Seagull Weekly Briefing 19/06

Good morning, and welcome to the Brighton Seagull's Weekly Briefing. Team Seagull spent Saturday morning at the Queen's Park dog show (congratulations to Best In Show winner Freddie and all who attended) and Sunday enjoying a slightly cooler day after week of non-stop sun. We hope you all had a wonderful time, and special congrats to anyone who did the London to Brighton bike ride!

This week's feature took a look at who might be the next MP for Brighton Pavilion now Caroline Lucas has announced she's not standing at the next election:

Who Will Replace Caroline Lucas?

Will the Green Party retain control of Brighton Pavilion at the next election?

The Brighton SeagullAdam Englebright

Greens criticise Labour over outsourcing school meals

In a meeting of the Children, Families & Schools Committee last week, a Labour report looking to re-tender the school meals contract was criticised by the Greens for having 'insufficient detail'.

The Greens are calling for more evidence to be presented that would substantiate Labour’s claims that in-housing would not be viable—something Labour say they did not claim.

Concerns were raised by the Greens that the re-tendering of the contract avoids paying higher wages for those providing the meals, 'effectively refusing to pay them the council’s wage bracket'. The contractor the council are working with will pay a living wage of £10.90 an hour, but the lowest wage bracket in the council is £11.59 an hour.

The Greens say 'there is extensive evidence demonstrating that in-house service provision gives better results', with public ownership providing better value for money and support for workers. In-house school meals is something the previous administration wanted to explore.

Cllr Sue Shanks, the Green spokesperson for Children, Families & Schools, said:

We are disappointed that Labour did not meaningfully consider a better system for school meal provision. The report lacked key evidence backing up their decision, with financial details skimmed over.

When we spoke to Cllr Jacob Taylor, joint chair of the Children, Families and Schools Committee, he refuted the Green's claims. He said:

We welcome scrutiny from the Greens and are pleased to see they also support bringing services in house where possible.

However, it is not correct to say that in-house options were not considered. They were explored and details were included in the report which was presented to the committee, of which Cllr Shanks is now a member. The report concluded it would cost an additional £1.1m a year for the service to be taken in-house.

Given the current financial situation faced by the council, we are not in a position to approve this additional expenditure.

Previous council overspent on budget by more than £3 million

It was revealed by the council last week that the previous administration overspent on their budget by £3.02 million last year.

Council leader Bella Sankey expressed her concern at the 'Green Administration’s overspend & failure to heed financial advice', describing the current council's finances as being in a 'perilous state'.

Councillor Jacob Taylor, deputy leader of the council and Finance Lead, said the overspend was confirmed by the Targeted Budget Monitoring Report, which examined how finances were managed across the budget in the previous year.

He said:

We already knew that the Greens had made awful financial decisions with the i360, but it’s now clear that they weren’t even able to manage the day-to-day spending of the council.

The situation is so serious that I have asked officers to request that our external auditors investigate the decisions and budget monitoring of the previous administration. It is clear to me that senior Green councillors in the last administration ignored warnings from expert council officers and actually chose to spend more than the council could afford. Most of them are no longer councillors – so Labour is left to clean up the mess.

He went on to say that the council has £9 million as a 'working balance', the bare minimum the Chief Finance Officer thinks is needed for financial stability. The overspend eats into 30% of that balance.

Cllr Sue Shanks, deputy leader of the Green group and the party's finance lead, said:

I am sure this will be discussed at committee but this was an agreed budget reported at several meetings of Policy and resource committee where Greens did not have a majority and passed by a cross party council again no Green majority.

Former Green councillor Elaine Hills condemned Cllr Sankey, saying:

Cllr Taylor said this puts the council 'in a very serious position', and while the current council understands the cuts to local authority funding has had a 'devastating effect' on councils, 'it is the duty and responsibility of our council to set a budget and stick to it'. He concluded:

The financial incompetence of the Greens has left the council with a whopping £3million blackhole and pushed the authority closer to financial disaster.

It is expected going forward that the current administration will have to make savings across almost all areas of spending to make up for the overspend.

🖋 News in Brief 🖋

• Former Tory councillor for Rottingdean, Joe Miller, has been found guilty of drink driving—full court report here.
• People were turned away from the Royal Sussex County Hospital over the weekend, due to a computer system failure, a problem which also affected the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath. Ambulances and patients were sent to Worthing or East Surrey. The systems failure affected doctors' ability to find medical records, as well as stopping phone lines and diagnostic equipment from working.
• Four benches have been removed from New Road in an attempt to curb antisocial behaviour in the area. It was decided by the Greens of the former council; Leader Bella Sankey called it 'another terrible decision' from the previous administration. She said: "We need to improve our public realm not diminish it. And deal with homelessness, addiction and [antisocial behaviour] with policies that work."
• Brighton Flea Market had a break-in last Sunday, through the roof of the building in Upper St James's Street. Rupert Wilkinson, from the flea market, called this the 'latest in a local crime spree', following break-ins at nearby Metrodeco and Budgens recently. He told The Seagull that damage was caused to a door, alongside the roof and ceiling damage, as those who broke in ended up trapped in the first floor office space above the market. They later ripped another hole in the ceiling, which Mr Wilkinson described as 'pointless'—they could have gotten out via the scaffolding on the building. They cannot see that anything was taken, but there was a lot of damage done with 'almost everything trashed', and tool picks were left behind.

Many thanks to friend of The Seagull Rob Englebright, who sent us his lovely dog Lola. He said:

Top dog Lola, enjoying retirement in Dorset. Favourite foods hedgehog poo, blossom and wood shavings. Pink nose, terrible wind.

If you've got a dog you think we'd like, please send a picture in to [email protected] with a name, age, breed and fun fact and we'll share our favourites (they will all be our favourites).

What's happening? More than 1,400 postal votes were delivered too late to be counted in the May council elections.

That's not good! It isn't! They made up 4.6% of the postal votes that were issued and received.

Could they not just be counted anyway? No. Polling stations closed at 10pm on Thursday 4th May, meaning nobody else could vote. Royal Mail delivered 1,423 postal votes the next day at 8am. Because they were delivered after polling stations closed, they couldn't be counted.

Yikes. What have the council said? Will Tuckley, Interim Chief Executive and Returning Officer for Brighton & Hove City Council, has has called for Royal Mail to finish their investigation into why they were delivered so late, and to confirm when they received the late postal votes prior to delivery, 'so [the council] can understand when they were posted and should have been delivered'. He said:

It is possible that these postal votes were placed in post boxes across the city on polling day and therefore would not have been received by the deadline. However, we need certainty.

We are aware that other local authorities in the South East had other issues with Royal Mail delivering poll cards and postal voting packs. It is essential that Royal Mail’s leadership understand the importance of their service in the delivery of elections.

This is high-stakes. Genuinely, yes. While we don't know which wards the postal votes were from, they could have impacted some incredibly tight margins. Hannah Allbrooke, former Green councillor and deputy leader of the council, lost her seat to Labour's Andrei Czolak by 6 votes (1,047 to 1,041).

In Preston Park, former Green councillor Leo Littman lost his seat to Labour's Liz Loughran by 36 votes (2,139 to 2,103).

And, to all those who say one vote won't make a difference, Regency ward Green Party candidate Ricky Perrin lost to Labour's Alison Thomson by one vote (920 to 919).

What have the Greens said? They welcome the investigation as a way to stop this happening again, but are concerned that this does not resolve the issue. Hannah Allbrooke has submitted an FOI request to the council, asking how many postal votes were received per ward, and communication that was sent on the matter. The Greens have also written to the Labour administration and Chief Executive calling for an independent investigation.

Green Group Convenor Steve Davis, said:

This deeply concerning news is leading people across the city to ask whether there was potential foul play in the election held last month.

There are serious questions to be asked. Why were voters not told sooner that 1,423 of them were not counted? Who decided to keep this quiet? If those votes were counted, what would the result of the election have been? Is it a fair election if huge numbers of ballots go ignored?

What about the Royal Mail, what have they said? We've asked them for a comment and will update this article as soon as we receive one.