Agenda item - Oral questions from Councillors

20.1      The Mayor noted that 8 oral questions had been received and that 30 minutes were set aside for the duration of the item.

 

20.2      The Mayor invited Councillor Janio to put his question to Councillor Robins.

 

(a)          Gateway to the South Downs National Park

 

20.3      Councillor Janio asked the following question, “Following the statement by Brighton and Hove Energy Services Co-op regarding Hangleton Bottom, namely that, the plant would not meet the criteria of the local community considering the proximity of homes and the impact that it would have on local residents; would the Chair of the Tourism, Development & Culture Committee confirm that the successful Conservative campaign to prevent the development of an anaerobic digester in the area means that Hangleton Bottom’s removal from the Waste and Minerals Plan would enable it to be used as a mixed use residential development, that could also house a much needed gateway to the South Downs National Park?”

 

20.4      Councillor Robins replied, “Gateways to the South Downs National Park are clearly an important issue for the city given its proximity to the National Park.  Gateways are also something that City Plan Part Two can further address through, for example, criteria based policy or through site allocations /designation around the city’s edges (e.g. urban fringe sites), which would include Hangleton Bottom.”

 

20.5      Councillor Janio asked the following supplementary question, “Would Councillor Robins confirm therefore that the Labour Administration will be supporting the Conservative campaign to turn Hangleton Bottom into a mixed use residential development that includes a gateway to the South Downs National Park?”

 

20.6      Councillor Robins replied, “I am not aware of the intentions of the land owners but would expect any proposals to have to go through the planning process.”

 

(b)         Secondary School Places in 2018

 

20.7      Councillor Page asked the following question, “Can the Chair of Children, Young People & Skills Committee tell me what steps the council will be taking to avoid repeating the situation this year where nearly 150 pupils received none of their 3 preferences especially in the light of the delayed opening of the new secondary school?”

 

20.8      Councillor Chapman replied, “We will continue to work with officers and the Admissions Team on providing parents with as much information as possible going forward. With the next round of the admissions process the admissions booklet has been rewritten and we're looking at developing an online tool as well, to help explain the situation a bit more to try and inform parents so they can make wiser choices. There will be enough places for children in the city and the authority will meet its statutory obligation to ensure that every child who wants a place in the city gets a place in the city.”

 

20.9      Councillor Page asked the following supplementary question, “This year there was there was no change to the lack of priority of all those 150 children, they were given no priority in the random allocation when extra places came up. There appeared to be no knocking of school heads together to find places for these children and it sounds like nothing is going to be done for all the parents of next years’ year sixes, so I hope the information is very clear Madam Mayor that they have no certainty that they will get any of their three choices. Does this show a lack of political leadership or does it show incompetence or does it show both?”

 

20.10   Councillor Chapman replied, “It shows neither of those things.  Let me just reiterate to members across the chamber that when it comes to the new school that, as a local authority, we have responsibility for ensuring that every child has a school place, but we have very limited powers to enable us to do that. We have worked very hard as a local authority with all partners involved in ensuring that the new school opens as soon as possible and we have done as much as we can we are now waiting on other people to go through their processes before it can open.

 

I believe there is also some confusion around what we can do legally and what the processes are. I will look to arrange a workshop for Members to attend so we can go through our obligations as a local authority and how the admissions process works.”

 

(c)          Maintenance Contracts in Housing

 

20.11   Councillor Mears asked the following question, “Before the independent review of the repairs partnering contact on the 27^th of July, can the Chair of Housing confirm whether her statement that “the previous Conservative administration let a light touch contract” is her view, her administration's view, or information she has received from council officers?”

 

20.12   Councillor Meadows replied, “I mentioned that the Conservative administration had set up the Mears contract through Councillor Mears’s administration when I was told that at the time the contract that was set up which continues until 2020 was a light touch contract.”

 

20.13   Councillor Mears asked the following supplementary question, “If the Chair of Housing is implying that she received the information from council officers I need to inform this council I'll be making a formal complaint to the relevant government department.  When we let this contract it was with the help and support of council officers and at no time where we told this would be a light touch contract as we would not have agreed to it and to add the same officers are now supporting this administration.  So I think this point needs to be clarified because going by the answer from the Chair of Housing I will be making a formal complaint.”

 

20.14   Councillor Meadows replied, “I think that is a matter for Councillor Mears to take forward if she wishes.”

 

(d)          Councillor Youth Services

 

20.15   Councillor Phillips asked the following question, “Could the Chair of the Children, Young People and Skills please clarify how the plans to move Brighton & Hove City Council youth service staff into the Integrated Team for Parents and Families is in the spirit of the amendments made at budget council which aims to protect not only our youth service ie children and families work but also the provision of detached youth workers?”

 

20.16   Councillor Chapman replied, “As you know we are going through a restructure of the in-house services to provide services in the greatest area of need and to continue to work in partnership with voluntary sector and I'm happy to discuss with Councillor Phillips as well on another occasion in more depth about what's going on with the youth service.”

 

20.17   Councillor Phillips asked the following supplementary question, “I’ll take that to mean they'll be no more Brighton & Hove City Council youth service that technically the council will stop prioritising open access in-house youth service which and I think it is awful that that may well stop.  The youth service bus came up as a much-loved resource through the consultation; can the Chair of the Children, Young People & Skills Committee please confirm that this bus which amongst other things provides sexual health and education outreach to young people will remain as is?”

 

20.18   Councillor Chapman replied, “The bus will be retained for a further year and resources will be available for the wider youth teams and the voluntary sector.”

 

(e)          Public Toilets

 

20.19   Councillor C. Theobald asked the following question, “When I sent an email to the council at the beginning of May regarding the terrible state of the toilets at the Pavilion Gardens and I must say there were a quite a few letters in the Argus from residents about this so it wasn't just me’ I was told there would be an improvement as a new contractor was taking over at the beginning of June. Well this improvement just has not happened. When will this improvement be happening? This is a facility in a prime position in our city, in pavilion gardens and it's important that we have something decent for our residents and visitors.”

 

20.20   Councillor Mitchell replied, “I do quite agree with you and as you say we have now contracted a new provider Healthmatic, one of the UK's leading companies in the field. We are now currently in a period of transition and building inspections so that the improvements needed are indeed put in place. A report will be brought to the October PRG Committee that will set out a detailed business case for the investment in our public toilets that we want to make with a business plan and this will secure the modernisation of our existing facilities into the future. I am confident that Healthmatic will provide as good a service to the people of Brighton & Hove as they do to the other 120 local authorities that they contract to and their populations and I'm very hopeful of retaining our Best Loos of the Year award for another year.”

 

20.21   Councillor C. Theobald asked the following supplementary question, “After what I've just heard that these toilets are really antiquated and they do need refurbishment but there's no reason why they shouldn't be clean at this stage and they're not. So this needs looking into now, not in the next committee meeting.”

 

20.22   Councillor Mitchell replied, “I totally agree and when I was pondering over what the subject of Councillor Theobald’s question might be, I said to Mr. Richard Bradley only this morning ‘Richard you've got to pay particular attention to those pavilion garden toilets’ and he assured me that he would.”

 

(f)           Cuts in Public Services

 

20.23   Councillor Sykes asked the following question, “We're just starting another round of budget planning for the next financial year and just to remind everyone, at Budget Council in February, the Administration’s budget cut a whole swath of services - youth services, community care, mental health, early years, substance misuse, HIV, voluntary and community sector, and more. A few weeks later we are arguing about spare cash including apparently recurrent cash and just to remind people again at budget council Green strategic amendments made the financial situation for this council better in this financial year as evidence in part by the answers to my written question. So my question is where is the Administration's strategic financial management?”

 

20.24   Councillor Hamilton replied, “Well I'm somewhat surprised by that question because Councillor Sykes knows that we have a four year plan and the strategic directions in which we're traveling.  With regard to what was being said about making cuts and so on it was only at the last meeting that Councillor Sykes said that the Green Administration made, I think he said, £60 or £70 million worth of cuts so therefore that must have reduced public services.  So we're all in the same boat on this all I can say is I think we've done very well in the present time we've kept most of our services going as far as possible, we haven't closed any libraries which is something not many councils can say.  

 

We have already started on next year's budget.  With regard to the expenditure that was referred to recently the Green Party supported us on everything apart from one of those items that we spent and we took the view, as I take now, that if you come at the end of the year and you've got a little bit of money left over I think the public deserve and expect to see you put something back into the community and that's what we've done. I'm quite proud of a record with two budgets going through and we’re still providing all the services here in a satisfactory way and we are putting money back into various other services that would be welcomed and we did get support from that and I'm very pleased for that support.”

 

20.25   Councillor Sykes asked the following supplementary question, “Personally I think that the Administration, whether local or national, shouldn't front-load cuts to jobs and services to build up pre-election giveaway funds.  Do you agree and what are you doing in the current budget planning round to avoid unnecessary cuts?”

 

20.26   Councillor Hamilton replied, “When I had meetings quite recently with Councillor Janio, Councillor Wealls and with Councillor Sykes I did say that I'm quite happy to meet any of them and have a discussion about this with regard to going forward to the budget.  Although we have budget review group meetings where the officers give us some information I think there is scope for more councillor to councillor meetings to discuss these things.  But I'm quite honest when I say that looking the next year's budget I think because we've been very careful and prudent and done reasonably well in the last two years.  I'm thinking that next year we are going to be in a situation hopefully where things aren't as bad as they have been and I think it’s due to the careful consideration given to what we've been doing.

 

“I'm quite happy to meet any finance spokesperson at any time to have a discussion about anything they were very particularly interested in to see if we can work together rather than leaving it right until the budget day itself when we suddenly end up with amendments coming out of thin air. It would be nice wouldn't it if you have these meetings before that mean you could go for a budget meeting knowing pretty well exactly what was going to happen that is my goal and I'm quite happy to meet with other people to discuss that.”

 

(g)          Councillor Surrey Street

 

Councillor Deane had asked the following question, “Councillor Mitchell you will recall that on the 5th of May a meeting was held with some residents of Surrey Street to update them on the alleviation of their daily nightmare with cabs using the street to queue up for the station. It was indicated by GTR at that meeting that they are now amenable to the rear of the station being used. This came about from pressure from their buses. That was some 11 weeks ago now and I have heard nothing since so I'd be most grateful if you could give me an update.”

 

20.27   Councillor Mitchell replied, “I certainly can and I was made aware of the meeting on the 5th of May, convened by the local MP, but unfortunately Councillor Deane I wasn't invited to that meeting.  However, as you will be aware, I have chaired a series of multi-stakeholder meetings with GTR the rail company, local bus company, yourself as a ward councillor, the police, and council officers. There have also been, as you say, public meetings set up to discuss the issue. More recently senior council highway officers have been having further dialogue with representatives from GTR in order to agree a solution that will provide better access to and from the station for taxies.

 

I fully appreciate the damaging impact that the current situation poses for residents and I appreciate their patience while we are now working to improve the situation that we inherited. I am pleased to be able to inform you that following the most recent meeting GTR have now made a firm commitment to develop proposals to improve access arrangements for customers at the front and rear of the station. As the land owner GTR will be working on the detail of these proposals and the associated timescales for a viable scheme in the coming months and I will of course keep ward councillors informed of this welcome progress.”

 

20.28   Councillor Deane asked the following supplementary question, “When will residents start to see a difference?”

 

20.29   Councillor Mitchell replied, “I understand that GTR are keen to move ahead with this quickly and that therefore the council will be offering every bit of help possible to enable them to bring forward better proposals and to have them implemented so the residents get a bit of rest-bite from the awful problems that occur at the moment.”

 

(h)          Health and Emotional Wellbeing of Looked After Children

 

20.30               The Mayor noted that Councillor Knight had asked for her question to be deferred to the next meeting and therefore concluded the item.