Brighton and Hove sits in the national consciousness as a vibrant, welcoming, diverse and exciting city – and all those things are true.
It’s a special place. I was lucky to grow up here and am delighted that I can now raise my own children in the city.
However, what many people outside Brighton and Hove don’t appreciate is that we have deep inequalities – perhaps some of the starkest in all of England.
We have to start by understanding the national picture. As Professor Danny Dorling points out in his work on the subject, the UK saw a rapid transformation in a relatively short period of time.
In 1973, the UK had the lowest income inequality in all of Europe – indeed by some estimates it had the lowest income inequality ever recorded worldwide.
By the 1990s, a mere 20 years later, the UK had become one of the most economically unequal countries on earth.
Since then, income inequality has not changed materially, and our country battles it out with Estonia for the dubious honour of most unequal in Europe.
Even within that depressing national picture, Brighton and Hove stands out as a particularly shocking example.
Deprivation maps from the Geographic Data Service show a city with some of the most deprived communities in the country sitting a short distance from some of the most affluent.
The consequences of this colossal geographic inequality are becoming increasingly apparent across multiple areas of life and society in the city.
The recent Health Counts Survey revealed worrying inequalities, with 56 per cent of adults living in the most deprived areas in good health, compared to 76 per cent in the least deprived areas.
The economic plan we published last year revealed neighbourhoods that rank the worst nationally for access to healthy and affordable food and a GP.
A separate report by the Sutton Trust examined educational outcomes and social mobility – the extent to which your background determines prospects in life.
While Hove and central Brighton do reasonably well in their rankings, the Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven constituency, which includes all of East Brighton, was deemed to be one of the least socially mobile places in England – ranking 527th out of 543 constituencies.
All of this sits within the context of an ongoing housing crisis in the city, with costs for renting and owning far outstripping the average wages available locally.
This has resulted in thousands of families sitting on the council housing waiting list, hundreds living in temporary accommodation and untold numbers leaving the city altogether to secure an affordable home.
Since being elected in May 2023, we have tried to pull every lever available to tackle these inequalities.
We created the Brighton and Hove Fairness Fund, putting in over half a million pounds to support residents struggling with the basics.
We introduced pioneering school admissions policies that gave priority to those families eligible for free school meals.
We introduced a Brighton and Hove winter fuel payment to support older residents struggling with costs over the winter.
We introduced a new mental health counselling pilot in schools to support families would not be able to afford private provision.
We have also introduced landlord licensing to drive up rental standards, increased council tax on second or empty homes and commissioned or bought new social housing right across the city.
But we are honest with ourselves and the city – these measures alone will only make a difference on a small scale. We must go further as a city and as a country to reduce poverty and economic inequality.
The consequences of not doing so are already being witnessed nationally and across the globe. If progressive parties cannot deliver improved living standards and reduce inequality in our communities, then far-right parties will step into the space and offer false solutions.
They place blame on the most vulnerable and further divide society. The real solution is to unite the country by reducing the economic inequality that divides us.
The council will be exploring further policy choices in the coming years to reduce the inequality in our city – but we can’t do it alone.
We need the help of community and voluntary groups, of educators, local businesses and residents who want to make a difference.
Watch this space – but in the meantime, please do get in touch if you have ideas. Email jacob.taylor@brighton-hove.gov.uk.
Councillor Jacob Taylor is the Labour deputy leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.
You also have the highest paternity fraud in the country.
Every father should be having a DNA paternity test
You also have the highest false accusations of domestic abuse in the country
Your contact centers can’t cope with demand.
3 years average for mainly fathers to give up hope .
Perhaps start with supporting both parents equally. And realize the data that children do better with both parents. That also includes inheritance more likely passed on to children and therefore be lifted out of poverty.
How awful to find out you not known your father and all of his relatives that generally are there to support one another
I watched a debate recently that asked the question, “Should paternity tests be mandatory at birth?”
It raised some complex points. One argument in favour was that mandatory testing could prevent future disputes and false claims, potentially protecting both fathers and children. However, opponents pointed out that in countries where paternity fraud is reportedly high, such as Jamaica, where older studies have suggested rates between 25–33%, mandatory testing could destabilise families and social cohesion. Some European countries, like France, even restrict paternity testing altogether unless ordered by a court, specifically to avoid this kind of disruption.
Cllr Taylor talks about inequalities and the need to address some of these in the city. He signals out Kemptown and Peacehaven, clearly with sight on a possible parliamentary seat, but under his watch the secondary school children of Kemptown are the casualty of playing musical chairs on where the city’s children go to school. This against dubious evidence and no indication of how forensic this will be evaluated.
Other measures listed are really not that significant in eradicating the inequality. The recent health data survey is far more revealing at highlighting where health inequalities are for example.
Please stop tinkering on the edges and divert resources to East Brighton as opposed to the more prosperous areas of Hove. If you neglect the east of the city, then you are not reducing inequality, more increasing it.
It’s also baffling to hear a Labour councillor talk about inequality when he supported the goverment’s removal of support from many disabled people. On the very day that many Labour MPs backed down and accepted the plans would push vulnerable people into poverty and hardship and needed to be re-thought, Cllr Jacob Taylor, along with his Labour councillor colleagues in Brighton, refused campaigners calls locally to express concerns about the cuts being proposed by their party in government. It was shameful imo and I can’t listen to anything this councillor spouts about inequality and believe it’s backed up by the courage of conviction to put people above party when push comes to shove. He didn’t speak out on disability benefits, and chose to tow the party line instead.
He might also want to check what campaigners are saying about inequalities in schools. He refers to the Sutton Trust, but they point out that the Labour Government has yet to properly address this. They are calling for reform the National Funding Formula to rebalance funding back towards schools serving the most disadvantaged communities along with the the need to reverse the real terms erosion of Pupil Premium funding and restore funding to previous levels. Until Labour councillors locally are honest with themselves that under Labour we are seeing a continuation of austerity, and they are prepared to challenge the government’s direction at a national level to address the inequalities these cause, anything they do locally does not even touch the sides of what’s needed – as much as they might like to try and spin otherwise.
Mr Taylor appears to believe that receiving 1785 votes and coming in THIRD place in local election means that people are interested in his nuanced opinions on what are essentially experiments in social engineering.
The dubious opinions he presents as facts are about matters which are clearly a stratosphere above his pay grade.
To claim that standards are rising for tenants by bringing in a licensing scheme when the council are far and away the biggest rogue landlord in the city is laughable. Control and revenue are have a far higher priority than the welfare of tenants with this regime.
If he really believes he can do some good with his ideas he should get elected as an MP. In the meantime it is his responsibility to stick to more important (he would see as mundane), matters which involve the efficient running and execution of local authority services.
Equality can really be seen in the stats for the city. Whitehawk in particular is one of the top places in the whole country for deprivation, according to the IMD Index. But as a kind owner of a popular local pharmacy chain once said, those are the places where we can assert the greatest change.
My feeling is that inequality is fundamentally connected to the affordability of housing.
So those with the lowest income are often those with the highest relative housing costs, either paying rent, or perhaps with first time mortgages.
That in turn means younger residents have the lowest disposable income – and are continually scratching around for money just to pay their bills. We may understand why the nighttime economy is now dead. Even the student venues are struggling.
The Tory policy was to try and increase the supply of new housing, but those private new-builds have mostly fed the top end of the rental market, and have not catered for those just starting out.
The ‘help to buy’ schemes have been a further snake oil con which has added to these woes – with high maintenance charges adding to already-high outgoings, meaning those shared ownership properties are now unsaleable. I know young professionals, in couple, both hard working and on good salaries, but who are now chained up in a situation they can’t leave.
Our council will have some basic facts on this – with average earnings and average living costs – but I suspect they are keeping quiet about this mess we are in.
In my case I am lucky enough to own my own flat, but my home-related bills are spiralling out of control, from council tax to parking charges, and my monthly water bill is now higher than my electricity charges, despite me living in a one bedroom flat with no garden.
Completely agree, Billy. Hard data is showing this shift, too. In the late 90s, the average renter might have spent 13% of their income on rent. Today in Brighton, it’s more like 50%. That affordability gap is a major driver of inequality. Wages haven’t kept up with rent, and housing has become an investment vehicle more than a social good.
In light of this, Brighton needs to tackle Right to Buy losses, regulate Short Term Lets, stop the loss of family homes to HMOs and speculative conversions, and ensure new builds are affordable and stay in residential use. There’s the start of this work within the council from what we’ve seen; I am hoping for an unfaltering continuation.
‘ the Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven constituency, which includes all of East Brighton, was deemed to be one of the least socially mobile places in England – ranking 527th out of 543 constituencies.’
Really odd statement, lumping together everyone in the constituency as apparently ‘deprived’ and ‘least socially mobile’, whatever the latter phrase is supposed to mean. Whitehawk certainly is deprived, and there are undoubtedly pockets of deprivation elsewhere in the constituency, but that’s not by any means true for the whole area. You do wonder where they get these statistics from. I live in the area and am not deprived (although not at all wealthy by any means) and I know of plenty of people in East Brighton etc who are in the same or better situation than I am. It would be good, though, if the council diverted some of their efforts and money over this way, especially in Whitehawk – not for me but for the really deprived – rather than concentrating on Hove, and tinkering with road layouts etc over there, as they seem to be doing at present. Billy is spot-on about housing affordability, as he usually is about most things. Down my street, we have plenty of owner-occupiers (including me, although I have a hefty mortgage still) but also an ever-shifting population of students in HMOs and transitory renters who are probably paying several arms and legs for iffy accommodation.
Katy above is also right. Resources do need to be diverted over this way, but in a targeted manner. to those who need it most (not me). The latest – not the council’s fault for a change – is that the NHS, on short-sighted cost grounds, is planning to take away the contract from the non-profit Wellsbourne CIC Health Centre – I am not a patient, lest I be accused of bias -, which by most accounts is regarded as a major plus for Whitehawk people in particular, to replace it with a faceless profit-based entity based in Leeds, who will undoubtedly reduce services because they can’t make the sums work and ultimately walk away, just as the previous private providers did before Wellsbourne CIC stepped into the breach. Cllr Taylor needs to grasp some reality and put some of the council’s money where his mouth is.
Hey Jack, social mobility refers to the ability of a person or a family to improve their social and economic position over time. It’s about whether someone born into a low-income household can go on to earn a decent wage, get a good education, own a home, and live a stable, healthy life.