A call to make climate change part of a future Sussex mayor’s focus was made at a public meeting for concerned environmental campaigners.
About 100 people attended the Making Devolution Work for Climate and Nature event to gain a better understanding of what devolution could mean for Sussex.
At the start of the session, three-quarters of those attending did not know what they thought about the devolution process, in a show of hands, with the rest split evenly between those supporting and opposed to the plans.
The event was hosted by Climate:Change, a Brighton and Hove based independent and non-partisan think-tank, at the Friends Meeting House yesterday (Thursday 3 April).
It took place as a public consultation is under way on creating a mayoral combined county authority with a directly elected mayor. The consultation is due to close on Sunday 13 April. For more information or to respond, click here.
The proposed elected mayor would have devolved powers over
• transport and local infrastructure
• skills and employment support
• housing and strategic planning
• economic development and regeneration
• the environment and climate change
• health, wellbeing and public service reform
• public safety
Matthew Fright, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government, said that mayors were working with council leaders from different political backgrounds who could outvote them in a combined authority.
He said that the existing mayors had not been legally compelled to take action on climate change but all had advanced climate change goals beyond government requirements.
Dr Fright said: “They’ve used a variety of powers to hand in housing to target retrofitting boilers and insulation, in transport to come up with multi-year settlements to encourage active travel and developing an industrial strategy.
“In the Tees Valley, the Conservative mayor (Ben Houchen) there has been doing a lot of work with the Green New Deal fund and using their budget to target green skills which is going to be something that’s essential for 1 in 10 jobs in the future.
“Oliver Coppard (Labour) in South Yorkshire has set up citizen assemblies to get them to draw up what the public think is necessary for net zero and using that to bake in for all the strategic planning in the future.”
Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, Tim Rowkins, said that there were powers devolved to places such as Greater Manchester that he would like to see come to Sussex.
Councillor Rowkins said: “Integrated transport is one. They created the Bee Network there (Greater Manchester). This is about bringing multiple modes of transport into a single unified network with integrated ticketing.
“We’ve got a pretty good bus service in the city but it’s only really good when you’re in the city footprint. If you’re coming from outside, things get a lot more difficult.”
He described Brighton and Hove as having a “terrifying” housing crisis, with 50 households presenting as homeless every week, with thousands of people on the waiting list for a home.
Councillor Rowkins said: “We need to be building houses like there’s no tomorrow, particularly social housing and affordable housing.
“We’ve got nowhere to put them. We need to be thinking beyond our footprint to meet our housing needs in the region.”
Adult education and skills will also be part of the new mayor’s brief and Councillor Rowkins highlighted the need to train people with the skills to serve the green economy, which is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy.
Hampshire and the Solent is another area on the fast-track to devolution and the chair of Hampshire Climate Action Network, Chris Holloway, highlighted how the county’s various councils had unco-ordinated approaches to net zero.
She wants climate and nature policy required for the new combined authorities, just as is required for health.
As mayors, who can be party political or independent, Ms Holloway called for manifestos committed to climate and nature.
She said: “Even if the government doesn’t require them to, they’re bound to do it if they put it in their manifesto. They’re held accountable to the voters if they don’t.
“We want mayors to promise that they will create a climate strategy that brings a framework so instead of a policy on transport, on the economy, they’re doing all those things within the context of thinking ‘what do we need to do about climate’.
“So they can’t say ‘yeah we care about the climate but we’re going to invest in roads not buses’, ‘yeah we care about the climate but what is really important is economy growth’.”
Ms Holloway urged people to ask their MP to support a letter sent to Angela Rayner to support climate and nature as a duty.
She urged the audience to contact their councillors to pass a motion to write to Ms Rayner calling for climate and nature to be integrated into the future mayor’s policies, as she did in Hampshire and as has happened in Horsham.
The proposed mayor would be elected every four years and would be supported by the mayoral combined county authority, made up of six members drawn from the leadership of East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton and Hove.
Should the government decide to move forward with devolution in Sussex, the first election to vote in a mayor is expected to take place in May next year, with new councils – known as unitary councils – holding their first elections in May 2027.
In the meantime, the county council elections that were due to take place this year – in East Sussex and West Sussex – have been postponed. Members of Brighton and Hove City Council are not up for re-election until May 2027.
Brighton and Hove City Council wants to keep its status as a single unitary authority within its current boundaries. It has proposed having five unitary councils across Sussex. These would serve fewer people than suggested by the government.
In its proposal to ministers, Brighton and Hove City Council said that it could absorb neighbouring areas such as Shoreham to the west and Saltdean, Telscombe Cliffs and Peacehaven to the east.
For more information and a link to complete the consultation online, click here.
Perhaps the new mayor could ask BHCC why they went ahead with VG3 in the full knowledge that this project would lead to more pollution?
Exactly. Everything this council does to supposedly benefit the environment is doing the opposite, including their evil vendetta against trees. Compare us to any European city and we scarcely have a tree above 40 years old anywhere. Many parks in Germany boast massive gnarled trees which are centuries old. As for their laughable bs about air quality when they are the ones causing it to decline through constantly p1sssing about with our roads impeding traffic flow with every unnecessary impediment and roadwork under the sun, whilst ignoring fixing dangerous potholes and keeping road surfaces vehicle-worthy.
There isn’t a new mayor yet and this post won’t be elected until May 2026.
Even then they won’t have any power to override a decision made by a local council.
Perhaps focus on getting value for money from taxes rather than the tired old scaremongering and vanity projects?
No1 priority should be to stop pointless vanity projects that no-one wants, and to ensure the bins are emptied regularly.
A focus on climate change is utterly pointless. Woke lefty nonsense.
The priorities expressed by these three illustrate why local politics is often somewhat dysfunctional.
This is just plunging normal people who cannot afford to be over-consumers of the Earth’s resources into poverty and debt enslavement with no envirnmental benefit.
This ignorant evil needs to be stopped, not encouraged.
Consumer blame is outrageous since individuals can only buy what is made available to them, which is not hemp-fuelled vehicles – one of the greenest possible options if it were made available to the public.
All this coming top down from hypocrites flying to climate summits from their multiple international homes in their private jets who buy influence in governments around the world. How dare they.
political simulation , doom/scaremongering , a trio of foul nonsence
We don’t want a mayor, that ship sailed with Simon Fanshaw. Just do the jobs you are supposed to.