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.
