People who have their questions to the council and its committees curtailed or refused have nowhere to raise their concerns, according to various campaigners.
When Brighton and Hove City Council rejects or edits public questions and speeches, the people submitting said that there was no committee to which they could complain.
Adrian Hart, who regularly asks questions at town hall meetings on a variety of issues, highlighted the situation at the council’s People Overview and Scrutiny Committee last Wednesday (28 January).
He referred to Victoria Bhogal, who was co-author of a Jewish and Proud deputation speech made by Susan Sheftz, which the council edited before a meeting, resulting in complaints.
Mr Hart said: “In each case, decisions were treated as final, complaints were declined on constitutional grounds and no scrutiny body assumed responsibility.
“Can the chair reassure residents that the council has adequate mechanisms to ensure that discretionary powers affecting public participation are exercised transparently, consistently and without disproportionate impact on protected groups?”
Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn, who chairs the committee, said that it was not within the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s role to look at constitutional concerns and urged Mr Hart to put his case to full council.
Councillor O’Quinn said that it was a shame there was no constitutional working group to take up Mr Hart’s concerns.
Green councillor Sue Shanks asked whether Mr Hart could take his case to the Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee, but she was told that the committee would not accept the question.
Councillor O’Quinn said: “I just feel that this is going around putting questions forward. We do need to hear it and there needs to be an answer to it.”
Mr Hart was sceptical about any resolution because, in his experience, when a complaint was discussed in emails, it was declined and there needed to be an examination of fairness and consistency.
Ms Bhogal raised the issue of cutting deputations and public questions at the full council meeting the next day, on Thursday (29 January).
She asked how the council ensured that decisions were fair and independent.
She has complained about elements of a speech calling for support for the Jewish community being edited out.
When Susan Sheftz spoke at a full council meeting, on Thursday 13 October, she started to read some of the lines cut by the council. The meeting ended up being adjourned.
Ms Bhogal asked why officers had referred to an external statement issued by the Sussex Jewish Representative Council about the October meeting.
At the same meeting. councillors voted to look into whether the council had pension fund investments in Israeli firms.
Ms Bhogal went on to say that the motion debated was a breach of the council’s own commitment to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-semitism.
Ms Bhogal said: “I can’t believe that you stand there and say that to a Jewish member of Brighton and Hove after just telling us earlier that you were proud of the Holocaust commemorations here.
“You have breached what you agreed to as a council.”
In reply, the Labour leader of the council Bella Sankey said that the decisions about the agenda and the council’s external statements were made independently.
The Labour group leader said: “I don’t recognise your description of what took place at that meeting, nor the accusations that what took place at that meeting was a breach of the IHRA definition which we as a council are very proud to endorse and support.”
Bella Sankey needs to go.
She really has no right to be the council leader.
She constantly smears people who ask questions.
She is defamatory and does not tell the truth.
One of her favourite weapons is to say she doesn’t recognise what people are saying.
Yet, she claims to be a lawyer!
The video is available on YouTube, we can see what was accurate.
Attending council meetings has become a very unwelcoming experience. For example just to visit the public gallery breaches Section 8 and Section 10 of the European Court of Human Rights. Not just a bag check but they want visitors to sign a form and give them their personal contact data with no explanation and no GDPR statement. They also confiscate any water visitors might need to keep hydrated while they watch the 4-6 hour meeting in case they choose to attack the chamber with it! In reality the only recorded water which ever fell on the great and the good in that chamber was from a roof leak in 2022. Visitors are then escorted up the stairs by a Security Guard and told that any clapping, whooping or cheering will result in ejection. Meanwhile Councillors in the chamber beneath get to exercise THEIR fundamental human freedoms of expression during the meeting. Two security guards with their eyes boring into visitors at all times from behind completes the welcome. If a council is this scared of its people expressing themselves or watching the proceedings of public council meetings, they are doing something BADLY wrong and democracy has long left the building.
The Head of Legal Services is also the BHCC Monitoring Officer which is a serious conflict of interests. Mr Hart needs look no further to find out why there are no meaningful outcomes to council complaints. Nor does the Mayor seem trusted to Chair without the Head of Legal whispering in her ear all the time.
The Monitoring Officer also being Head of Legal is standard across most councils. It is not, in itself, a conflict of interest. Claiming otherwise just signals unfamiliarity with local government law.
What does land though is that Scrutiny says it is not within remit, Standards says no misconduct is alleged, Audit will not accept the issue, and Full Council cannot interrogate officer decisions. That creates a closed loop where governance concerns are acknowledged but examined nowhere.
Benjamin – you are right about one narrow point: it is lawful and quite common across UK councils for the Director of Legal / Governance to also be designated as the Monitoring Officer. That structure itself isn’t unusual.
Where residents’ concern comes in is not about job titles, but about how independence is demonstrated in practice. The Monitoring Officer’s statutory role is to safeguard legality, fairness and proper governance — including where the council itself may be at fault. Best-practice guidance recognises that tensions can arise when the same officer both advises on procedure and later closes down challenges to that procedure, which is why some councils use deputies or external advice in contentious cases.
So questioning whether sufficient safeguards are in place isn’t ignorance of government law; it’s a reasonable governance question — especially where residents repeatedly find scrutiny routes closed, complaints dismissed as “already explained”, and no forum willing to examine procedural fairness. The issue isn’t who holds the role, but whether the system allows meaningful challenge when things go wrong.
“What does land …. “. Exactly Benjamin!
Absolutely. However, a bad system doesn’t indicate bad faith or illegality, as the conversation has sometimes drifted off into.
The questions put to the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Full Council last week exposed an accountability gap. Leader Cllr Sankey and Monitoring Officer Culbert seem to have come up with a neat trick whereby public calls for scrutiny are framed as individual councillor misconduct. In other words, residents raising concerns about how discretion is exercised (by highlighting interference with public participation at meetings, or safety arrangements, or closing down a formal complaint before its even been looked at) are told they can’t go to scrutiny committees, or Full Council, and then redirected to Standards — even where no misconduct is alleged! And of course, the Standards Complaints are invariably rejected upon receipt by arguing that the complaints process – like scrutiny, like Full Council – is “not the appropriate forum”.
The result is a closed loop where serious governance issues are acknowledged but never examined anywhere. That’s the issue many residents are trying to get addressed. The comment on here by Tracy Ward gets close to explaining it; the Head of Legal has been our ‘acting’ Monitoring Officer (MO) for 18 months now. So the MO takes legal advice from herself, Cllr Sankey and the MO seem perfectly aligned on (a) keeping the pesky public at arms length and (b) marginalising the concerns Jewish residents and gender critical residents (who dare to raise child safeguarding concerns). Worse still, the Mayor, the CEO and Chairs of scrutiny committees all bow to the rule of our oligarch-like gatekeeper duo.
Wouldn’t it be great if a single one of our elected councillors stood up to this? I won’t hold my breath.
I always laugh when I see ‘ BHCC Democratic Services ‘ mentioned! A classic example of an oxymoron.
It cracks me up that we have a “Democratic Services” at all as it seems to be implying the rest of the council isn’t democratic!
Comically Authoritarian council shuts down opinions and debates it does not like?
Knock me down with a feather.
It might be taking a little bit of time but the birds really are coming home to roost.
Julia’s comment matches my experience exactly. My question about the council’s use of false trans suicide statistics (which was dangerous and irresponsible), and Christina Summers’ excellent questions about the treatment of Jewish resident Mrs Sheftz at the 13th October Full Council (and the closure of her subsequent corporate complaint as “already explained”) were all deflected away from scrutiny. No individual councillor misconduct had been alleged by us (to be clear, we were accusing the COUNCIL of MALADMINISTRATION) — yet no forum would examine the substance. That repetition across very different issues is what vividly reveals the ‘accountability gap’. They’re cornered.
Are you 12 years old! They answer your question and you are cross because you don’t like the answer! You should be sent to bed… without any pudding!
Hi Grandma!
Gosh, I think you’re in one of your muddles again.
There was definitely some directed complaints you made towards the mayor, in our discussions, Adrian…
Council Leader Sankey reminds one of the old adage which warns that some people will sink the whole ship just to be Captain. Her naked ambition knows no bounds and democracy is whatever she says it is. How long was she a Councillor before she became Council Leader again? Six months, wasn’t it? There has been something really off about her regime from the outset. She could hardly treat the elecorate with more dripping yet smiley contempt if she tried. The rule of thumb with her seems to be, the more serious the question, the more Pollyanna and brush off the answer.
Instead of focusing on City services and economic development, this bunch have hijacked our money for political gain.
It needs to stop via an uprising from tax paying residents!
City of sanctuary residents and University non tax payers are just a strategic weapon to gain control of a City
Nail on head. Our money is being squandered on their own career ambitions and vanity projects and not on looking after the residents and the city properly.
Good grief – we residents thought we were paying huge CT for services NOT political disputes FFS
What do you expect from Labour? You can’t even criticise without getting put in jail fast tracked.
Who was fast tracked into jail for critising Labour in Brighton?