The Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council has been re-elected by her party for a further year and was confirmed as leader at the annual council meeting.
At Hove Town Hall today (Thursday 22 May), Bella Sankey was formally nominated by fellow Labour councillor Tobias Sheard.
Councillor Sheard said that Councillor Sankey had achieved the impossible, by balancing the budget for two years running without going bankrupt while extending the range of materials recycled by the council.
He said that her other successes included finding more money for street cleaning, freezing resident parking charges and the fastest roll-out of on-street electric car charging in the country outside London.
Councillor Sheard said: “As deputy leader of the Local Government Association, she’s helped push for local councils’ budgets to increase by over 4 per cent.
“(It) means not only can we continue to have money to pay for the debt left by the Greens’ ‘pole’ tax on the seafront but funding projects such as the Brighton Fairness fund.
“And the establishment of the mental health pilot in schools – a project, I might add, that has seen a ministerial visit today to see how our ideas can be taken nationwide.”
Councillor Sankey said that leading the council was the “love and honour” of her life. She said: “I couldn’t be more committed to our city and our residents.
“The more we do the more I can see there is to do. I promise I will work just as hard in the year ahead.
“And with all of your support, we will achieve even more for our people here in Brighton and Hove.”
Councillors Jacob Taylor and Tim Rowkins are the deputy leaders of the council for the coming year.
Green councillor Steve Davis was appointed as the official leader of the opposition. His party is the second largest on the council.
Bella is doing quite a good job. Needs to do more about antisemitism. She also needs to spend more time on local issues rather than swanning around among the upper eschelons of the Labour party seeking to cultivate a future as an MP. Concentrate on the job at hand please Bella.
You couldn’t make it up – Councillor Sheard says “Councillor Sankey had achieved the impossible about extending the range of materials recycled by the council, but omits that EVERY council in the country HAS to do this by this by March 2026 because of new national legislation and they’ve been given millions in funding to make it happen.
The decision to apply for the local electric vehicle infrastructure levi funding was also taken before Councillor Sankey’s time as leader. Why do Labour councillors keep doing this dreadful misrepresentation of facts.
Also curious to know what “Hove Beach Park” was before a park. If I remember rightly it was somewhere I walked my dog before – if that’s not a park I don’t know what is – it’s regeneration at best, not really the first new park in the city in 100 years
It was a largely unused brownfield site next to the King Alfred, Clare.
The local Labour party is failing with essential issues like rubbish collection, potholes, environmental protection, finance, pollution, democracy, and fairness.
Parks and natural spaces are being paved, the sky is being concreted, and our once peaceful roads are now clogged with vans and trucks.
Nationally they are failing on immigration, taxation, welfare, foreign policy, and crime.
The only real expertise this Labour group seems to have is in deceiving the public, misleading them, and keeping their true agenda concealed in secretive meetings. If you’re a pensioner who has spent your life saving for retirement, you’re now seeing your winter fuel payments end, taxes rising and bills go up.
Labour were awful in opposition and are worse in power.
Rob, it’s hard to take your comments seriously when every post follows the same script: Labour bad, no detail, rinse and repeat. You constantly accuse Labour of dishonesty, failure, and secrecy, but never seem to offer a single piece of verifiable evidence. No council meeting minutes, no voting record, no policy details. Just vibes.
You lump together everything from rubbish bins to foreign policy, yet offer no specific examples of local failures linked to actual decisions made in Brighton & Hove. That’s not critique, it’s just deflection. If you want to be taken seriously, show us you’ve done more than skim headlines or copy Twitter talking points. Until then, it just reads like partisan noise.
And you always defend Labour Benjamin, despite evidence of them u-turning on pretty much everything, so it’s hard to take your comments seriously imo.
I get that you disagree with me, but accusing me of blind loyalty doesn’t engage with the substance of anything I’ve said. I don’t support Labour unconditionally; I support good policy, backed with a strong evidence base, and I criticise where I see failings with a solution-focused mindset. If someone puts forward a weak or misleading claim, I’ll challenge it, whoever it comes from – unfortunately, that tends to be more commonly from those with an anti-council stance.
Changing course in response to new information, funding gaps, or legal barriers to me is a sign of pragmatic realism, not weakness, in my opinion. U-turn is not a dirty word, despite what the media would suggest. I’d rather have that than ideological rigidity. Having said that, I would much rather the mantra of “Measure Twice, Cut Once” were more robustly used.
If you’ve got specific points of policy you’d like to debate, I’m always here for that; you’ve always been one who articulates themselves well, and I always appreciate the different perspective, it helps me have a more well-rounded opinion on a topic.
It’s not really worthwhile reacting to “Benjamin’s” many comments on this site, as they are always either dull or use incorrect information. You’re really boring, Benny.
“You’re boring” is a great way of saying “I can’t refute your points, so here’s a playground insult instead, from behind a sockpuppet.”
Have to agree with you about Labour failing locally despite their PR machine (Benjamin) & Cllr Sankey trying to re-write history. They can’t get the basics right. In Westdene & Withdean Ward missed bin collections again this week. In some roads there has been one collection in two months. I have just completed an interview with one of the National Newspapers – so watch this space.
Potholes are rarely filled, despite repeated requests.
Graffiti not cleaned.
Trees not trimmed.
Weeding not done.
Kicking & screaming there will be food collections later this year (it is mandatory government requirement), yet little infrastructure to collect the waste. Just wait for the first missed collection on a hot summers day.
The current administration are failing at the basics.
It’s disappointing to see Cllr Lyons once again resort to personalised attacks instead of addressing the issues with accuracy and context. Though I’m flattered he considers me a threat to his increasingly disingenuous narrative, if fact-checking and encouraging public understanding is “PR,” then frankly, we need more of it.
If the councillor is struggling with the bread and butter of his role, I’d be more than happy to demonstrate how it can be done effectively, even without the privileges of elected office.
On that note, the challenges facing our city’s public realm weren’t created by this administration. They’re the product of over a decade of well-recorded Conservative-led austerity, legal constraints, and national policy gaps that have hollowed out local authority capacity across the country.
That’s a basic reality Cllr Lyons seems determined to ignore at every turn.
You couldn’t make it up (or perhaps you can!) – Councillor Sheard says “Councillor Sankey had achieved the impossible about extending the range of materials recycled by the council, but omits that EVERY council in the country HAS to do this by this by March 2026 because of new national legislation and they’ve been given millions in funding to make it happen.
The decision to apply for the local electric vehicle infrastructure levi funding was also taken before Councillor Sankey’s time as leader. Why do Labour councillors keep doing this dreadful misrepresentation of facts. Every time they do it erodes trust further.
But Bella has failed to sort out the weeds as she originally promised in her Wish Ward councillor capacity, the roads and potholes have never been worse, she has closed schools and Libraries and taken credit for initiatives which had nothing to do with her. She has also adopted an anti-democratic cabinet system and hired herself an extra deputy leader at public expense without public mandate. As for recycling, while the Veolia 30 year contract is in force surely all our rubbish still gets sold to the Newhaven ‘Energy Recovery Facility’ for burning to generate electricity which is sold to 44,000 non-Brighton and Hove households – a nice little earner in its own right since we pay our council tax to have it taken away. So where does that leave recycling? Is there even any point if it is all burned? She has also pushed through the wildly unpopular Valley Gardens 3 project with no cost/benefit analysis or economic risk impact assessment to the electorate. And the Madeira Terraces restoration has seen some clumsy work so far with arches filled in rather than restored.
What is most scary is the relentless dishonesty shown by this administration.
Dressed up as virtue which makes it even darker.
Mikey, you’re back with the greatest hits! But as usual, there’s more heat than light here. You blame Bella for everything from Veolia’s county-wide waste contract to population-driven school closures, without pausing to check timelines, responsibilities, or facts.
For instance, the Energy Recovery Facility has been burning non-recyclables for over a decade. And Valley Gardens 3? Consulted, funded, and moving ahead precisely because the city does have a strategy, one that’s backed by active travel and climate groups.
Criticism’s fair game, but you keep recycling talking points that don’t reflect reality. If you want to be credible, bring data; otherwise, you’re just making noise for the sake of it.
It’s not really a re-election . Labour have re-appointed their leader. With Labour imposing their cabinet system to control the council it all seems a bit North Korean and Kim Jong Un, with adulatory worship of Dear Leader Sankey.