Councillors called for the Floral Clock, in Hove, to be saved at a meeting last night (Monday 13 October) while others wanted it replaced with something new and different.
The debate was prompted by a petition, with 3,000 signatures, presented to Brighton and Hove City Council by campaigner Laura King.
She started the petition to object to proposals to scrap the Floral Clock and spend about £125,000 to revamp the surrounding northern end of Palmeira Square.
The meeting, at Hove Town Hall, was told that the 72-year-old centrepiece was created to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
But councillors were told that it hadn’t worked for many years and the council could no longer afford to mend and maintain the clock.
Ms King, from the Friends of Brighton and Hove Citizens’ Action Group, criticised the public consultation which ended last month, having attracted more than 1,100 responses.
She said: “The announcement of the Floral Clock’s demise came three weeks before the under-advertised public consultation was set to end.”
Hoardings went up around the top end of Palmeira Square two weeks before the consultation was due to end, Ms King said.
She added: “The consultation itself asked the leading question: ‘What would you like to see in the location of the current floral clock?’ All of which exposed the consultation as a pre-decided sham.”
She asked how the cost of restoring the clock could be £25,000 two years ago yet now it had become too expensive to restore.
And she compared the previous £25,000 estimate with the £125,000 that the council was willing to spend on revamping the area with Mediterranean planting, adding that Hove lacked a Mediterranean climate.
Given that the top end of Palmeira Square was fenced off, she asked where Hove’s Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah would go this year and in future years.
Labour councillor Alan Robins, the council’s cabinet member for sports, recreation and libraries, said that the council was looking at what to do.
Councillor Robins said that it was not just about reinstalling the clock but also about maintaining it – and it had been out of action for 21 years.
He said: “The original design involved thousands of bedding plants being planted and then removed each year which isn’t in line with the more sustainable approach to our green spaces in place now.
“We are taking forward a consultation and will consider everyone’s views in deciding the options for the future – and we’ve set up a working group to co-ordinate this open space which will be used for many years to come.”
He said that whatever the council opted to do, it had to be affordable when it came to installation and maintenance.
Green councillor Ollie Sykes, who represents Brunswick and Adelaide ward, which includes Palmeira Square, paid tribute to the campaign and to the work of the Friends of Palmeira and Adelaide for their work.
He said that, alongside his fellow ward councillor, Labour councillor Andrei Czolak, “nothing was off the table” when it came to the area’s future.
Councillor Sykes said: “There’s lots of interesting other futures for that area which references the Floral Clock, references the coronation of our late Queen. But it might be done in a different way.
“One view put to me recently was a focus on quality. We should take the time to consult, maybe get architects on board, maybe a competition, to build a future for the clock.”
Conservative councillor Carol Theobald, a life-long resident of Brighton and Hove, asked whether proceeds from the community infrastructure levy (CIL) or other funding might be available for the clock.
She said: “We want the clock to be restored and the gardens to be an attractive feature of this very important part of Hove, surrounded as it is with fine listed buildings.”
Labour councillor Birgit Miller, the council’s cabinet member for culture, heritage and tourism, said that she was more inclined towards reinvention than replacement because maintaining the Floral Clock as it was is not how gardening is carried out these days.
Councillor Miller said: “It’s deeply environmentally unsustainable, growing thousands of plants, because they need to be annual bedding plants and they need a high degree of weeding.
“In 1973, 20 years after it (the clock) was founded, a member of the gardening team back then said Palmeira Square and the Floral Clock had its own team of five gardeners.
“That was a different time, a different way of gardening, with high use of pesticides.”
The council noted the petition.
Given that any public petition over 1,250 regarding a city issue is supposed to TRIGGER a full council debate, this is an odd choice of headline. How convenient that the Middle East hullaballoo – on the very day of a peace deal – inside and outside made the perfect excuse to banish any Floral Clock supporters from the public gallery and kick the Clock Petition into the long grass by ‘noting’ it. The only individuals against the clock appeared to be a few Councillors. The Save the King Alfred and the Save Rottingdean Library campaigners receieved similarly dismissive treatment from the public servants in charge or protecting these public facilities, with their supporters unallowed in the public gallery. It was an embarrassment of a meeting which should be re-run, keeping international politics out of local council business.
Another sham consultation brought to you by those nice people at BHCC.
And we expect better from Councillor Robins!
You can’t just call things a sham just because you don’t agree with them, Mike; it just comes across a bit ranty. I know you’re capable of better articulation than that. You would have read my discussion with other people about consultations, and how they tend to hold expectations of comprehensiveness that are rarely aligned with the intention and how that causes a disparity, such as feeling it is a “sham”.
It did appear that the Consultation was a sham because there was no choice on the consultation to save the floral clock, the fence had already gone up round the area before the consultation ended and from what was said by Council it appeared that decisions had already been made in consultation with Friends of Palmeira regarding planting (Mediterranean) and removing to floral clock altogether.
And I think that’s an important naunce – that the consultation wasn’t about if it should be removed, but about what it should be replaced by. And I would agree with you that it was perhaps an important discussion to have. Potentially, was there a way to maintain it as is, or repair and sustain it?
That perception is how opinions like Mike’s are formed.
In order to replace something, it is first necessary to dispose of what is there, so obviously the floral clock consultation was a scam. It is this ‘YourVoice’ gaslighting which will bring Labour down. We are all sick to death of these crude mind manipulation tactics to deflect attention from the latest awful thing the council intend to do to us. It’s getting so boring now. Yawn.
If the clock’s removal was already agreed as part of the garden’s redevelopment plan, the consultation focused on what replaces it, not whether to remove it. You may disagree with that approach, but that doesn’t make it a scam; it’s just a narrower scope than you expected.
Articulating a point isn’t mind manipulation, James.
Boring Benjy , the Council apologist, takes his seat in Pseuds’ Corner
I preferred Attack Poodle; that was far more amusing. Unfortunately, your insults are more bark than bite, and evidence a lack of substance. Shame.
Even paranoids have enemies.
The last part of the article is the one that clarifies everything. Obviously they’re not going to employ a team of five gardeners to keep up with Palmeira. There’s probably about five gardeners for the whole city. So then it becomes “would you gamble the repair costs of the clock on volunteers keeping up with the work” and the answer to that is “no.”
The quote about “Mediterranean planting” misses the point. That style of gardening is a low maintenance choice. No extra water, hardy plants, minimalist design. It’s not climate-dependant in the least.
The quote of needing five gardeners along with 32,0000 bedding plants is utterly ludicrous. Those figures have been extracted from an archive from the 1950’s. Who has ever proposed this? Just gaslighting from the Labour Councillors as they can’t form a sensible objection.
Councillor Miller should be ashamed of producing such a lazy and ill considered response, while trying to shut down the whole debate. I have voted Labour throughout. Never again
it is alarming that Councillers Miller and Robins are allowed anywhere near heritage and parks and gardens when they seem to show nothing but contempt for what makes Brighton and Hove special and any residents trying to defend this. What on earth made them decided to become Councillors ? They would appear completely unsuited to the role.
The money to do this is available.It just needs the senior management to stop endlessly covering up wrongdoing and spending vast amounts of taxpayer’s money on hiding wrongdoing within the organisation just dealing with the wrongdoing and hold the individuals accountable rather than misleading the public , when doing investigations are just wasting money as the wrongdoing is so obvious. I am aware that they have spent thousands of pounds already uncovering up just two cases that probably would have kept the clock in place for ten years.
So don’t believe there is no money they find the money when it directly impacts themselves. It’s a choice to remove it and is not a financial one.
money available to keep the clock , rather than keeping individuals that are failing within the work environment for the wide , the public.
Those are two separate budgets that don’t interact with each other, Lee.
As mentioned elsewhere a Sundial, but made by a local artist/sculptor/ someone ???
I like this idea!