Agenda item - Oral questions from Councillors

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

20.2    The Mayor then invited Councillor G. Theobald to put his question to the Chair of the Planning Committee.

20.3    Councillor G. Theobald asked; “As Councillor Cattell will no doubt be aware the court of appeal recently found in favour of the government in a case brought by Redding and West Berkshire Councils who objected to the government’s guidance that developers should not have to have affordable housing on sites of less than 10 units. The fact that Brighton & Hove City Council continues to ignore this government guidance is effectively inviting a costly legal challenge by developers in the near future. Does Councillor Cattell agree with me that this brinkmanship on the part of the Council is pretty reckless at a time when, as we keep being told, the Council needs every penny it can get?”

20.4    Councillor Cattell replied; “As you said that is guidance and it is not legislation and we have an agreed supplementary planning document and at Planning Committee last week we approved a scheme of under 10 units with an affordable housing contribution. If that particular applicant wished to apply to have that set aside then we will but it is a test case We also approved refused another one because the applicant did not agree to the section 106: affordable housing quote for under 10 units and if that developer decides to appeal then that will be decided by appeal. At the moment we are going by the guidance being what it says it is; guidance.”

20.5    Councillor G. Theobald asked the following supplementary question; “I would just point out that the guidance is backed up by the court of appeal so that’s legislation for you. The fact that so much of the city’s housing comes from small sites of less than ten units makes it all the more important that as a Council we don’t do anything to jeopardise that supply not developed by the big players in the market but by small developers –often family firms- who struggle to meet the Council’s financial demands. I think that in this chamber we are all agreed that we need to see more affordable housing developed in Brighton & Hove but does Councillor Cattell agree that by continuing to make these demands of developers the Council risks reducing the supply of housing of all types and tenures?”

20.6    Councillor Cattell replied; “No, I don’t agree. The fact is even though there are a lot of small developers they all know what the score is they all know what the local plan has been saying for the last couple of years that it has been coming on stream, it’s not a surprise to them and if they are properly and professionally advised then they will take into their business model. If anybody around in the chamber knows anything about developer’s profit then they will know that all these things are taken into consideration certainly when I was a planning consultant the first thing I would say to clients is check out all of the section 106 requirements. If you still can’t make a profit then you should walk away because there will be plenty of other people who will come in.”

20.7    Councillor Sykes asked; “Given the opportunity of new faces at 10, 11 and at DCLG and the relentless pressure on this Council’s finances and other Council’s finances what action is Councillor Hamilton and the administration planning, together with other Labour Councils, and possibly through the LGA and alone, to lobby for maintenance and increase in support for underfunded local authorities?”

20.8    Councillor Hamilton replied; “Whilst this is not something I have discussed in great detail with our Finance Team I am aware that the Local Government Association will, of course, be making approaches to the new Government, because quite clearly we have a new Minister instead of Greg Clark.  With the new Minister we hope that there will be a change in the overall financial situation.  I have to say I am not very optimistic but nevertheless new Prime Minister, new Cabinet it may well be that they will have another look at that as all of us here, whatever our political persuasions are, know that with £44m savings still to make it can only cause us further problems in trying to present the balanced budget and provide a full range of services. I will discuss with our Finance Team to see if there is any way to try and pursue this, but I think it is best to say that the Local Government Association is probably the best vehicle to use to try to see what can be possibly squeezed out of the Government to make sure that our Revenue Support Grant doesn’t go down by the £11.5m next year which is what is intended.”

20.9    Councillor Sykes asked the following supplementary question; “I am quite disappointed by that response, because I wasn’t looking for a technical response about how we are going to do this with Officers, but more of a political response about the state of Local Government Finances and the situation going forward, so it sounds to me like this administration is doing very little to lobby for our cause.  The other element of the Medium Term Financial Strategy, is of course, Council Tax and the Medium Term Financial Strategy illustrates this administration’s adeptness of what you might call extreme U-turns with 17% Council Tax rise over this 4 year period and that is their choice and my question is what plans do the administration have to discuss this huge Council Tax rise over the next period with residents given their choice to cut back on consultation last year.”

20.10  Councillor Hamilton replied; “Thank you for your second question.  Well, clearly, I think everybody has to agree that the new Government has been in place for a very short time and I imagine that it will take a bit of time to see what is going on.  We will certainly make representations and also, of course, we have had one of the MP’s for the city, who is my MP and I will certainly contact him as well to see if he can put some pressure on for us as well. With regard to the Council Tax increase over the coming years, obviously as Councillor Sykes knows, we do have a consultation process. We will, I am sure,  be having a Budget Review Group Meeting before long and as I said to you before if you want to bring things along for our consideration on consultation on Council Tax then by all means do and we will see how it can be done.  I think that there are two conflicting things, you could say, let everybody who owns a computer send their consultations online and that’s fine and you would probably get quite a few people to do that, on the other hand would that be a legitimate fair cross-section of the public as a whole?  We need to try and reconcile the two things, but I always say this at Budget Review Group we are always welcome to receive suggestions from the other Groups and, if you want to, come along to our next meeting when there will be plenty of time to carry out a consultation on the council tax increase.  It is whether we do it for the remaining years or the next one that will again be something for the Budget Review Group to consider.  Clearly we are mindful of the situation, we are in a very difficult position, we have 1.99% maximum. The 2% for care, we know, goes nowhere near meeting the extra costs for the demand led adult social care which we are getting, which we estimate might be, between now and 2020 might run up to another £20-23m of extra adult social care pressures we won’t get that by 2.5% with another 2% each year which is about £2.5m per annum.”

20.11  Councillor Page asked; “Thank you Mr. Mayor and I hope that none of us are feeling lonely tonight, but evidence is strong now that loneliness and isolation is a harmful thing on people’s health.  It has been equated to smoking more than 15 cigarettes a day, contributing to much greater risks of heart disease; depression etc. and older people are particularly at risk.  We have 10% more than the national average of older people living alone in our city according to the census.  So will Councillor Yates join in applauding local projects which encourage communities to reach out to those amongst them who may not otherwise speak to anyone else for a whole week, such as the Food Partnerships Casserole Club and in particular Impetus’ Yellow Rose Campaign.  I would encourage everybody to look out for yellow roses being sold on Saturday 30^th July which is the UN’s day of friendship.  I have come across another project just recently called “hen power” this is nothing to do with party houses it about older people looking after hens, chickens and to reduce isolation. Will he join me in applauding these projects to reduce loneliness and isolation?”

20.12  Councillor Yates responded; “Absolutely, it’s really good to hear Councillor Page bringing this to everyone’s attention. It’s one of our key strategies for the Health & Wellbeing Board; addressing loneliness and social isolation. It’s one of the big concerns we have in terms of things that are unnecessary and are driving ill health; both psychological ill health and physical ill health as well as having other significant social impacts and cost implications for the whole of society. So all of the partners that we work with whether those are partners across the city like the food partnership, community or voluntary sector, impendent organisations like food clubs/shared meals organisations. People like ‘men in sheds’ who are trying to organise in the city to develop services those are all absolutely brilliant. Just a few things you might not be aware of we are working, using EU funding, to share best practises with 5 partner cities and that is funding we’ve been able to use here in the city to tackle social isolation and, of course, we are also a World Health Organisation age friendly something that isn’t going to be affected unlike that EU funding by Brexit.”

20.13  Councillor Page asked the following supplementary; “I am encouraged to know that the Health & Wellbeing Strategy has something on loneliness because when I looked at it on the website a week or two ago I could hardly see the word loneliness mentioned. Can you suggest more specific ways the Health & Wellbeing Strategy, possibly another Committee, can encourage residents and other organisation to support this sort of community care?”

20.14  Councillor Yates replied; “There is a variety of ways and, as I’ve already said, we’re working with building based services, and community sector partners. This isn’t just about what we do as a Council, this is about what the whole health and wellbeing system does and in fact what the whole community does because you can reduce social isolation just by talking to your neighbour, just by introducing yourself to your neighbour. It doesn’t have to be something that’s funded necessarily, doesn’t have to be something that’s pushed by the government or even local government. The better care plan of course is to address social isolation because we know that some of that better care funding can do some really good things and we’ve developed ‘I statements’ to help people who may be at risk of social isolation to be able to identify and for us to be able to measure are we doing good things about social isolations?

The ‘I statements’ are:

I’m enabled to remain independent for as long as possible,

I’m supported to have social connections and feel happy,

I’m enabled to stay well and maintain a good quality of life for as long as possible,

I’m able to access a range of community support to help me maintain my resilience and wellbeing,

I have access to appropriate information and support to enable me to manage my long-term health conditions,

            I have access to appropriate advice and support to help me avoid harm or injury and I have to say as someone who lives alone with a long term health condition I hope as I age I’ll be able to answer in the affirmative to all of those statements.”

20.15  Councillor Phillips asked; “Since many of our young people in our city’s secondary schools at the moment will go on to study at one of our universities could Cllr Bewick clarify what the likely implications is of the loss of EU research funding on our universities?”

20.16  “In terms of opportunities for young people in this country I believe that there will be more opportunities for young people to not only go to university but to exchange in cultural, intellectual and other academic exercises because Britain is re-joining the global economy and that means that our young people here in Brighton & Hove and across the rest of Britain will get those opportunities. We will continue with the Erasmus programme that has given tens of thousands of young people in this country the opportunity to study a degree included at masters and post-graduate level but we will be extending those opportunities to places like Australia, Canada and other growing parts of the world.”

20.17  Councillor Phillips asked the following supplementary question; “I quite intrigued as to how the Erasmus programme will continue since Switzerland can’t have it but that wasn’t my question but if he could respond to that too that would be great. As the leader of the leave campaign in Brighton & Hove and one of the few proponents of Brexit who is yet to resign can Councillor Bewick please provide some reassurances that the loss of funding will be replaced by other income streams despite the significant worsening of the UK financial position as a result of leaving the EU?”

20.18  “On the impact of Brexit on our education system, on our universities it wasn’t very long ago that university vice chancellors were writing to the Secretary of State for Business, writing to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the fact that they could not let in non-EU from other parts of the world who often pay more to come and arguably contribute more to the economy because they tend to occupy those important key areas to the economy like IT, Finance and Management. So let’s be absolutely clear about this when we leave the European Union there will be more opportunities for young people because we’re re-joining the global economy. I didn’t lead the campaign for Brexit here in the city because I’m some little Englander and want to pull up the draw-bridge of opportunity, no I joined the campaign because I want to leave little Europe behind for a global economy.”