Preventing opposition members from having access to confidential documents could undermine the new cabinet system, a Green councillor warned yesterday (Monday 12 August).
Councillor Ollie Sykes said that a lack of transparency in how decisions were made would eat away at the trust and respect needed for the new system to work.
He was speaking at an extraordinary meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s new Place Overview and Scrutiny committee.
The meeting was called by Councillor Sykes and six other opposition councillors, “calling in” the cabinet’s decision to rebuild the King Alfred leisure centre at its current seafront site.
They said that the public documents the cabinet based its decision on did not contain enough information.
Decisions like these were previously made by committees with members from all political parties. The new cabinet only has administration councillors – currently Labour.
After the decision was called in, councillors on the scrutiny committee, made up of seven Labour councillors, one Green, one Conservative and one Brighton and Hove Independent – were given access to the confidential papers.
But the committee’s co-opted members were not – nor were the opposition councillors who called in the decision.
Councillor Sykes said: “It’s a matter of trust and hence respect to members to allow us to properly scrutinise the material behind decisions.
“If we agree to any undertakings required from us to allow us to have access to that documentation, I think that should be allowed.
“In the future it may undermine the operation of the cabinet system if that trust and respect isn’t in place.”
In terms of the King Alfred decision, he said that the information made public before the cabinet’s decision was too high-level – ie, not detailed enough – to base a robust decision on.
He said that it wasn’t clear how detailed the plans used to make financial assessments were and the basis for assessments of “optimism bias” – ie, how likely the budgets were to overrun.
As a member of the scrutiny committee, Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh had read the documents deemed too commercially sensitive to publish.
She said: “If you’d published it, it would have shown residents how you’d reached this decision.
“There’s only one confidential financial in there and that’s the projected cost of the land sale. You should consider having some kind of redacted document people could see.”
The Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor attended the meeting to answer questions about the cabinet’s decision and committed to rethink how the system worked in terms of scrutiny and access to confidential documents.
Councillor Taylor said: “It’s a bit silly if we just call in every decision and go to the trouble of setting up a committee just to see those papers. There may well be somewhere in between that that gets us to a better place.”
His cabinet colleague and fellow Labour councillor Alan Robins said: “We didn’t block this for our own purpose. It wasn’t something where we said don’t let anybody see this. It was advice that we’d taken.
“If you don’t, people start to think, well, what’s in there? What are they up to? What aren’t they telling us?
“Those of us (who’ve seen the papers) know there wasn’t anything particularly damning in there.”
The committee was told that the seafront site option was assessed as standard – ie, relatively straightforward – because it would either wholly or mainly be built on top of the existing car park.
Councillor Robins said this meant the existing leisure centre would be able to remain open as long as possible – hopefully for the next four years – before the new centre was due to be completed in 2028.
After about an hour and a half, the press and public – including Councillor Sykes – were asked to leave the meeting so the committee could ask more detailed questions about the business case.
After about 20 minutes, the public were readmitted as the committee voted on whether to send the decision back to the cabinet or not.
Labour councillor Amanda Evans, who chairs the scrutiny committee, said: “Having read my way through all those papers that we’ve been provided with, I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of information they had available to them to make the decision.
“They had all the information they could ever have wanted to make a decision at this stage.”
Councillor Fishleigh said: “I thought that business case absolutely excellent and congratulations to everybody. I hope you’ll just crack on with it now.”
The 10-member committee voted to approve the Labour cabinet’s decision by eight votes to one.
Councillor Fishleigh voted in favour, along with all seven Labour committee members. Green councillor Kerry Pickett voted against and Conservative councillor Ivan Lyons abstained.
After all the Labour propaganda that the King Alfred is as good as derelict came the priceless revelation at the end of part 1 of the meeting that no full structural survey has been done! No wonder the project head was mumbling into his microphone. No one explained how the £47m figure had been arrived at and where it was coming from either. Unless that was in Part 2, which sought to exclude most Councillors as well as the public.
The new Cabinet system stinks. It just looks designed to get things pushed through by – am saying this through gritted teeth because I personally want the King Alfred development – but I don’t trust Labour in it, and figures obviously need to stack up.
Staggering that there’s been no survey – I didn’t watch the meeting Barry – but if you’re correct that no one can explain how the £47 million figure has been arrived at big questions need to be asked and the councillors trying to push this through without due diligence (using tax payers money!) need to put this information in the public domain or not go ahead until they can explain these basic numbers.
My WW2 veteran father – back in 2005-7 Karis KA days – wondered if there was buried ordnance under the KA/RNR Site. Was a ground survey of the car park ever done before Tarmacking over the RNR site?
There’s been plenty of information beforehand though Barry; the topic of King Alfred has a storied history to it. It is not a huge leap of logic to deduct that if something cost x amount 10 years ago, it going to degrade further and cost more now.
By reading the article, it is clear that the figure rationale was in Part 2.
Looks like Sankey and Co are taking their lead from Keir Starmer and his erosion on freedom.
Freedom to watch the working age populatin of the UK suffer from your house that’s gone up 2/3/5x, paid for with low interest rates and triple lock pension coming on top of a private pension… Oh wait that was the Tories!
Er…
1. Worked from the age of 16 and always paid national insurance and tax.
2. Saved for a deposit, made sacrifices, paid my mortgage, which I’ve never defaulted on.
3. Self employed so the only pension I have is the state pension.
You sound very entitled and bitter. The world owes you nothing. Do you wear Patchouli?
You’re close to understanding household income versus housing cost disparity and how it has worsened over the last three decades.
Nice to see patchouli getting another mention too.
Enlighten us about ice on the inside of windows never doing you any harm or maybe you shared you bed with eleven siblings and worked down the pit with only gruel and a thick ear for breakfast.
If full disclosure of all plans for the use of public money for a public leisure facility is not available it suggests the content withheld would bring the plans into question. If there is commercially sensitive information that can’t be released to all, why can’t it be released? What would be exposed? BHCC serves the city and it’s citizens so unless that has been overturned there is no reason and no justification for withholding any information. It is a matter of public record. It is not officers’ personal finance being used to fund the proposal, it’s hard-earned money from the citizens of the city. I call into question the integrity of these proceedings.
You could always challenge this through an FOI if you think some elements aren’t commercially sensitive information. Could also request an external review too. Might be worth a go?
Whilst we’re at it, can we have public scrutiny of VG3?
Over and above the £6m bhcc got from central funding, this is going to cost the local taxpayer £7m – and will result in more congestion and pollution.
Another humdinger from the idiots at bhcc Transport.
Another? Or just the same flawed thing you assert, in every single article – which gets challenged every single time.
The Council admitted it would need an extra £7million to cover the cost.
This info is in the public domain- why are you trying to deny it?
I’m most curious about Cllrs Pickett & Lyons’ rationale.
The Conservative group support the redevelopment of KA, however, there are questions needed to be asked about the cost, where the funding is coming from, safeguards re over budget costs; the site of the new development & that part going to redevelopment for residential use.
Unless it’s restoration, it’s council theft of a public amenity. Shoehorning a mini leisure centre into 20% of the space and erecting 700 flats for rich people’s 2nd homes on the public beach is unsupportable.
Am surprised Bridgit Fishleigh has fallen for it. This is not a plan for public benefit, full stop.
Thank you Councillor, I appreciate the answer.
Councillor Ollie Sykes is a hypocrtie.He wouldnot know what transparency meant. The Green party was inpenetrably opaque when it was in power. Go away Ollie.
How would you know, Hove Lassie? You write swaggering abuse here all the time – never backed by examples/evidence. You accuse vaguely. So come on! Proofs please. Examples. some FACTS!
Enough faffing about now lads. Tear the outdated eyesore down and get on with giving the city a proper leisure centre! Long overdue!
Thank God for Bridget Fishleigh – previously of Saltdean Lido fame and these days a knowledgeable (rare quality) voice on the Council. Trustworthy on facts!
As for LABOUR! Do they undermine democracy because absolute power corrupts; or do they suffer from lack of confidence and feel the need to stack the deck? I wish someone would take them to court and challenge them on their secrecy! They begin to remind me of Trump and his Project 2025!
If Cllr Fishleigh really cared about Saltdean Lido, she’d seek to replicate its success with an award winning restoration of another art deco building in the King Alfred.
My WW2 veteran father – back in 2005-7 Karis KA days – wondered if there was buried ordnance under the KA/RNR Site. Was a ground survey of the car park ever done before Tarmacking over the RNR site?
Where can we see the planning permission? Wondering how it will look, with the flats and all?
New Labour’s anti democratic cabinet system at work