A councillor plans to take residents’ concerns about the sell-off of publicly owned property to a special committee, with a call for more transparency.
Independent councillor Bruno De Oliveira said that he had contacted Brighton and Hove City Council cabinet members to share the concerns raised by residents in his Fiveways and Hollingdean ward.
Voters have contacted him about the potential sale of the former Homewood College site in the ward, the former Labour councillor said.
Last month, cabinet members agreed to sell various properties – including a school caretaker’s house, in Hangleton Way, an office, in Shenfield Way, and a cottage, in Stanmer village – with the proceeds going towards a £20 million investment fund.
Councillor De Oliveira is concerned that the decision was opaque, with much of the detail hidden unnecessarily in confidential papers with no prior public scrutiny.
He said: “These assets do not belong to any particular administration. They belong to the public and must be treated with the dignity and transparency that such ownership demands.
“The invocation of ‘commercial sensitivity’ as a blanket rationale for perceived secrecy can appear beyond its legitimate function of protecting negotiations.
“It risks becoming a convenient tool to sidestep rigorous democratic oversight.”
The Independent councillor has asked the cabinet for
<ul>
<li>a full public register of council-owned assets that are currently under review for disposal</li>
<li>an open consultation with residents and stakeholders about the use of those assets, particularly in relation to social and council housing</li>
<li>a commitment to transparency so that commercial confidentiality is the exception, not the rule</li>
<li>a moratorium on asset sales until proper public debated takes place</li>
</ul>
He said that Brighton and Hove deserved a council willing to build housing and trust – something that he believed that the Labour administration aimed to achieve.
The decision to sell off various properties has been “called in” by the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee. A special meeting is due to be held next Monday (19 May).
But Councillor De Oliveira said that the oversight should have happened at the start of the process – not when the decision had been “effectively rubber-stamped”.
Members of the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee called in the decision amid concerns over excessive secrecy rather than just a proper level of commercial confidentiality.
Their reasons were “an absence of sufficient evidence on which to base a decision” and whether there was “sufficient consultation with stakeholders”.
At the council’s cabinet meeting last month, Green councillor Pete West said that the council was planning to “sell off the family silver” without scrutiny.
In response, the Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, said that he was happy to share details of the properties earmarked for disposal with the scrutiny committee.
He said that the council had to look at taking the opportunity to build housing on every single bit of land that could be used – and preferably social housing.
