Brighton and Hove City Council is the council that does not want to innovate. And we should not have to put up with it!
Greens (Brighton and Hove News » Despite hard budget decisions, work continues on more and better housing) and Labour (Brighton and Hove News » A Labour council and government will mean decent homes for all) recently published here about how each one of them would build decent homes. Not great homes, just decent ones.
One of my colleagues even talked about how house prices rises was hurting a few but no mention of how it was benefiting others (some Labour supporters, I suspect).
There was talk of revenge evictions but no mention of a failed council policy on HMOs (houses in multiple occupation) which put renters at risk of eviction when properties that were licenced as HMOs were legally prohibited from being licensed as such.
Once the temporary licencing policy ends this month (February), a potentially large number of renters could be at risk of eviction.
Crucially, neither one of my colleagues mentioned the cardboard-box style architecture (being generous here) that recently got passed to stack our residents in Moulsecoomb.
That particular new development, on paper so far, was neither beautiful nor green. It lacked sustainable urban drainage or any sound placemaking principles.
On procuring and delivering good design, the council’s administration has not been innovative or revolutionary, focusing on quantity rather than quality.
For example, the administration talks about social value and community wealth but with a sleight of hand blacklists successful local suppliers.
The administration supported failing organisations like the one that ran the Brighton Marathon on the grounds of community wealth and as a result risked losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Innovation is hugely important to our future as a city but it is increasingly looking like it is an alien concept to Brighton and Hove City Council.
UK local government procurement accounts for £60 billion a year. This represents a huge market and a significant lever public authorities like ours can use to create and shape markets, for the benefit of all of our residents, not just the few.
However, despite all this potential to drive strategic outcomes, public procurement in Brighton and Hove is largely under-exploited as a mechanism for sparking and scaling innovation. Joint ventures and partnerships in the affordable housing and social housing sector being one of these. Brighton and Hove in the past 10 years has failed to use this lever in any meaningful way even when others have.
Be First recently launched a tender for architecture practices to provide £35 million of design services for social housing in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, with an emphasis on reaching under-represented small practices and supporting local businesses. Through their new framework, they are directing urban design expertise into the council.
While this was going on, our administration was moaning about what it could not do. We should be embedding resilience and diversity as well as social value into our procurement as a city. We are not. The local elections in May offer an opportunity to change that for the better.
Councillor Samer Bagaeen is a professor of planning and a Conservative member of Brighton and Hove City Council.
Why are this guys articles always so incoherent! It’s pure made up nonsense from a party that is about to be totally wiped out in May.
Jen
This guy is a conservative and they haven’t run BHCC for over a decade so your comment means nothing.
BHCC is a hung council, Helen. Your statement is inaccurate and disingenuous.
Jen, i suggest you look at his Twitter profile for a glimpse at his qualifications to be saying all this. He is outspoken (not the usual Tory voice) and I agree with much of this. The problem is at the council officers level mainly with this Cllr pointing the political level oversight and ACTION deficiencies. I doubt the Tories per se would do any better, sadly. He abd Robert Nemeth are the only Tories with the expertise needed to effect change – line voices in the local wilderness
Not sure what’s incoherent. While I agree the Tories are likely to come third in May, his key points strike me as relevant.
I suspect Jen was making a poor stab at a Labour black propaganda slur
Sounds like everyone is committed to vote for Brighton finally going down the drain.
I disagree about innovation. But innovation requires blue-sky thinking, and this is usually met with constant closed criticisms without consideration for a compromise into feasibility. Simply complaining about an issue without providing a solution is neither helpful or constructive.
House prices rises ARE hurting, more closely aligned with reality, thousands of individuals. One look at social housing waiting lists would evidence this, so this comment comes across as purely disingenuous.
He argues the semantics of “great” homes versus “decent” ones. Clearly an argument of the logical fallacy of equivocation. Again, comes across as disingenuous. He complains about planning, yet his title is “Professor of Planning”.
Overall, his words ring shallow to me. I hope he can do better.