A public consultation is due to start in July if the government decides that Sussex should move forward with plans for an elected mayor and a shake up of the current councils.
Members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee were told about the proposed public consultation at a meeting dedicated to devolution yesterday (Thursday 5 June).
The government is due to announce its decision on whether to press on with devolution for Sussex and Brighton and Hove by the end of the month.
At the same time ministers are expected to share the results of a public consultation which ended in April.
The consultation asked for people’s views on creating a “mayoral combined authority” with two representatives each from Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council and West Sussex County Council.
Should devolution move ahead, Sussex would end up with fewer councils – all of them unitary councils like Brighton and Hove City Council. These would replace the existing county and district councils.
Brighton and Hove City Council proposed the creation of five unitary councils serving areas with populations of between 300,000 and 400,000.
The size and shape of Brighton and Hove would either stay the same or neighbouring areas such as Peacehaven to the east and Shoreham to the west could be absorbed.
Councillor Bella Sankey, the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, said that a future consultation would not be on whether the changes should take place.
It would focus on the future structure of local government in the county and how it aligned with other services, including the NHS and fire service.
When she became leader in May 2023, Councillor Sankey was surprised, she said, to discover the level of co-operation required between the city council and the two Conservative-run county councils.
Councillor Sankey said: “There was nothing really strategic in place, no mechanism or requirements or anything in law to require us to collaborate in the interests of our residents, communities and businesses.
“Devolution is incredibly welcome and it is much overdue. There is a lot we can learn from areas that have already devolved and are seeing the benefits.”
Labour councillor John Hewitt, the cabinet adviser for devolution and government reorganisation in Brighton and Hove, said that any consultation would be “robust”.
Councillor Hewitt said: “We’ll be sharing and engaging data and evidence and public feedback with our neighbouring authorities.
“I’m going to put strong emphasis on this as it’s extremely valuable and something we are taking very seriously on promoting facilitation, consultation and engagement with residents and stakeholders.
“We are proud to be one of the only councils in the country to run an early engagement exercise as part of our interim plan.”
Councillor Hewitt said that he wanted the consultation process to go beyond the September deadline set by ministers.
During the two-week engagement carried out in February and March, 597 people shared their thoughts on the proposed mayoral authority and shake up of councils.
A report to the overview and scrutiny committee said that public meetings, community events and business networking were part of the mix to encourage people to respond to the consultation.
Fellow Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn said that community groups including the many neighbourhood forums across Brighton and Hove, with their thousands of members, should be part of the consultation process.
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that even though her party would put up a candidate – as it had done in other parts of the country – it did not agree with elected mayors.
Councillor Shanks said: “Nationally, we are in a completely chaotic situation as far as I can see, with new political parties which aren’t represented here coming along.
“This will decrease our representation as councillors because if we expand our boundaries, we’ll presumably lose councillors. You can’t have the number of councillors that exist across Sussex, including the districts, once you make changes to the boundaries.”
Another of her concerns was the speed of the process. She said that September was “not far away” with the summer between.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows echoed Councillor Shanks, saying that there were “new boys on the block” elsewhere in the country, referring to Reform UK’s success in the mayoral and county council elections last month.
Councillor Meadows said: “All residents want is the bins collected. They’re not interested in all this highfalutin’ who’s going to take charge here, who’s going to take charge there. They just want their bins collected.”
Newly elected Labour councillor Sam Parrott said that when she was canvassing in the recent Westbourne and Poets Corner by-election, she found that residents cared about education, transport and equality more than bins.
Councillor Parrott said: “Having spent the last two-and-a-half months engaging with residents both in the campaign and, as a new councillor, having spent many hours of the last month going out and meeting people, I find it very distressing that a councillor could sit here and say all our residents are interested in is bin collection.
“That’s not my experience on the doorstep.”
If the government approves proposals for Sussex, mayoral elections would take place in May next year and local elections to the new unitary authorities in May 2027.
It sounds like Bella is saying she isn’t able to cooperate on a cross party basis with other council’s right now and that’s why she thinks there should be mechanisms, processes and laws in place to force collaboration between councils.
Politicians need to have good diplomacy skills and be able to work collaboratively across parties and with a wide range of people. If she struggles to do that because there is no law to make people work with her, which her comments suggest she is finding problematic, forcing regional changes (that no one asked for) so that councils have to work together by force is a very big change because of any failure to be able to liaise and work through issues via discussion and relationship building.
If she entered politics thinking that it would not involve discussion with others to find common ground to bring about positive change, and that this involves certain skill sets so you don’t force people without consent, that says a lot imo.
That’s a misread of the situation. The issue is the lack of formal mechanisms that make collaboration between councils functionally possible.
Brighton & Hove’s own cross-party reports on lays this out clearly, even government departments like DCMS have struggled to progress national policy because councils can’t share data or coordinate effectively. That’s why the report calls for legally mandated frameworks, not just “being nice”.
It’s not that people won’t talk, it’s that the system gives them no reason to align, no structure to do so, and no shared accountability.
Relying on goodwill doesn’t cut it when housing policy, licensing, planning, and enforcement are split across disconnected authorities. That’s not a personal failing, it’s a systemic one.
The definition of politics is pretty much the debate between parties. Mandating everything to remove that debate is questionable in my view – it’s kind of a basic and allows for better decision making as in theory it should give opportunity
It’s not about goodwill, if politicians are unable to have those constructive conversations cross party, perhaps the problem is we’re electing the wrong politicians, and the ones in power are only focused on pushing forward their ideas and shutting out other views from debate and discussion.
Creating laws as a way to remove debate and discussion isn’t the answer – that just sounds more like a dictatorship to me. It might take longer and require more skill to reach decisions via discussion and collaboration, but it’s still better than bulldozing things through and stifling public debate in the process.
No one is suggesting ending cross-party debate. But mandating collaboration between councils, especially when delivering housing, health, or infrastructure, isn’t dictatorship. It’s how you stop paralysis and get things done.
And to think that thr proclamation of a unitary authority, Brighton taking over Hove, was proclaimed as a solve-all nearly a third of a century ago.
Christopher, the formation of a unitary authority may have streamlined some governance locally, but it didn’t resolve inter-council coordination across wider regions.
Brighton & Hove being unitary doesn’t help when services like housing, transport, and planning still clash or duplicate effort with East and West Sussex. That’s not something the 1997 reorganisation ever claimed to solve. If anything, it showed the limits of relying solely on structural change without proper powers and resources.
I’m hopeful devolution addresses this.
I’m going to make this point with my tongue firmly pressing out my cheek as well as making a sweeping oversimplification but…..
Whilst certain none of the local or county councils outside of B&H are free of debt burdens and/or taxpayer liabilities founded in mis management, vanity projects or administrative failures. If I was a voter or authority leader then I’d be closing the door based on their being a moral imperative not to align my neighbours or constituents with an administration that was lead by parties of all colours who were the only people in the city who repeatedly ignored the obvious to a point where it landed a £51M liability on the taxpayer.
Such sustained incompetence I’d feel compelled to fight with all my power to keep my voters as separated from as possible
But here’s the key point, in my opinion, devolution isn’t a reward for past behaviour. It’s a tool to fix the very problems voters are shutting the door about, to use your terms.
More local control over housing so we aren’t swamped with student and AirBnBs; the potential for a tourist tax that’ll allow Brighton to regenerate and develop as needed; a transport system that makes sense; and joined up thinking so we are working synergetically, not just in silos; and investment into our young people and those who need the opportunity to help themselves.
Devolution doesn’t hand power to past mistakes, it creates shared responsibility, with checks and balances across multiple councils. A much greater level of scrutiny which has been asked for verbatim.
If we define the city’s future solely by past errors, we trap ourselves. Devolution gives us the chance to break that cycle, not repeat it.
Communication has always been a growing challenge for this council and for politics in general. A voter doesn’t have to agree, but at least we should be able to have a conversation at the door, right?
‘Reorganisation’ a convenient way of preventing more councils being run by Reform. Interesting that it was mainly Conservative councils that opted to deny their electorate the opportunity to vote.
Nah, Reform have been pretty clear that they can’t organise themselves properly. Was reading the other day they haven’t been able to run a majority of their mandated meetings. Loud voices, no plan.