Queen’s Park is about to vote for its fourth councillor in little more than three years.
That is remarkable. But Milla Gauge’s resignation raises a more important question: what should an elected representative do when residents raise concerns about the safety and welfare of school children?
The answer ought to be obvious. Listen. Ask questions. Seek evidence. Test the assurances given by officials. And, where necessary, insist that the matter is independently examined.
That is safeguarding.
The Local Government Association puts the responsibility clearly. While some councillors have specific safeguarding responsibilities, it says all councillors should be asking appropriate questions and assuring themselves that their council is doing all it can to meet its duties to safeguard children.
Councillors also have explicit “corporate parenting” responsibilities towards children in care and care leavers.
Yet in Brighton and Hove, this basic principle appears to have become strangely controversial.
Milla says residents came to her with concerns about children questioning their gender, the council’s schools guidance, external organisations working with pupils and possible pathways towards medical intervention.
She says she repeatedly sought to have these concerns examined and was told, in effect, that there was no case to answer.
Her statement is vital because a safeguarding concern is not the same thing as a proven safeguarding failure.
Indeed, safeguarding means investigating concerns before harm becomes a proven fact. A councillor told by parents that they are worried about a practice involving vulnerable children should not respond: “Come back when you can prove that harm has occurred.”
It should be: “What is happening? Who is responsible? What evidence supports it? What safeguards are in place? Has anyone independently checked?”
That is not being “anti” anyone. It is doing the job.
The WellBN investigation makes this distinction especially important. NHS Sussex found serious patient-safety failures involving children and young people, including inadequate assessment, monitoring and prescribing, with 78 children and young people within the scope of the investigation potentially harmed.
The findings do not suggest that the council was responsible for those clinical failures. But neither should anyone pretend that the findings are irrelevant to a city where schools, council services, external organisations and health services all interact with vulnerable children.
The question is not whether WellBN proves that the council’s policies caused harm. It doesn’t. The question is whether the council has learned from what happened and is prepared to examine its own arrangements honestly.
That is precisely what parents and PSHEbrighton.org have been asking. More than 100 residents have written to the council’s chief executive asking what lessons have been learned.
And it’s the reason why I’m not standing in this by-election.
I stood as an independent candidate in the previous two Queen’s Park by-elections because I wanted these safeguarding questions heard. I am now a co-founder of PSHEbrighton, which continues to pursue them. But there is a cost to raising difficult questions in this city.
At the last hustings in 2024, several candidates condemned my safeguarding concerns as “anti-trans rhetoric”.
More recently, after a lawful PSHEbrighton leaflet was delivered in another by-election ward – necessarily carrying my name and home address as its legal imprint – I received an email wishing me a “long, miserable and painful death”.
Someone subsequently came to my home and put the leaflet back through my letterbox.
I don’t mention this to seek sympathy. Nor do I imagine that everyone who disagrees with us behaves like this. I mention it because it illustrates the problem.
We raise an alert about children and safeguarding and people hear an attack on transgender people. That is a dangerous conflation.
Trans identified citizens deserve dignity and respect. So do gender-distressed children. But safeguarding does not become optional because a topic has become politically sensitive.
Nor should councillors have to choose between compassion and scrutiny.
The WellBN investigation demonstrates why scrutiny matters. We now know that serious failures did occur in the local system. The parents whose concerns were dismissed three years ago as “baseless smears” were right to demand that those concerns be taken seriously.
The lesson is not that every safeguarding concern is necessarily correct. The lesson is that credible safeguarding concerns must be taken seriously and properly examined.
That should be the test for every councillor in Brighton and Hove – and particularly for whoever represents Queen’s Park next.
I hope the candidates set aside political loyalties and recognise that when residents raise a credible concern about the safety or welfare of children, a councillor has a duty to ask the difficult questions.
We’ll soon see.
Adrian Hart is a co-founder of PSHEbrighton.
To start, while Adrian and I may differ on his methodology, it remains imperative to state that death threats are never acceptable. Also, I don’t think calling Adrian a TERF or anti-trans is particularly helpful either, just an indication of why it is important to be aware of the emotive of an issue he correctly identifies as sensitive.
That said, Adrian repeatedly sidesteps a crucial point: an investigation by an appropriate body is already underway following this incident, and this process was not initiated or guided by the council at any stage. NHS guidance has been updated following the Cass Review, and the associated toolkit continues to be revised, even in the wake of this incident. All patients have been referred for continued specialist care. After repeatedly challenging Adrian on factual inaccuracies, what I receive in return is often insults, personal attacks, and a dismissive attitude – unwilling to engage substantively or capable of offering a rebuttal.
As an evolving topic, council guidelines should be regularly reviewed in light of new information and deeper understanding, but we also be careful not to kneejerk. In the case of WellBN, one of the main issues was assessment, and using continuation from private facilities as justification, rather than assessment. We are also very prone to absolutism in this argument, and often in my discussions, I find nuance get lost, because every person is different; with circumstances that are unique, and that creates difficulty – it’s why we can never have a directive instead of a guidance framework.
Safeguarding is a question, not an accusation; yet Hart’s organisation appears to have forgotten this distinction, veering instead into political discourse on multiple occasions, accusing councillors of lying without any evidence to support this, making inflammatory rhetoric to cause emotional manipulation, and gaslighting when answers are given that doesn’t suit his chosen narrative, unfortunately to the detriment of the very children he claims to protect. His vote share collapsed off a cliffedge to approximately 60-70 votes since he focused on this issue, a sixth of his previously growing support; I believe this is the more prominent reason Adrian is choosing not to stand this time, however he may seek to justify it.
Milla’s actions were peculiar, given that her clear next step should have been the ombudsman, had she followed proper procedure, which, according to Sankey, may not have been the case. Considering her professional role outside of being a Ward Councillor, where safeguarding of young people with autism is a constant aspect of her remit, I’m assuming she would have known this, and so her resignation – rather than simply going independent – is…interesting.
Benjamin, I agree that this is an emotive and sensitive subject. That is precisely why I think your comment illustrates the problem Adrian’s article is trying to identify.
You say that “safeguarding is a question, not an accusation”. I agree completely. But that means that when credible safeguarding questions are raised, the response cannot simply be to explain why the person asking them is wrong, politically motivated or insufficiently nuanced. The questions have to be properly examined.
The fact that an NHS investigation took place into the Hove WellBN clinic does not answer the separate question Adrian raises about the Council’s own safeguarding responsibilities. Nor does the fact that NHS guidance has subsequently changed answer his question. They may be welcome developments, but they don’t establish that the Council’s own policies, guidance and relationships with external organisations have been adequately scrutinised.
Indeed, I think you inadvertently make Adrian’s central point when you say that council guidelines “should be regularly reviewed in light of new information”. Exactly!! The question is whether that review has happened sufficiently, and independently enough, when residents have raised concerns.
On the point about WellBN, nobody is yet suggesting that the Council caused the clinical failures (only an independent review can establish that). The relevance of WellBN is that it demonstrates why apparently uncomfortable concerns about children should not be dismissed before they have been properly investigated. The fact that assessment was a major problem makes scrutiny of the wider environment (eg the schools environment) even more important, not less.
I also think it is worth separating two things. It is perfectly legitimate to challenge Adrian’s interpretation of the evidence. What isn’t helpful is to turn that disagreement into claims that he is “gaslighting”, “emotionally manipulating” people or deliberately harming children. Those are serious allegations, and they require rather more evidence than simply disagreeing with his conclusions. How about focusing on what he says in this article? Your encounters with him (or me for that matter) in comments under other articles are not especially relevant – its the wild west in the comments territory! (I notice he implied you were a “twit” on one occasion – oh my god Adrian is outrageous!).
Finally, on Adrian’s decision not to stand: you may of course speculate about his motives, but I can tell you that the personal abuse and intimidation described in the article are real, as is the sheer financial cost for independents facing successive by-elections. More importantly, his decision is not the substantive issue is it?! The question for the candidates in this by-election remains a very simple one:
“When residents raise a credible concern about the safety or welfare of children, will you ask the difficult questions and seek proper assurance that the concern has been adequately examined — even when the subject is politically uncomfortable?”
I don’t think that is an absolutist position. I think it is the minimum we should expect from people entrusted with safeguarding responsibilities. I’m biased of course – but Adrian’s article injects oxygen into a by-election where Labour and Greens (I only have their leaflets through my door so far) are desperately trying to airbrush the whole reason Milla resigned out of the picture.
Finally, as one of the residents who went to Milla with concerns, and tracked her diligent efforts to get answers for her constituents, there was nothing “peculiar” about her resignation other than the fact that it displayed a level of integrity that is all too rare.
Milla…we can speculate either way I suppose, only she knows her full reasons. I don’t believe that having integrity is not mutually exclusive in this scenario, we could both be right! There’s perhaps something in what you just said, that you feel that Greens are trying to “airbrush”. That makes me think more that Milla made a procedural error, and didn’t like it, or maybe didn’t understand, when she was told to use a certain route. Again…I’m speculating at this point, just what we’ve been told does seem peculiar.
I don’t think the question for the candidates is at all unreasonable. There is a clear socially-acceptable answer though, so I would gently ask, in my usual contrarian way, does that give you much insight? No-one is ever going to say, no, if you know what I mean?
You’re absolutely right about the abuse side of things, even looking back at the historical articles posted, Adrian has been accused of a lot of things that clearly are not true. Such is the provocative nature of this topic, and Adrian’s approach to these things have been…well, not the way I would have handled it, to be diplomatic.
I do think his election results are relevant, because they are also a reflection of his public approval through his words and actions in a very tangible way. Seeing such a cliffedge drop at the time he engaged with this topic, suggests that his methodology has been disapproved by at least 80% of his previous voters who chose not to vote for him last time.
I stand by my assertions that Adrian has used gaslighting and emotional manipulation on this topic in the past, and this methodology has damaged the cause he has tried to champion. Rather than minimising my opinion to just this one piece, this is a viewpoint I’ve come to from multiple articles, interactions witnessed that Adrian has had with others, and ones that I’ve actively taken part in with Adrian. You devalue yourself and say none of our comments matter, but they do shape public opinion, we have to remember the vast number of people who read and never comment. We share our views, and in opposition it allows a reader to make their own decisions. Sometimes it devolves into something not particularly useful, and Adrian had said things much worse than “twit”, but hey…the internet is indeed the Wild West! As they say, sticks and stones aren’t going to do much to me, so you can imagine what effect hurty words will have!
You claim concerns were dismissed, but this is where I seem to butt heads. They weren’t dismissed, because, as we have both agreed, an investigation into WellBN did, in fact, take place. The council was not the appropriate body to investigate this, so it was right they did not get involved. I agree learning should be applied from the results of this investigation, and through the continuing natural evolution of guidance around this subject, as we both know, this isn’t the first version of the council’s toolkit, and it definitely won’t be the last revision, right? But again, we need to be not kneejerk and veer into an extreme in the other direction – which I think is where some of the TERF accusations towards Adrian come from, unfairly, in my opinion. Adrian isn’t a bad person, and I don’t dislike him – I feel I need to repeat this.
His methodology has seemingly led him to create adversarial barriers to a very important message and that has made it very ineffectual in what he is trying to achieve. Maybe if I try to put it this way, he’s seeking the right answers, but asking the wrong questions?
You are entitled to your view of Adrian’s “methodology”, and readers can judge the various articles and interactions for themselves. But there is an important distinction between expressing an opinion about someone’s approach and making allegations such as “gaslighting” or “emotional manipulation”. Those are serious claims, and unless they are supported by specific evidence, they remain assertions rather than established facts. I don’t think it is useful to keep citing them in a comment thread.
The substantive point raised by the article is much narrower — and I don’t think either of us has changed the other’s mind about it. The existence of an NHS investigation into WellBN does not, by itself, answer the question of whether the Council adequately considered the safeguarding concerns it raised for residents about BHCC policies, guidance and interactions with organisations working with children. Nor does saying that the Council was not the appropriate body to investigate WellBN answer that question.
You agree that safeguarding questions should be taken seriously and that lessons should be learned. I agree. Where we seem to differ is over whether the concerns raised warranted the Council asking sufficiently searching questions of its own arrangements.
That is ultimately a matter for evidence and scrutiny, not for either of us to settle in a B&H News comments section. And, as you rightly say, readers who have followed this issue can make up their own minds.
Thank you to PSHE Brighton for continuing to hold the Council to account on this critical safeguarding issue. I was saddened when Milla resigned as she is the minority as a principled and professionally curious councilor. Hopefully, someone else has the courage to continue asking the questions that she started.