A Green councillor has criticised the way that the council’s budget forecasts are presented to senior councillors, describing a new-style report as “lacking clarity”.
Councillor Ollie Sykes made his comments at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet yesterday (Thursday 16 July).
He spoke out a few weeks after slamming Labour for using “smoke and mirror” financial tricks to break even at the end of the past financial year.
The figures for May – the second month of the 2026-27 financial year – forecast an overspend of nearly £20 million, with risks totalling a further £17 million.
But the new analysis accompanying the figures no longer shows a year-on-year comparison with previous years’ overspends and forecasts.
Councillor Sykes said: “The administration’s ‘month two’ finance paper unfortunately presents a toxic combination of lack of clarity, uncertainty and bad news.
“I don’t remember a similar position before in Brighton and Hove City Council.
“But the main theme has to be Labour’s budget control – or lack of it. At the last cabinet I said the council is running on fumes.
“Two and a half weeks later it’s clear that even those fumes have run out. All of a sudden, Labour is projecting a £37 million overspend.
“The last time we got close to this was at the height of covid in 2020 when we saw a projected £36 million overspend.”
The coronavirus pandemic brought uncertainty and was unprecedented – but now he said that he was concerned that the council was asking for £30 million more in exceptional financial support from the government on top of £15 million borrowed last year.
Councillor Sykes called for cross-party working and said that people in the Brighton and Hove wanted the two “progressive” parties to work together.
The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, defended the new-style report, saying that it was trying to show on a single page all the key information about the various pressures on different parts of the budget.
Councillor Taylor said that the first report of the financial year showed that the council was in a “worrying position”.
The Labour finance lead said: “Clearly this council and many others continue to operate in an extremely challenging environment, where demand-led services, inflationary pressures and broader global economic uncertainty continue to place significant strain on our finances.
“The whole point of these reports is to identify the risks early to allow us to take corrective action or mitigations to strengthen our positions before they become unmanageable.”
