Agenda item - Mayor's Communications.

14.1    The Mayor gave the following Communications:

“It is with great sadness that I share with you the news of the passing of Hilary Summerville former Councillor and Mayor of Brighton who served as Councillor for more than two decades from 1963. Can ask everyone to stand for a minutes silence as a mark of respect for a former Member?

I would like to offer the Council’s congratulations to the city council parking team as Brighton & Hove City Council was declared overall winner at the parking annual awards by councils held at the houses of parliament on Monday the 11^th July. Brighton & Hove won the first annual report award 7 years ago and has been short listed every year since. The awards have been designed to reward, share and promote best practice in local authority annual reporting nationwide. Can I ask members of the team to come forward along with Councillor Mitchell to collect the award and can I just add personally that this award received by the parking team  follows one in March and I think this is an absolutely fantastic achievement that we should all be very proud of and grateful to our fantastic parking team.

These first two months have been pretty incredible and I have been delighted by the sheer number and variety of invitations I have received and the warmth of communities and other organisations. I’d like to take a couple of minutes now to let you know what I have been up to in my ambassadorial role as first citizen and to share with you my importantly some of the incredible things that your constituents have been doing. There has been a real mix from the formal tone of graduation ceremonies to running through bubbles for charity last weekend in Preston Park. I’ve been really touched by the dignity of the Filipino community which is a young community in our society. Who early on in May invited us along and I was really touched by the way that they are seeking inclusion in our society and recognition of the Mayor is incredibly important to them. I was royally entertained by the G-scene Golden Handbag Awards. The recent blue plaque unveiling that celebrated the 250^th anniversary of our first Jewish resident was both touching and celebratory as was a similar event at the India gate commemorating Mir Dast VC and many members turned up to those occasions. I’ve been pleased by the enthusiastic reaction of school children and oversees student to events in the parlour not least the Chinese students who were excited to learn of the three ghosts that haunt the town hall and I can tell you I took some translating to get all that across.

My 27 charities have responded with enthusiasm to the new way of working and whilst some have been happy to just use the name of the Mayor and title. Others are working on fund raising opportunities for later in the year. So please consider supporting them when the time comes and I am hoping to showcase many of them at our Christmas reception to which you will all be invited and will be taking place in the Brighthelm centre. The very first being organised is a sponsored walk, we haven’t completely finalised it yet but if you can save the 18 September in your diaries. This week I have been celebrating an achievement of 3,500 graduates of the University of Sussex and having listened to the Vice Chancellor’s speech I am very aware that 25% of Sussex students are from oversees and Sussex is 4^th in the UK for research impact and brings £1/2 Billion into our local economy and is the second biggest employer. It is a significant institution for us and next week I will be attending the University of Brighton graduation. What I am very mindful of is these are now lifelong friends of this city as they go back to wherever they come from around the world and I hope all members are equally proud of the two universities, what they do and the students who attend them. I have enjoyed supporting communities across the city and most memorably I attended a 50 plus tea dance organised by the Hangleton and Knoll Project, I’ve been to Mile Oak Primary School to receive some Chinese exchange students who were making their first trip so far away from home. The Kemp Town Carnival was a fantastic occasion as was Abfest last weekend. The Patcham Flower festival where I met Councillors Theobald was a great and colourful occasion as part of the fringe festival. Stowman Farmers Market which I was invited to was a great early occasion; most recently I enjoyed cleaning up viaduct road with students from Sussex University which was a long overdue matter. I have been really enjoying the Bevey pub in Bevendean and if you are unfamiliar with that you really need to go and see that you really should go and see that project. They’ve built a community kitchen to help people learn the skills of cooking and I enjoyed making pizza there but I also went along to see the lunch club which was celebrating the Queen’s birthday and there were 50 members of the local community there having a great time. I’ve taken part in the Take Part festival in a number of places around the city that’s our sport and physical activities festival. It’s fantastic getting so many young people and through the ages active and one of the things I hadn’t come across before is walking football and that’s a brilliant new activity. Finally I had the delight of playing the female number one table tennis champion on national table tennis day and I actually managed to score a couple of points although I think she was taking it easy on me. On Sunday I abseiled down Peacehaven cliff and that  was a scary thing to do I can tell you, I am still raising sponsorship for that and I have had a tremendous response so far and I am doing that for the Matlets. They have to bring in £11,000 every day to keep doing what they do. As many of you know I am endeavouring to post about my engagements and spread the good news of what wonderful people are up to. So if you want to follow and like the Mayor on Facebook and Twitter please do so, I think it’s quite an interesting story of our communities that I’m able to tell in celebration.

Pride is coming up and the City’s population will double for that day and this year we have Trans-Pride a fairly young which I hope many of us will be out to support. On a more sombre note there have been many occasion for us to reflect and remember recently not least the commemorations of the battle of the Somme the battle of Boars Head which involved men of Sussex and many people in Brighton and the battle of Jutland and also the recent tragedies which we have faced in Orlando and in Nice and I attended the Orlando vigil and I found that particularly moving. It was a unbelievable response and I have been very, very moved by the ways which our communities have responded across this period of time and I think that what they do is they offer a beacon of hope. That is a point of pride which we should all be wanting to share in.”