One of the first decisions taken by the new Labour cabinet – to go ahead with a £47 million scheme to replace the King Alfred Leisure Centre – could be “called in” for review.
The move comes as opposition councillors said that the decision was made with too little evidence, false assumptions and skewed options that could add £8 million to the budget before work even starts.
The council’s cost estimates, they said, were too low because they ignored key government guidance, showing the risks of confining such big decisions to a handful of councillors.
And key information was withheld from opposition members of Brighton and Hove City Council, they said, and those councillors were unnecessarily prevented from asking more questions.
They added that the £8 million error is a sign of just how costly the decision to ditch all-party committees and switch to cabinet decision-making could prove to local council tax payers.
Before what has been described as “a power grab”, it would have been easier for opposition councillors to ask questions in committee meetings, enabling the ruling Labour group to refine their proposals.
Now, a “call-in” could mean a delay that adds “construction inflation” to the £8 million error resulting from a poor initial decision.
And that delay, councillors said, was the direct result of the switch from committees to a cabinet system, with power concentrated in the hands of a small number of councillors from one party.
Seven councillors from the Green and Conservative parties have written to the council’s chief executive Jess Gibbons to ask her to call in the King Alfred decision.
Labour said that it welcomed scrutiny and was confident that it had made the right decision to reflect the views and needs of residents.
A letter to the chief executive said: “Evidence provided … to cabinet on Thursday 18 July was very high level and was in and of itself insufficient for members to fully understand the decision.
“Following a comment about insufficient information and consequent questions put by Councillor Ollie Sykes to cabinet … additional information was shared directly with Councillor Sykes.”
The extra information suggested that the council had chosen the wrong measure to estimate the potential costs of demolishing the King Alfred swimming pool and leisure centre and building a replacement.
It had treated the scheme as a “standard building” project such as straightforward housing rather than a swimming pool on a site where the complexities had defeated previous developers.
The councillors said that if the £47 million budget had been drawn up in line with government guidance, the projected cost would have been about £8 million more.
And that would have made a refurbishment a more attractive option. In addition, they accused the council of erroneously suggesting that a makeover would have a lifespan of only 10 years.
This was an assumption and, they said, no reason had been given to show why a makeover might not last 20 or even 30 years, making it much better value for money.
Opposition councillors were keen to see the “business case” so that they could understand the calculations better and ask appropriate questions on behalf of council tax payers.
But while the business case was shared with cabinet members, it was withheld from other councillors for reasons of commercial sensitivity.
Councillor Sykes said that this was spurious, not least because the council could share the reasoning and, if absolutely necessary, redact or hide the exact numbers.
And it went against the promise by Labour that the switch to cabinet decision-making would be more transparent.
He said that the Labour administration might have perfectly proper reasons for choosing a demolition and new build even if it was not the best value option.
But a genuinely democratic council ought to be open, transparent and accountable and prepared to explain its decisions and show the alternatives – as happened when decisions were made by all-party committees.
The council’s recently adopted constitution says: “Members are entitled to have enough information to be able to perform their functions properly and the courts will protect this position.”
It adds that any restrictions are “without prejudice to any right that members may have to access information and documents under the common law principle of ‘need to know’.”
The letter to the chief executive Jess Gibbons was sent by Green councillors Steve Davis, Ollie Sykes, Kerry Pickett, Chloë Goldsmith, Raphael Hill and Sue Shanks and Conservative leader Alistair McNair.
A decision on whether to pause the project and call in the decision for review is expected to be made public within days.
If the request is accepted, the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee would be expected to ask a member of the cabinet and a senior official to give evidence about the decision.
This would be likely to take place at a specially convened meeting – and the cabinet would then respond formally at either its next meeting in late September or at a special meeting before then.
The timing of the cabinet response is likely to be affected by the scrutiny committee’s findings and whether the £47 million budget may need to be higher.
If Labour uses its majority as a party-political means to ignore the government guidance, opposition councillors would have the right to raise the matter with the council’s auditors.
Councillor Sykes, the shadow cabinet member for finance, said: “The papers presented to cabinet on Thursday 18 July did not present the full picture of this major project, which carries with it significant expenditure and risk.
“We want to make sure the right option for the King Alfred is chosen but, when it’s possible that the preferred option could cost upwards of £8 million more than projected, we need to make sure the council has the money to pay for it.
“It’s concerning that this has happened on the first major project under the cabinet system and highlights the lack of scrutiny that Greens have warned about.
“It’s right that this decision is now properly examined by all councillors but – because of Labour’s changes to our system – it may cause months of delays.
“Under the previous committee system, these concerns could have been raised and addressed in the same meeting as the decision was made.”
Councillor Jacob Taylor, the Labour deputy leader of the council, said: “We welcome scrutiny of big decisions which is an important part of our system of local government.
“We are confident that our decision to build a new King Alfred leisure centre on the existing site is the correct one, and reflects the views of residents and the needs of the city.
“We are very happy to defend that decision against opposition from the Greens and the Tories.”
Don’t forget VG3 – currently £7m over budget! Taxpayers are expected to foot the bill!
Thank you cllr Muten.
Thank you BHCC Transport Dept
Lies
Lies, inaccurate not 7m over budget. Thank god for a Labour Council and not a green one
Interested to hear that as this paper reported it being over budget a while ago.
https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2023/03/15/work-to-start-soon-on-final-phase-of-13m-valley-gardens-scheme/
The Greens should shut up and go away. They have no cedibility whatsoever in local govenment in this city. The 100% correct decision has been made. The competence of the current Labout administration and is a welcome and stark contrast to the inept failed Green administration.
Personally, I feel the better financial decision was the Benfield site, but I absolutely respect how the strength of feeling in the public consultation was reflected in choosing to stay out.
Snarling knee-jerk comments are like head-butting – Time the Labour party supporters commenting here got a bit more civilised than that!
Democracies allow dissent! Thuggish insult is the work of autocratic dictatorships that don’t allow questioning!
And Donald Trump.
The Cabinet are not faultless Gods and neither are the officers that feed them their lines & data.
Given the disastrous example of the i360 planning consent of 2006 from the Labour administration, it’s clear the responsible thing to do is to pay attention to the petitioning counsellors request!
What for instance is known about ground conditions? One of my saveHOVE speakers for the Karis KA/RNR planning Committee decision meeting was a PhD level expert who silenced the room with his findings about what had not been done. The Karis team was sat in front of me sliding under the table in their chairs in acute embarrassment.
Regardless, The Labour administration forced a planning consent through that day. Happily, the ING bankers saw sense and pulled their funding and we were spared a disastrous scheme.
Sadly, we lost most of the planning departments senior planners because of that Planning committee meeting and decision. The department never recovered. And that’s quite a sad legacy for the Labour Party.
The planning consents weren’t disastrous.
It was a totally separate decision not connected to funding,
The issue with the i360 was the egregious joint decision of the Greens and Tories to vote through the £36m+ loan.
Two scandalous planning decisions you are too cowardly to own, regret or learn from.
I don’t “own” any of these decisions.
I’m not a planning official or a councillor. Why did you think I was?
I will say again the decision to award planning permission was totally separate from the loan decision.
Why is that such a hard concept for you to understand?
What a load of rubbish Valarie.
Surely you can tell the difference between granting planning permission in 2006 and the Greens and Tories agreeing a £45m Public Works Loan which is costing the city £2m a year.
Funny how the decision was made in Committee and yet no amount of “scrutiny” made the Greens or Tories see sense.
The decision was made by Committee, but all they key information was taken in closed session. The Cabinet institutionalises this secret and flawed process, shutting out taxpayer and voter scrutiny on the spurious grounds of commercial confidentiality. There was no commercial rival vying to put up an i360 of its own.
Now that secrecy is baked in to the decision-making process.
Despite all that, bad Councillors can still subvert Committees. It’s just easier to get things wrong with the in-built secrecy that goes with the Cabinet, even with the best of intentions, as so few Councillors have a chance to ask questions about so many decisions.
Labour claim to welcome scrutiny. Yet so far have done everything in their power, including changing powers, to avoid it.
Labour understands that for a cabinet system to work well , the scrutiny committees need to be strong and work well. Labour really does welcome Scrutiny.
If the Labour council loves scrutiny so much, why are they refusing to investigate the claims of political interference within Cityclean that the KC report alluded to last year, in particular regarding the findings of the 2019 report into bullying and harassment which led to zero action under a prev Labout administration. If media articles are correct about councillors “doing deals” back then, then residents in the city deserve to know about it, otherwise questions will be raised about things being potentially covered up.
Jack, how would you improve scrutiny?
Having a beach front leisure centre for all and continuing sports all along the seafront should be central to Brighton and Hove s wellness ethos. Health is wealth. Please do not sell this space to developers.
I want the KA to stay there but couldn’t agree more that Labour’s self made plan to spend £47 million should be scrutinised – where is that money supposed to come from?
Why not read the papers that went to the cabinet meeting?
Then you’d lnow rather than just wonder
You raise an interesting point that perhaps we aren’t educating ourselves on why a decision is being made before forming our opinions.
Another way could be that the council could do better is describing their rationale in an easy to digest format for laypersons?
I think it’s fine for a budget of £47m to be set by a small group as long as there are consequences for those people if it is not acheived. That’s what would happen in the private sector. So senior managers in the council would lose their jobs if the work comes in over budget. Councillors would agree to resign and hand back allowances received. Currently, the council can spend our money and come back for more if it goes wrong. So there are no consequences for poor business cases and financial planning. Let’s create some! If the staff and councillors are so confident then let them back it up
Are we forgetting that this is the method pushed in public conversation, as opposed to the other site?
The same councillors are complaining about both methods. I’d suggest they pick a lane and stick to it, otherwise it really cuts into their credibility.
You are right about VG3 it’s not £7 million over budget it looks likely to easily exceed this figure! Initially the local taxpayer was only expected to pay £1 million, (with the rest coming in LEP grant), that had risen to over £6 million plus additional borrowing and that was back in March of last year. Tenders have been out for a while and the deafening silence would tend to indicate the actual budget is far bigger than initially thought.
The only refurbishment option presented cost £13m and it was reckoned this would only last ten years. Surely there would be ways of using some or all of the current building that would work longer term than that?
I was pleased with the decision to go for the existing KA site over Benfield, given that there seemed to be plenty of signs that Benfield was the preferred option. I do wonder if this was a bit of a screeching handbrake turn, undertaken when the council leadership realised just how hostile the wider public was to the move. That could explain a certain lack of robustness and detail in the calculations.
The numbers definitely suggested that Benfield would be the better site, financially speaking. But like you say, there was a strong resistance to this, for a variety of reasons. I think either option would have generated some ire from people, not to mention the KA has a long history of discourse around it, this being but the latest story.
I think what we will likely see is another project not happen to facilitate the KA, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, sometimes you have to be realistically what you can achieve in a certain timespan depending on the barriers.
Yet a full restoration is now quoted at only £14m.
And who says a restoration would only last ten years?
Someone who is talking out of their backside, obviously.
Read the cabinet papers Barry and inform yourself.
I agree with Chris here. It’s a really bad habit of yours to make accusatory comments, without having read the relevant information. You seem to do that on the regular.
It seems like greens just want to get in the way of progress. Crack on Labour, this derelict building needs to go.