees would be politically balanced – Labour dominated – and able to appoint voting and non-voting co-opted members.
Public access to both council and cabinet meetings would continue, with the leader approving which questions go before councillors.
A report setting out the proposed changes said: “The council is facing unprecedented financial pressure to manage its budget in the face of reducing government funding and increasing costs.
“In these circumstances, a cabinet system is considered to be a more efficient governance model which is more reflective of the overall majority control and better placed to respond to the challenging budget pressures.
“A cabinet of executive decision-makers will enable decision-making to be streamlined.
“Significant decisions may be called in and scrutinised by overview and scrutiny committees to ensure an appropriate check and balance in the system, with the ability to hold the executive to account.”
If the committee votes through the proposals, a public consultation will take place from Friday 15 March until Friday 19 April.
The consultation includes proposals for new forms of public engagement including question time, “meet the cabinet” events, citizen assemblies and other forums.
Currently, most policy decisions are decided by one of seven committees chaired by members of the political party with the largest number of seats. This has been Labour since elections last May.
Other committees – such as the Planning Committee, Licensing Committee, Audit and Standards Committee and the Health and Wellbeing Board – will continue to operate in their current form, as will housing management panels.
Scrapping policy committees will require a restructuring of a number of teams of officials including “democratic services”. This is forecast to cost £80,000 and the money will be found by keeping posts vacant.
Councillors have frozen their allowances for the past two years but the report said that the move to a cabinet system would require a restructuring of allowances to reflect the changes.
The switch to a cabinet system was foreshadowed in a Local Government Association (LGA) “peer review” report in 2017.
But although different political parties have formed administrations to run the council, no party had won a majority this century until Labour won 38 out of the 54 seats last May.
With “no overall control”, the biggest party has had to rely on votes from or the acquiescence of others.
If the council votes for the changes, the switch from the committee system to the cabinet model will take effect after the Annual Council meeting on Thursday 16 May.
The Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee is due to meet at 4pm next Thursday (14 March) at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Another nail in the coffin of local democracy and accountability.
Welcome news. A return to the form of local government and democratic decision making that delivered great things for Brighton and Hove in the past. The committee system is an antiquated and inefficient relic that needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. It is only useful for those, like the Green Party. who want to play silly student politics with our lives.
What great things exactly did the cabinet system deliver? Do please tell.
What ‘great things’? Brighton and Hove has not been great since the national political parties took over from local residents’ groups running their own separate towns of Brighton and Hove.
A cabinet council is only useful for dictators who believe they have totalitarian power over their electorate and were not elected to serve or be accountable to them. FYI a cabinet council is the antiquated idea, and one which needs to be re-consigned to the dustbin of history as wholly undemocratic, which is why it was superceded by the committee system many years ago. To go back to it would be a retrograde step, no lessons learned.
Errr when exactly was that? Hove was one party -Tory- for all but for not much more than a year prior to local govt reorganisation. Brighton for most of its existence was Tory controlled. So let’s have some FACTS please.
Errr when exactly was that? Hove was one party -Tory- for all but for not much more than a year prior to local govt reorganisation. Brighton for most of its existence was Tory controlled. So let’s have some FACTS please.
You seem to have gone really quiet since being asked about these “great things” that were delivered when we had a Politburo before……
You can’t give Cllr Mutt£n any more power.
This monstrous idea is not even being ‘debated’ by the Full Council.
Why not, and whose idea was a cabinet council in the first place?
Are they even an elected representative?
Let them be made fully transparent and accountable.
Muten is merely a sockpuppet for Mark Prior & Co in the Transport department . He does their will.
Surely it’s not a nail in the coffin for democracy if the party with a huge majority that was democratically voted in by the residents of the city are deciding how to govern. Its probably more like actual democracy in action.
This is an erosion of democracy and a Blaririte power grab. It was not in new new labours manifesto.
A cabinet system was NOT on Labour’s manifesto when voted in in May 2023.
Where is the public referendum on this if Labour are running a democracy?
Has a single member of the electorate asked for this if BHCC are supposed to be serving us and not themselves?
What happens to the Democratic Services department – do they all get the sack?
Presumably most Councillors will be losing a lot of extra allowances if there are hardly any committees to sit on any more.
If Labour is planning to ‘ditch’ the Committee system in favour of a mafia-style system, then they must be prepared to ‘ditch’ thousands of disgusted voters in the process.
They would do well to remember the bigger they come the harder they fall and that bullyboy tactics have no place in a democracy.
It’s not uncommon for political parties to update or revise their manifestos over time, especially in response to changes in public opinion, societal issues, or political circumstances. With this in mind, I don’t think to say it wasn’t there is a particularly strong argument.
I’m not entirely convinced on cabinets, I do believe there are quite a few benefits and downsides; I am still forming where the balance lies.
However, this does makes the selection of councillors when we vote all the more important, as the effect of absenteeism would be felt all the more prominently.
More of the Bella Sankey ego trip. especially as she will get to decide which questions go before councillors. Meanwhile she stays silent on her initial support for and promotion of the two ex-Labour councillors who have just resigned (both of whom she then condemned when the truth about them emerged) and even more silent on the new problems at the bin depot and how the reforms in the KC’s report, which she accepted in full, are shaping up. Not very well by the sounds of it, as we are threatened with another strike before the recommended reforms have been fully implemented. Obviously she doesn’t read B&H News, and reserves her Sermons from the Mount for the Argus, so there’s little point in criticising the cabinet proposals in this forum. Suggest that anyone who disagrees with the proposal waits for the public consultation and makes their view known there, even though the question(s) will probably be skewed and the results ignored if BS doesn’t like them.
ALL decisions need to be decided by a committee. Each committee should have at least 5 members – always an odd number to prevent a stalemate. The members must include a person from every political party represented by the elected officials.
However committees can, and have done in the past, lead to decision-making delays, bureaucracy, power struggles, lack of accountability, limited expertise, potential biases, and resource allocation issues.
There’s pros and cons to both systems. I’m still on the fence currently.
The weaknesses you describe could also be attached to, er … democracy.
And I don’t see at all how ‘limited expertise’ applies more to the committee system, where opposition councillors (who might just know a thing or two) get a voice, against a system where they are effectively shut out.
It’s pure Blairite managerialism, put in place by a bunch of centrist Dad types who are so convinced of their own wisdom and moral rectitude that they don’t need to listen to anyone else.
I do wonder whether a committee system has no real purpose when there is such a large majority. If one decision takes several months to get through the committee system is it costing the council more in delays?
Are there potential cost savings beyond those suggested in the article? I found watching the committees the public questions tended to be dominated by the same few faces.
However, the leader appearing to restrict questions at cabinet seems off, if legitimate questions are posed. I also wonder if there is a question of burying decisions in paperwork as you can’t have a cabinet that goes on for 7 hours.
What’s wrong with delays?
Most council decisions are not for our benefit in the first place so what’s the hurry and where’s the fire as far as the electorate are concerned?
Delays and debate often make for better decisions in the long term and this city will exist for the long term. Short-termism is seldom praiseworthy and tends to lead to poor decisions and outright asset-stripping.
I do agree that committees should be an odd number though and sub committees should probably be a maximum of 7 made up of all parties including Independent representation.
It’s a fair question. I think Brightons council process is very slow for decision making having worked with them.
In some areas, I suspect costs increase for procurements as you are adding significant delay and private sector partners will add inflation for example. Asking private sector to hold prices for sometimes up to 6 months to get through committee is asking for trouble.
We then complain council contracts go up and up. This is a hidden cost and probably difficult to quantify but council money is precious. Are the delays worth it when Labour will approve their own schemes and are debating between each other?
The point about the large majority is that it won’t always exist (and remember that it was gained on 45% of the city-wide vote). But under the cabinet system Labour will retain complete control of the council as long as no other party overtakes them in seat totals after the next election. Their vote share could drop ten percent or more and they could still hang on.
It points up the weakness of the British electoral system as well as the council cabinet system. In their present incarnation Labour will do nothing to change any of this.
I do agree its a weakness of the system but the majority will exist for at least 4 years. Unless they implode again.
Labour already have complete control of the council whether there is a committee system or not. They will vote in blocks and the other parties will be shut out anyway.
It may be too pragmatic but is it an good use of council tax if savings can be made when budgets are stretched?
I’m not saying I’m completely sold on cabinet systems.
Labour will implode again. Their arrogance will be their downfall.
It’s going to cost £80 grand to implement. The only savings would be in council officers’ time (they’ll have to consult less people). It’s true that the committee system can allow vexatious objections from councillors who are just being politically tribal, but I don’t think that outweighs the loss of democratic accountability.
And it wasn’t in Labour’s manifesto. They have 3 years and two months left of their present term, and this will surely lose them support.
Trust your councillors to think up a system that ensures “trust” is at the heart of the system
I may be wrong – and please correct me if I am – I thought Warren Morgan once fancied a cabinet system but didn’t do it in the end, for some reason, and look what happened to him. This will all end in disaster, simply because we have a very inexperienced leaderene whose absolute power has gone to her grinning head and she fancies being a dictator, because ‘Bella knows best’. We also have, mostly, an inexperienced bunch of committee chairpersons (not all of whom are necessarily bad news), who will presumably become the cabinet members for whatever it is. The worst bit of it all, though, is that BS gets to decide what questions can be put to councillors and you can’t get much more dictatorship than that.
Over time there will inevitably be resignations, by-elections and all that, as always happens, and this fantastic majority may not look so good eventually.
And I would remind everyone that, whilst we have the I360 fiasco round our necks, B&H Council is still on the hook for this ever-increasing debt. So what is she going to do about that??
Let us take a moment to recall that the Captain of the Titanic believed his ship was ‘unsinkable’ and look what happened to him. BS & gang, take note.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This council is CORRUPT.
So…. do not expect any reduction in the number of councillors getting large monies and talking amongst themselves.
Councillors, talking to each other! Heaven forbid. Next you’ll be saying they gather together and talk about council policy next. Maybe even refer to each other by name!
Stuff has been stale for far too long! I’m looking forward to seeing a bit of change in the way the council makes decisions. No, it wasn’t in their manifesto but i wouldn’t expect it to be really. Same as it doesn’t list in the manifesto, who is likely to chair a certain committee or who will be the leader etc. Manifestos are more of a kinda ‘look book’ for a political party, not really about how decisions will be made. Most people don’t care too much about how a decision will be arrived at.
But they might well care what the decision is and in Bella’s new scenario no alternative voice would even get a look-in, so might as well not exist, and anything her lot wanted would automatically happen, presumably. Additionally, she would have control of questions which could be asked of councillors,. The manifesto is a red herring – no political party, whether national or local, ever sticks to the manifesto, but if you fancy a dictatorship as put forward by Bella, then fine.
Councillors should not be able to keep changing the system. Labour will regret the change if they end up running the council with out a majority. But what ever the system is you should nt be able to keep changing it has to bed down for at least ten twelve years to get an idea how it is working. The best response from the public to this would be to ask for an elected mayor by referendum. Then the councillors would be stuck with this system and it would mean the voters had decided who the executiive of the council was.