Agenda item - Written questions from members of the public.

A list of public questions received by the due date of 12noon on the 13^th July 2018 will be circulated separately as part of an addendum at the meeting.

15.1      The Mayor reported that 5 written questions had been received from members of the public and invited Ms. Montgomery to come forward and address the council.

15.2      Ms. Montgomery asked the following question; “Can the council tell us the number of private rented properties in Brighton & Hove at Local Housing Allowance for this current year for the following?

One bedroom and bedsits

Two Bedroom

Three Bedroom

Four Bedroom

Please include new private developments where an allocation of so called Affordable rents are charged. The National Planning Policy Framework states that Affordable rent can be up to 80% of the local market rent which allows for rents between 60 % and 80%”.

15.3      Councillor Meadows replied; “A grand total of 7750 is a source from Revenues and Benefits department. Within the above numbers it should be noted that some households may need to top up the LHA they receive when it does not cover the whole rent.  The above properties do not include affordable housing provided by Registered Providers.  Brighton & Hove City Council operates an Affordable Housing Development Partnership with selected Registered Providers.  One of the conditions of Registered Providers being included within this is that they agree to cap rents at LHA levels (including Service Charges).   Therefore affordable rent units provided by Registered Provider partners in the city are provided at this rate. Between months April 2015 to March 2018, Registered Providers let 127 homes in the city.

In addition, since the launch of the council’s New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme in 2015 until the end of March 2018, 127 properties have been built with rents capped at LHA levels.  The council continues to support the provision of affordable housing in the city.  As well as the direct provision by registered providers and through the New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme the council has:

·           Entered into a Living Wage Joint Venture with Hyde to deliver 1,000 new lower cost homes for rental and sale.  We have identified the following priority sites to contribute towards 1,000 new homes for lower income working households in the City through our Living Wage Joint Venture, Homes for Brighton & Hove:  For Whitehawk Urban Fringe - c. 150 homes; Coldean Urban Fringe - c. 120 homes; Belgrave centre - c. 100 homes and further site review work continues.  But we also provided council owned temporary accommodation:   Stonehurst Court conversion which has delivered 10 family homes, opened in May this year. Housing Committee have also agreed the purchase of a property from Orbit Housing Association and the conversion of the former Oxford Street Housing Office, both of which are underway.

·           Created new homes through the ‘Hidden Homes Programme’ - we aim to make sure we make best use of our Housing Revenue Account assets through conversions / refurbishment of under used or under occupied spaces within our existing stock into new homes.

·           Completed 9 new homes including the conversion of two redundant store rooms at Norman Hurst on the Albion Hill Estate into two four bedroom flats, completed earlier this year. We are currently working on Hidden Homes delivery at: Swallow Court, Whitehawk, conversion of a former community office into two one bedroom flats and one two bedroom flat at Woods house, Sackville Road to convert the former public toilets into a community room and then convert the existing Jones Court

IT shows that there is a lot of work on affordable homes in the city, for example the Home Purchase Policy where we have delivered our first two purchases under our new buy back policy and we have improved supply throughbest use of existing HRA assets.”

15.4      Ms. Montgomery asked the following supplementary question; “According to the City Plan 2016, the city population could be expected to grow by 10.2% to around 299k people. If targets were to address the housing needs of Brighton & Hove and to provide housing that meets all communities in the city, a mix of housing types that are affordable, accessible and designed to a high standard for more sustainable communities and the reduction of inequalities between neighbourhoods in Brighton & Hove. The housing needs of Brighton and Hove also need to tackle the issues of homelessness, overcrowded households and to make substantial progress in meeting housing needs and demand.

Around 15k people in the city can’t afford anything other than social housing, so given that the City Plan Two is on its way, how successful do the council think City Plan One has been in dealing with housing crisis, the lack of truly affordable housing, homelessness and inequality?”

15.5      Councillor Meadows stated that she would send Ms. Montgomery a written response as it would be detailed but noted that the council had a joint venture with Hyde Housing Association to provide 500 new homes at 37.5% of market rent;

15.6      The Mayor thanked Ms. Montgomery for attending the council meeting and her questions and invited Mr. Hawtree to come forward and address the council.

15.7      Mr. Hawtree thanked the Mayor and asked the following question, “Would Councillor Daniel please tell us why, at the public meeting in Hove’s Carnegie Library on June 1st, there was no answer to the fundamental question of how much it costs each year to run this purportedly ‘expensive’ Library?”

15.8      Councillor Daniel replied, “The clearest reason that it wasn’t answered during the course of the meeting was that the purpose of the public meeting was to inform the public of the changes taking place and give them the opportunity to hear from the library service and the new tenants about what that change would look like in practice. It wasn’t a consultation nor was it a debate on how expensive the library is or isn’t. Those debates were had by council with representations from the community, including yourself, many months ago now. This was an opportunity to look at the specific designs and meet the providers. Officers did make efforts to try and answer the question then and there; however they weren’t able to provide the figure on the evening because there wasn’t one simple figure in the accounts that gives the full cost. This is because various costs are spread over a number of budgets, Corporate Landlords, Jubilee Library PFI and the staffing costs. Therefore the full cost has to be calculated from multiple sources and as promised in the meeting we were both at and, as you will see, as promised, all the answers to any questions that were left unresolved at that meeting were put online soon afterwards.”

15.9      Mr. Hawtree asked the following supplementary question, “In light of what you have outlined, and I thank you for that, in the meanwhile would you please outline for us the advertisement and the selection, interview and decision processes for the next Head of Libraries and however that job title might be re-cast.”

15.10   Councillor Daniel replied, “That is a matter for our Head of Service.”

15.11   The Mayor thanked Mr. Hawtree for attending the council meeting and his questions and invited Mr. Furness to come forward and address the council.

15.12   Mr. Furness thanked the Mayor and asked the following question, “Now that the hoped for grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the Madeira Arches has fallen through, Councillor Yates, could  you please enlighten us all with the details of your administration's Plan B?”

15.13   Councillor Yates replied; “Thank you for asking this question. It is right to say this isn’t about a Plan B this is about a Plan A plus and a Plan A*. If you saw earlier the work that our Comms team did around supporting some of the important crowd funding initiatives that actually provided additional support and revenue into delivering an improvement and a future for Madeira Arches has been recognized nationally as innovative and excellent, so Plan B it is not.

I can let you know that the meeting with the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) had been held this week, that allows officers to plan the next steps with regards to a revised submission.  The HLF were very complimentary about our bid and stated that the lack of success was due to a lack of available funds not the quality or content of the bid.  A bid is likely to be made again in August and if necessary further bids will be made next year.  Work is also on-going to attract interest from Philanthropic investors.   A Peer Group has been established to help advise on the funding strategy and the council are also taking advice from GVA both locally and nationally.

The full restoration of the first three arches will begin this year and completed by summer 2019.  The Property and Design Team have commenced work on this with the regeneration team already.  The appointment of a design team and more detailed advice from cast iron specialists is however required to progress the project.  The design team will need to progress the project consultation and start the process of a planning application for the whole terrace. This is subject to final agreement from councillors with regard to resourcing and I hope all councillors will come together to support this, certainly more than 2000 people supported the crowd funding and so we know the city is fully behind it. The restoration of Marine Terrace is the repurposing of them.  Some of this might be made available from previously identified match funding for the HLF bid, but the council do not want to weaken the bid for HLF funds by reducing the amount of match funding beyond certain limits. None of the crowd funding monies will be used to pay for this.  

The Madeira Restoration Fund is now set up and receiving regular contributions including most recently from the newly brewed Madeira Beer and the Madeira Terraces Raffle. The Brighton Bier Company are also looking to fundraise directly in order to be able to take on a set of arches for themselves by bridging the gap from the conservation deficit. Also, of course just to note, that this week we also heard the positive news from the HLF that there was funding released for Saltdean Lido, another important asset to the city that this council is very grateful to the people working hard to support the repurposing and the re-opening of the Lido building.”

15.14   Mr. Furness asked the following supplementary question, “Previous administrations of all colours have allowed the heritage of the entire sea front to fall to bits.  Now the bandstand has been restored that I raised question on the very first place; do you think the fact that the Heritage Lottery Fund is rather loathe to provide funding for anything other than the Lido on the sea front could just have something to do with the chronic failure of the so called West Pier Trust to allow the pier to crumble as have all our sea front railings. Councillors who represent sea front wards would I think agree with me on this. If we can’t put our own house in order first, frankly how dare we expect national funding because of our incompetence, what would you say?”

15.15   Councillor Yates replied, I think it is worth to recognise as custodians of some of the most important heritage objects in this city and indeed in Sussex. We all need to recognise the part that has been played over decades in failing to deal with problems when they could have been dealt with. Failing to provide resources and sometimes failing to find solutions for some of our important heritage assets. But that is not the position of this Administration and we have been working really hard to secure funding from both within the limited council’s resources and of the limited resources that the HLF have.  It is certainly not fair to say that the HLF are only interested in Saltdean Lido, bear in mind the HLF funding going into the Royal Pavilion and the funding that has been spent in Shelter Hall and on the Volks railway. Those are more of our seafront heritage that I know Madam Mayor is absolutely committed to as she stated when she was first elected. We will take action, we will get this done, we are not disheartened and Madeira Terraces will become another part of the ‘jewel in the sea front’ of our great city.”

15.16   The Mayor thanked Mr. Furness for attending the council meeting and his questions and invited Ms. Paynter to come forward and address the council.

15.17   Ms. Paynter asked the following question, “I thought we would have had the King Alfred redevelopment before PRG and Council before the summer break for Councillors and we don’t have a council meeting now until October. In lieu of that may I ask you please for a quick update today to give us an idea of what the hold-up is about?”

15.18   Councillor Yates replied, “I agree with you I would have liked to have this up and running and making more progress than we currently have. As you will be aware, in September 2017, the Council, alongside Crest Nicholson, it's preferred development partner, submitted a £15.2m bid to the then newly launched Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF).  We were delighted by February's announcement that the bid had been successful; the second largest marginal viability award in the country. Since that time we have been working with Homes England as part of their due diligence process and we hope to receive confirmation of the funding award and the contractual terms shortly, there lays the delay.

HIF funding is critical to the projects viability and the terms of the HIF funding will allow the Development Agreement (DA), something that is at an advanced stage, to be completed. We hope to be able to report to committee at the end of the summer.”

15.19   Ms. Paynter asked the following supplementary question, “So by the end of the summer you have the HIF decision assigned, but I wonder about public consultation. Are there any dates in view as I know from Rob Star himself that he has already been up to London interviewing planning agents a couple of months ago now so by now there must be a date in the wind?”

15.20   Councillor Yates replied, “The developer will begin the public consultation process as soon as the Development Agreement is concluded i.e. late summer/Autumn of this year and then hope the planning application will be submitted in the second half of 2019 and construction commence in the second half of 2020.”

15.21   The Mayor thanked Ms. Paynter for attending the council meeting and her questions and invited Mr. Shepherd to come forward and address the council.

15.22   The Mayor noted that Mr. Shepherd was not present and therefore a written response would be sent to Mr. Shepherd and noted that concluded the item.