The average “band D” council tax bill in Brighton and Hove will top £2,000 in the coming financial year after councillors agreed their first £1 billion budget.
The higher bills will be sent out in the next few weeks after Brighton and Hove City Council set its 2021-22 budget tonight (Thursday 25 February) and the council tax for the year from April.
The council has put up its element of the bill for a band D property by £82.77 – or 4.99 per cent – from £1,659.11 to £1,741.88.
When the police and fire precepts are included, the bill rises by £99.67 – or just over 5 per cent – from £1,954.55 to £2,054.22.
The police precept is going up by £15 a year – or 7.5 per cent – for a band D home from £199.91 to £214.91.
And the fire precept is rising by £1.90 – or 1.99 per cent – from £95.53 to £97.43 for a band D property.
Councillors were told that the current financial year had been dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, with significant extra spending – most of it underwritten by the government.
Hundreds of rough sleepers were put up in temporary homes at short notice, businesses were given emergency grants and the council stepped in to help buy stocks of PPE (personal protective equipment).
The council’s coffers also suffered a loss of income as people struggled to pay council tax bills while parking revenues dropped and events were cancelled at council-owned venues such as the Brighton Centre.
Again, the government is funding most of the shortfalls and, despite forecasts of a big deficit, the council looks like balancing the books by the end of next month when the current financial year ends.
But the council has called on its reserves – or corporate savings – to carry out a “financial smoothing” operation to achieve this. And the effects are likely to be felt for the rest of the decade. Savings are being sought in the coming year although there is no political appetite for compulsory redundancies.
Councillors voted through a budget totalling £1.054 billion, including a £221 million capital programme – for big projects – and a revenue budget of just over £830 million.
A year ago, the council agreed to spend £947 million, consisting of £780 million in revenue spending and £167 million on capital projects.
The ruling Greens said that more than £27 million had been set aside for climate action plus new investments in equalities work, housing and homelessness and economic recovery.
But the Greens do not have an overall majority, with only 19 of the council’s 54 seats, and required cross-party support to vote the budget through.
They struck a deal with Labour and the Conservatives and incorporated spending requests in the form of a “composite” budget amendment.
The Greens said that the budget now included extra funds for domestic violence services following the outcry when RISE, the domestic abuse charity based in Brighton, recently lost a £5 million contract.
The party said: “This year’s budget is the first since the Green Party became the council’s largest party in July 2020.
“In July, the council was predicting more than £30 million overspend in services but is now projecting an underspend of just over £4 million.”
The Green council leader Phélim Mac Cafferty said: “Since taking control of the council in July 2020, in the midst of the health crisis, we have worked tirelessly to plan a better future out of the pandemic for our city.
“We are pleased that opposition parties have voted for the Green council’s budget for the city – which has put recovery from this crisis at its heart.”
The Conservatives said that they had come out on top as the parties negotiated a cross-party compromise during the budget council meeting.
Councillor Joe Miller, who speaks for the party on finance, said that the result was testament to the hard work and positive ideas put forward by the Conservative group. He said: “Our Conservative team has been clear with what we wanted to achieve from this budget.”
There was a twin focus on restoring Brighton and Hove’s heritage and boosting tourism for a post-covid recovery as well as “improving the state of the city”.
Councillor Miller said: “Through our hard work, identifying savings, we have managed to secure £7 million of measures to benefit the city.
“This is a demonstration of our values and an example of what our Conservative team can accomplish for this city if elected at the next election.
“This is what we have delivered from opposition. Imagine what we could do in administration to rebuild our forgotten heritage, to turbocharge tourism and to bolster businesses – and to protect and support the most vulnerable and disadvantaged while investing in climate change at the same time.”
He said that the spending plans would “lead to a fairer and larger bounce back of growth, which our residents need and our city deserves after the most hellish year – due to covid – of many people’s lives”.
Labour said: “We’re delighted to have won support for our range of proposals to improve the Brighton and Hove City Council budget for the year ahead.
“By working constructively and cross-party in the best interests of the city, we were able to win support for measures to address residents’ concerns on issues such as drug dealing, parking charges, beach huts and bus services.
“Our budget plans came from listening to our communities, combating the climate crisis and tackling disadvantage.”
‘Turbocharged tourism’?
That would be the wrong kind of tourism.
To refresh your memories: a turbocharger compresses more air flowing into a (car’s) engine’s cylinder. When air is compressed the oxygen molecules are packed closer together. This increase in air means that MORE FUEL can be added to the engine.
Green tourism please.
Utter rubbish from the greens as usual
A Turbo Charger uses LESS fuel
In fact 10 to 40%
But dont let the facts get in the way of dogma
How much is the Council having to pay to the Public Works Loans Board each year for the i360? Having spent £40.2 MILLION of PUBLIC MONEY on a structure that few people wanted and even fewer were consulted about, this has been making HUGE LOSSES for years!
And years to come no doubt.
These crazy councillors who are clobbering residents should be locked up.
The Greens do have a majority.
Momentum supports the Goons and the Goons support Momentum.
A red/green left-wing alliance.
That is why Brighton is becoming Skidrow-on-Sea.
It’s called democracy: the parties that get the most votes get to make the decisions. If they can’t muster a majority, they can form an alliance with those that share common goals in order to build one. I bet you didn’t complain when the Conservatives formed an alliance with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.
Despite the constant whingeing from the anonymous reactionaries in these comments, the fact that the left consistently win elections in this town means that most people think they’re doing a decent job.
Or that most people in this town are monumentally stupid.
Or that there is a huge student population, which is also monumentally stupid. And how ironical that they can vote in our local elections, when most of them come from elsewhere, and are only here for a few years, while the rest of us have to put up with the nonsense that they help to thrive for years to come. The Greens are not very bright, but they are certainly cunning. Hence the continuous growth of student accomodation.
And it is a fuirther irony that antisemitism in the Labour party has led to our being stuck with these clowns, who are intent on creating more and more destruction as they go along.
With a single man’s rebate of 25%, council tax on my tiny studio flat near Seven Dials was in the region of £950 a year. I’ve just moved to Spain, and the Council Tax for my 2 bedroom property is under £100 a year. The town where I live isn’t anywhere near the size of Brighton, but I’m told it’s similar just about everywhere. Just saying.
If they didn’t waste the money to put those pointless cycle lanes in they probably wouldn’t need to up the council tax, but instead ill just breathe in the extra traffic pollution from all the stationary traffic while im working my arse off to afford to pay the tax bill, rent, food and other life expenses while the promenade falls down and a donut on a stick goes up and down on the sea front. Welcome to high ppm pollution crumbly brighton
“If they didn’t waste the money to put those pointless cycle lanes in they probably wouldn’t need to up the council tax”
Those lanes were paid for with UK Government grants, they didn’t come from the council’s budget.