Opposition councillors said that Brighton and Hove City Council was “on its knees” as the Labour leadership went cap in hand to the government for £15 million so that they could set a legally balanced budget.
One even accused Labour of “selling the telly to pay the rent”.
The council has applied to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for “exceptional financial support”, according to a report to the council’s cabinet which is due to meet next Thursday (12 February).
The report said that the council received less than it was expecting from the government in December, leaving it facing a £25 million budget shortfall.
The government funding helps to pay towards several essential services which are under financial pressure as demand and costs rise such as temporary housing, adult and children’s social care, libraries, environmental services and roads.
Senior councillors and officials have found almost £12.5 million in savings while still facing a shortfall of nearly £13 million, resulting in the request to the government.
The report said: “Savings proposals have been identified to reduce the gap but, given the exceptional demand pressures on emergency and temporary accommodation and social care, alongside very low levels of reserves, the council has requested ‘exceptional financial support’ (EFS) of £15 million from the government.
“This is part of a strategy to fully fund service pressures going into 2026-27, protect and increase levels of reserves and provide sufficient time for savings to be delivered through the transformation portfolio.”
The report said that budget-setting was “very challenging”, particularly because of growing demand for emergency housing and social care placements – and pressure on income.
To deal with short-term pressures, the council was also looking to borrow internally from the £17 million held in developers’ contributions, known as section 106 money, and community infrastructure levy (CIL).
Green councillor Ollie Sykes said that the budget was “desperate” from a council “on its knees”.
The opposition finance spokesman said: “Labour locally is being dishonest when they say they are digging our city out of the mess.
“Labour has not fought hard enough for our city and we are losing millions next year and over the next few years in grant support in comparison with councils elsewhere in the country such as the Green-led authority in Bristol.
“We were promised that a Labour government plus a Labour council together would address Brighton and Hove’s problems. Instead, they have made them worse.
“The administration love to talk about ‘Labour firsts’ and there are plenty in here.
“It’s the first time we have had £15 million in emergency financial support and the first time we are selling off £3.2 million of council assets just to pay ongoing revenue costs. That’s like selling the telly to pay the rent.”
Conservative group leader councillor Alistair McNair was equally scathing, describing the council as “hanging on for dear life”.
Councillor McNair said: “This is the kind of budget you get after Labour has been in government for only two years. Cuts, cuts and cuts.
“We were promised no more austerity with a Labour government in power but it’s only getting worse.
“You could sum it up: it’s a budget of cuts and costs – to you and me. The council is hanging on for dear life.”
The council is also looking to build up a working balance reserve from £8 million to between £12 million and £15 million over the next four years.
The report said: “Brighton and Hove City Council has one of the lowest levels of reserves of any unitary authority and has done for some considerable time.
“(It) is therefore unable to withstand significant financial shocks at a time where financial risks to councils are arguably greater than they have ever been.
“The external auditors, Grant Thornton, have raised a significant weakness in respect of financial sustainability over recent years and the council’s financial sustainability was the top recommendation in the Local Government Association’s corporate peer challenge in April 2025.”
The council is expected to put up council tax bills by 5 per cent for the coming financial year, starting in April, of which 2.99 per cent would be for general services and 2 per cent would ringfenced for adult social care.
The council’s share of the average band D council tax bill would go up £103.62 to £2,180.01. The bill will also include police and fire precepts.
The Sussex police and crime commissioner plans to put up the police precept by 5.6 per cent to £281.91 for a band D property.
The council has an overall budget of more than £1 billion including £341 million for “general fund” spending in in 2026-27. This covers hundreds of day-to-day services.
Councillors will also be asked to approve almost £240 million in capital spending including £113 million on new housing through building and buying homes.
Major projects are planned or under way including the Madeira Terraces, the King Alfred, New England House, the final phase of the Valley Gardens revamp and the Brighton Marina to River Adur coastal protection works.
The cabinet is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm next Thursday (12 February). The meeting is scheduled to be webcast.
£7m+ spent on VG3 on top of the funding from Central Government.
Yeah, that makes financial sense – considering the end result is more congestion and pollution (as the Council’s own consultants told them!)
Who in the Transport department signed this off?
A bigger issue for me is the council is still paying off millions in Labour PFI deals. The waste one alone, taken out by a Labour council at BHCC around 2003 still has about £157 million left to pay, and the council is reducing hours at the Jubilee Library when they are still paying off about £15million from the PFI contract to build it.
It’s not a new thing that Labour have made poor decisions for the city. PFI may have been introduced by the Tories in the early 1990s, but it was under the new Labour government that followed where a huge number of projects were funded via this route. This article refers to public authorities paying out a staggering £306 billion in total annual charges still – https://www.lrd.org.uk/free-read/pfi-rip-just-keeps-taking. It really is a proper scandal, and yet Labour bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they are not part of the problem when it comes to local council finances being so dire.
It’s a good analysis there Craig, and you’re absolutely right that PFIs have been constraining many councils, even beyond Brighton, and have been for decades. Most PFI contracts are effectively locked in. Exiting them early would usually cost more than continuing to pay, which is why councils are stuck managing the consequences rather than “fixing” them.
What I’d push back on is isolating the problem to just PFI. The biggest pressures now are demand-led and have accelerated sharply in the last decade, especially temporary accommodation and adult social care. Those costs rise regardless of who is in control locally.
That does not mean Labour should duck responsibility. It does mean the solution lies in national reform of both local government funding, and how PFIs are handled in the future.
Waste PFI is a waste of money
BHCC could negotiate a better overall deal as it’s also the landlord.
Exit clauses weren’t so expensive earlier in the contract (extended by five years by Veolia on day 1).
Problem is Veolia is bigger than BHCC and they’re scared.
Complicated by politics of ESCC and BHCC being partner’s. Which aligns with Tracey’s point about tribal politics spoiling local authority education and environmental improvements.
Again, and I’ve cited and debated the reports several times, they do not show this, other than in an option that is not being used.
But you are a , presumably, salaried Council apologist, paid to spout lies and rubbish.
BHCC are actually claiming VG3 will reduce congestion!
I get called many things, often contradictory, from one week to the next. The latest was a far-right Reform extremist of the Conservative Party, which doesn’t actually make sense, lol. It’s the same approach that Trump seems to use against reporters asking him questions he doesn’t like, something for you to reflect on, perhaps?
There are public documents and independent reports, which I have seen you join in our discussions about, so you know this, that point to exactly what I’ve asserted many times before, so the narrative that you’re arguing for is just not accurate.
Ditch borrowing to finance the eye-wateringly overpriced £65m King Alfred development and fifty years of £multimillion city debt repayments on it. There. Fixed it for you.
Nope. See my reply to Tracy. Same concept.
Stop all these vanity projects,removing the Palce Pier roundabout ,cycle lanes along the seafront in Hove in fact get rid of MUTEN AND PRIOR !!
At last. I was wondering what had happened to the “opposition” and whether they’d gone red under the bed. Is BHCC permitted to raid the CIL tax though? I thought this was supposed to be for reinvestment into the community after developers bought their way out of their 40% per block affordable housing obligation.
The solution seems obvious. No more capital projects until the basics are sorted out and the debt levels are lowered. It is madness to keep spending into council reserves because once they’re gone, they’re gone and it’s not just about the now, but safeguarding the city’s future. It is also madness to keep building more cycle lanes when figures show the level of cycling is actually going down and not up in the city so residents are clearly not responding to nudge theory bullying-by-design. And many can’t, considering nearly 20% of the city are registered disabled. This never-ending bad weather is not an incentive either. This is not the Algarve! There are several mentions of “emergency accommodation” in the article, yet there seemed to be little, if any, due financial diligence undertaken on the recent £19m emergency accommodation contract awarded so casually and hastily to a start up company few had even heard of. The first money saving measure could be to cancel it on the grounds of it being erroneously awarded without due process. An ombudsman could intervene if this helps.
Unfortunately, that’s not an obvious solution. Capital and revenue budgets are legally separate. Borrowing for long-life assets like housing or leisure infrastructure is spread over decades, while the immediate pressures here are demand-led revenue costs like temporary accommodation and social care that cannot legally be stopped. Funding is typically done so through other means than revenue. Cancelling them often increases costs through penalties, lost grant, or future emergency repairs. You’d actually end up making things worse.
Explain how £300,000 from the public toilet budget ended up filling a hole in the Kingsway to the Sea project then Benjamin. Explain how the i360 plunged the council into £32m debt at taxpayers’ expense. Capital projects can totally have an impact on cuts made, even though they should be totally separate. Every time there is a shortfall in government/other funding for projects, there is a raid on council budgets, resulting in cuts, cuts and more cuts. This has to stop.
Certainly, the £300k Kingsway example is a virement decision within the council’s overall capital programme, not evidence that capital routinely props up revenue services. It was a decision made to address a specific cost pressure on a live project, rather than a general mechanism for funding day-to-day services.
The i360 is actually the opposite of the argument you are making. It did not cause cuts because capital and revenue are “the same”. It caused long-term pressure because the council took on commercial risk that did not pay off, leaving it with debt and interest costs. That is a lesson, to the Greens specifically, about poor risk appraisal, but it is not about banning capital investment altogether.
Hi Benjamin.
Tracy has made a very valid and vital comment.
It is my opinion the Kingsway project was a total waste of resources and nothing more than a vanity project. Toilets, benefit the whole city, residents, visitors and workers alike and in my opinion more important than Kingsway.
As for the i360, you say it has not caused cuts, opinions will vary of course depending on how you view the situation.
With respect, the i360 has cost thousands in prevention of FOI for a start, millions in keeping up with loan repayments and the 2 million every year we now have to pay.
That money has had to been found somewhere, that means the general budget has less to fund other things, so therefore, less money across the board so effectively cuts for the next twenty odd years to pay for the bloody thing.
It’s an excellent point, as usual, Martin; debt servicing due to i360 could have been avoided, in my opinion, and a textbook example of poor risk appraisal. On reflection, Jason Kitcat should not have whipped his party to approve the amended loan on the i360 at the much higher price, but this is the hand we have unfortunately.
Labour austerity. Plain and simple.
Keir and co duped residents on a promise of change and have backtracked and u-turned since. Locally this council and the Labour councillors under Bella Sankey’s reign have been complicit in their silence and their willingness to tow the line with the Tory faction who have infiltrated the Labour Party in recent years.
“Change” could mean anything. Why would anyone automatically assume “change” means change for the better rather than the worse? Labour hedged their bets both ways with this meaningless promise.
That skips over the structural problem in local government finance that has been flagged for years by auditors and the LGA. Councils of all political control are having to seek EFS for exactly the same reason. And that can be traced back to 20 years ago.
A council in this much £ trouble but just announcing a seafront playground revamp??? Really? Ok urgent repairs needed to some arches, but where is the rest of the money coming from? If they are going to keep telling us how broke they are, they need to be consistent or it’s public gaslighting.
That’s simply a Labour council spin story. What is actually happening is that a structural survey has found the stretch of road near the playground to be at a catastrophic risk of collapse, so the council is bidding for national money to fund the essential work needed as part of that. When they do the structural work it will be extensive and provide opportunity to tart up the bits of seafront they have to dig up and replace when they do the structural work.
The council did the same insane spin thing with the Norton Road car park. Labour councillor Trevor Muten spun it as am “upgrade” and the administration made out that they were having fewer cars there because cars are bigger these days and they were making adaptions to better accommodate them. The truth is the structural survey at the car park found serious issues with the central beam, and the surveyors made clear that it was not deemed safe / strong enough to bear the weight of the number of cars parking there and unless structural work was done to address the weight bearing issues. Rather than pay for the more expensive weight bearing work, the council chose to do a cheaper patch up job, reducing the number of cars parking there to reduce the pressure on the beam. A really short-sighted decision as the council loses parking revenue by having fewer cars parked there, which will more than exceed what the structural work would have costed if they did it now instead of the cheapo patch up job.
It’s a good example of how council finances often get communicated badly. There are reasons and a logic, but unless you’re specifically looking for those, the narrative most people land on is poor.
It’s not poor communication, it is spin at best, lies at worst. A councillor suggesting in a press release that reducing cars at Norton Road car park for safety reasons due to the weakness of a core structural beam is some sort of “upgrade” is far from being open, honest and transparent.
People aren’t stupid, and people are starting to see through Labour’s spin now and their deliberate choice of words – which they often seem to use to try and deflect from the truth. Just look at Starmer at the moment. He’s been caught out, and even his apology looks like just an apology to save his own skin, not an apology because he’s truly sorry.
Speaking of poor communication, Trevor, there are two separate things.
When major works are required, there is usually a marginal additional cost to reinstate or modestly improve what has been dug up anyway. It’s pretty simple logic, although you are right that councils often choose unhelpful wording that lends itself to people thinking it is spin.
Where I disagree is the jump from poor phrasing to accusations of lying. That leap shuts down understanding for performative outrage. Finances are already opaque enough without turning every explanation into a test of political loyalty.
People are not stupid. But equally, not every badly worded press release is a conspiracy either.
The art of keeping people in a state of confusion and then trying to make them feel stupid for not understanding what is going on is exactly what gaslighting is. .
Helen, I would not say residents are being deliberately gaslit, but I would double down on the fact that poorer communication, especially in nuance, creates confusion and distrust. Safety-critical, often externally funded, work is announced separately from the revenue crisis, which lands as an inconsistency. I would agree with you that it is on the council to explain that better, and not on residents to decode.
Because, even providing extra context or challenging inconsistencies as a simple member of the public, we can end up attacking each other, rather than develop a better understanding, for example, my current list of accolades doted upon my fans on here includes being a Labour, far-right, extremist, Conservative, Reform, attack poodle (My favourite thing Cllr Lyons has ever said), paid, unemployed, hired spy or employed by the council, apologist.
Jokes aside, it’s not helpful.
Calling this a “begging bowl” budget ignores the bigger picture. Councils like Brighton and Hove are facing intense pressure from rising housing need, temporary accommodation costs, and adult social care, all areas where demand has surged and local control is limited. Years of national underfunding of local government have weakened reserves across the country, so it’s not surprising that support is now being sought.
Conservatives attacking the situation overlook how long-term funding settlements under previous governments helped create these structural gaps. This didn’t appear overnight.
As for the Greens, it’s easy to criticise, but harder to present a fully costed alternative that protects frontline services while meeting legal budget requirements. Residents need realistic solutions, not point-scoring
What you say might carry more credibility if we didn’t all see so much public money wasted on vanity projects. Playing the political blame game doesn’t wash because Red, Green and Blue are all guilty of financial mismanagement at one time or another. In fact the political blame game becomes an argument for dispensing with party politics at local council level altogether, since these interminable squabbles just make things even worse and create an unacceptable conflict of interest where national party politics supercedes local needs and loyalty to the party is put before loyalty to Brighton and Hove residents. Ask residents what they actually want. A beautiful, clean and well-functioning city at reasonable cost. Who is fit to deliver this if Councillors are party-whipped and cannot serve two masters?
Wholeheartedly disagree.
Dispensing with party politics locally would not remove legal duties, funding constraints, audit requirements, or the need to set a lawful budget. What residents want is important, but that has to be tempered with the pragmatic reality that councils must fund statutory services first and live within national funding frameworks. Wanting a clean, well-functioning city at a reasonable cost is obvious. The hard part is delivering that under legal and financial constraints.
On the contrary, cutting out all divide and rule political garbage would make a massive difference to the city. No more conflicted loyalties, no excuse for non-accountability and all collective energy could come together to decide how to genuinely fix and improve everything. In collaboration with the residents. It would save time and money and Brighton and Hove could be a testbed for direct democracy in this country. This city has always liked to pride itself on being ahead of the curve. Why not abandon all these same old, same old, failed political parties and see Councillors elected on civic-minded merit alone?
Because that is unrealistic utopian distraction. It sounds attractive, but falls apart extremely quickly with even a paper thin level of scrutiny, ironically.
Someone still has to make decisions, take legal responsibility, and be held accountable when things go wrong. That has nothing to do with being civic-minded.
Party politics is not the cause of Brighton and Hove’s financial pressures. Demand-led services, long-term underfunding, historic liabilities, and weak reserves are. Replacing elected parties with an undefined alternative does not resolve any of those realities.
Hypothetical systems that do not exist does not help residents understand or fix the very real budget decisions in front of the council now.
Honestly, that’s a really good temperature check. I’m not a fan of political point-scoring and mudslinging, and I quite agree with you, it doesn’t help anyone.
Nationally, I think a lot of the challenge can be distilled into a simple councils are having to do more with less, so the biggest lever central government should be pulling is changing how councils are funded. Brighton is not the only council who have requested EFS, was reading on other news websites about other councils who’d had to apply over successive years.
Locally, you have to invest. There are legal obligations that have to be met, such as housing. Being clever with how these are met is better than just cutting, for example, bringing temporary housing in-house to make savings on the private premium.