The Green Party has selected a candidate to stand in the Rottingdean Coastal by-election for a seat on Brighton and Hove City Council.
Members have chosen Libby Darling, who previously stood for the Greens in Moulsecoomb and Bevendean in 2019. She studied at Brighton University and who works for the NHS in community paediatric therapies.
The 52-year-old mother of two has lived in the ward with her family for 20 years and served as chair of Visit Rottingdean – formerly the Rottingdean Traders Association – for two years.
The Greens said that she was a strong environmental activist who founded local eco-charity Beacon Hub and had run a volunteer beach cleaning group called GRAB for more than 10 years.
She said: “I am extremely pleased to be selected by Brighton and Hove Green Party to provide a strong green voice in the ward.
“Rottingdean Coastal ward is a gem in the city, nestled against the east of the city of Brighton and Hove, surrounded to the north, east and west by the South Downs and with a Marine Conservation Zone ‘Beachy Head West’ to the south.
“I am looking forward to representing all of the residents that live in this beautiful coastal ward.
“I am passionate about ensuring inclusion of more women and young people in politics and proud to stand for a party that fights for equality, inclusion and environmental justice.”
The by-election is expected to be held on Thursday 5 May after the resignation of Conservative councillor Joe Miller.
Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty, the Green leader of the council said: “Libby is the perfect candidate to become the first Green councillor to represent Rottingdean Coastal ward on Brighton and Hove City Council.
“I also want to thank Councillor Joe Miller for his commitment to the ward.
“As an active community campaigner on single-use plastic waste and our treasured marine environment, Libby will make a fantastic community representative for the neighbourhoods of Rottingdean, the Marina, Black Rock, Ovingdean and West Saltdean.
“We are excited about introducing our candidate and the prospect of electing a further Green councillor on Brighton and Hove City Council.
“I encourage voters in Rottingdean Coastal to elect Libby on Thursday 5 May and join us as we work towards a carbon neutral city.”
Good to know who the candidate to ignore is for those that love Brighton. The equation is simple – vote Green, ruin Brighton
Aren’t you the guy that wants to stop women and children cycling to school on OSR? A fine person to listen to.
yeah well no point putting a cycle lane on a busy road the idea is to keep the traffic flowing not cause pollution
David Haskell
And can you tell us how many women and children used the cycle lane when it was installed please.
BHCC’s own stats and those from DfT showed LESS people actually used the lanes, very odd that, care to make a comment and explain that.
No thought not…
It is crass to trot out the line that the Greens have “ruined” Brighton. Perhaps you should look at/read the international news, and reflect upon what is happening in Ukraine: those are ruined towns and cities. Your pathetic attitude makes one wonder how you would cope in those circumstances. What is the point of you?
So because there is a war in Ukraine that means we are not allowed to talk about the utter incompetence and pure destruction the green party has presided over. That view is exactly the reason they need to be removed, they refuse to listen to the electorate.
I think what he is trying to do is find an example of something of a similar level of incompetence. Maybe Putin is a closet Green.
Absolutely, Wet pang. Whilst the Ukraine situation is absolutely horrendous and totally heart-breaking, something which we all undoubtedly agree on, our local life has to go on somehow. Green ‘life’ in the city is and always was totally abysmal. No lessons at all were learned from the Greens’ previous catastrophic tenure under the chocolate wafer teapot, Kitcat, they were almost wiped out, very justifiably, at the subsequent election, and yet, here we are again with a cloned version of the previous Green (terminally incompetent) regime and they are a regime, there’s no doubt about it. However, we still have democracy here. Hopefully, the Greens will be wiped out next year, as they very thoroughly deserve to be (not all of them, as some are reasonably sane and useful, but hopefully most of them). It says something that Christopher got wiped out in the 2015 parliamentary elections and was almost beaten by UKIP. He has not been a councillor for a long time. Maybe the constant obsession with the Carnegie Library and very little else had something to do with that? Nothing personal, Christopher, but you do need to get real about local life and what your awful party has done to the city. The Carnegie library is not even a minor deal for the vast majority of residents (many of us buy our books, whether new or used, use a Kindle or even borrow from the free Jubilee Library – if you want a particular book to read, then the source doesn’t matter that much, whether it’s a heritage building or a market stall. People do not judge a book by its source and, whilst I am as keen as anyone here to preserve heritage buildings, there is much more to local life than that). When Old Steine, a main tourist attraction and once the jewel in Brighton’s crown, with the fountain, the flowers etc, which used to look stunning, is now a derelict quagmire and has been totally trashed by Green neglect, with drug dealers, vandals and general pond-life roaming the City Centre doing their thing at will, that is what really matters locally. Heritage lampposts are falling down (blamed by useless council officers on cars hitting them, although nobody has come up with any evidence at all that cars were involved, and one lady on this website happened to see one of them keeling over (no cars anywhere in sight). Sorry, Christopher, and I rather like you usually and appreciate that you are very well-educated, cultured and intellectual (how very un-Green around here), but you are living in a time warp, totally divorced from any kind of local reality. Ukraine is not relevant at the very local level, and it’s a cheap shot to suggest that we should all be crying for Ukraine (which we very much are) whilst ignoring everything that blights our local lives on a daily basis.
Some time ago I resolved to keep off this forum. However, whilst the Green candidate for Rottingdean Coastal may have sterling credentials, and she looks a lot better than most of the very sad candidates that the Greens have and do put up, she is unfortunately not what is needed in Rottingdean Coastal right now.
There is a huge elephant in the Rottingdean Coastal ward, which is the proposed and preposterous development of the Gasworks site. Joe Miller was apparently in favour of it (very fortunately, he has resigned, but he obviously had no idea whatsoever about any of it and his resignation is undoubtedly a massive plus for the ward – long may he be absent from Brighton & Hove).
The electors of RC were left totally unsupported by councillors on the Gasworks. Miller was amazingly a supporter of the development, and it was obvious that he really knew nothing about it because he was too concerned with other personal matters and his own career. Bridget Fishleigh is a very good councillor but can’t comment because she is on the Planning Committee and Mary Mears is about to become the Mayor, so can’t really get involved.
So far, we have had the Green Candidate who has not mentioned the elephant and has no actual experience which might help us. The Lib Dem actually lives in the Marina, but has only mentioned issues in the area east of the gasworks site, so no support there. Poor old Lynda Hyde, who had retired, is very experienced in planning matters and may possibly help we residents near the Gasworks.
We do realise that the Boundary Commission has proposed putting the Gasworks site, Sussex Square, Marina etc in a different ward from RC as from May ’23, but in the meantime I think I speak for many residents adjacent to the monstrous Gasworks proposal that we need someone, right now, who can stand up for us. So, that is not a Green lady, worthy though she may be, who doesn’t even mention the issue or the area, that is not a Lib Dem who lives in the Marina and can’t even bring himself to mention either the elephant in the room or the area. Who knows if Labour are even standing. This is a very critical period for those severely affected by the Gasworks proposal and, so far, only Ms Hyde has shown willing to tackle it.
What would you like put on the site?
Very simply, and I am not getting into a debate about this, my comments were more concerned with the lack of local councillor involvement or support on this issue rather than the issue itself. We are not allowed to make any comments about ex-Cllr Miller, because of his pending court case, but he never showed any visibility, interest or knowledge whatsoever in the matter (in fact, he was only ever seen in this particular area at election time, the last time being several years ago on the eve of an election when he couldn’t explain why his party hadn’t either canvassed our street or put any leaflets through the door – ‘oh’, he said, ‘I don’t know why that is’) He was feeble in the extreme for constituents in this bit of the ward and only interested in his own ambition, politically speaking). Since then he has been totally absent and invisible in this part of the ward. He was very recently asked directly by a constituent what his opinion was and he said he supported the development, even putting in a supporting comment on the council website. He’s gone now, thankfully. My point was that, whereas constituents in other wards can very likely enter into meaningful conversations with at least one councillor who shows an interest in and knowledge of a particular issue, which is what councillors are supposed to be for, some of Rottingdean Coastal hasn’t had that basic courtesy from a particular councillor since the proposal was first mooted. This person has apparently been hiding out for some time, possibly because of a serious personal matter that has never mentioned to anyone, until it surfaced a matter of days ago really. However, East Brighton councillors, and East Brighton is affected by this, have weighed in to oppose the proposal and we are grateful to them, because that is the only councillor involvement or support we have had.
Since I assume that you are now going to make some snide comments about objections to the Gasworks proposal and how/why objectors are so up in arms about it, I will explain briefly, since you may not have read the developer’s proposals in depth, or probably not even at all.
The proposals involve very deep excavations of a contaminated site which has live gas mains beneath it, and toxic chemicals. The developers want to build crammed – in tower blocks. Many official bodies, including the Health and Safety Executive, the Fire Service and contamination experts, have major concerns about the safety aspects of the proposal and there are other issues about the creation of wind tunnels, cutting out daylight to nearby properties and all sorts of things. The developer has just put in a dubious Financial Viability Assessment which provides for no affordable housing whatsoever; the ‘Executive Summary’ is very short and full of developer-puff and vague numbers and it relates to the existing proposal, which experts believe to be unsafe and unacceptable for all sorts of valid reasons. So the FVA is just a bit of implausible ‘puff’, and, despite over 200 pages of incomprehensible appendices from accountants etc, which do not actually back up the developer’s claims but merely consist of mega-pages of ‘maybe’ numbers, it is all just rubbish. You know, it says, in effect, like, well, we think it could cost up to £x millions to make the site safe, but we don’t actually know, and we need to make £y millions of profit to make it viable and we are taking a big risk on this etc etc. The development would take around 8-9 years if it ever got going and that is far too long, whatever is built on the site. People need homes now, not luxury and unaffordable flats years down the road.
There is a much better solution, which would help Brighton people to get on the property ladder, rather than providing luxury flats to be marketed abroad for investors, which will mostly remain empty for much of the time, as with the grey elephants in the Marina. Most of this company’s mega-developments are totally unaffordable for any average person needing a home.
Firstly, there is no need for deep excavations on the site, with all the associated risks from toxins and long-term disruption (the developer has a terrible track record on this score). The deep excavations are only proposed in order to support tower blocks. No tower blocks = no deep excavations.
Secondly, it would be possible – if a decent developer was involved – to build fairly low-rise accommodation on the site without deep excavations, such accommodation not being totally out of reach of local people who need a home.
Thirdly, it is also very possible to build decent homes quite quickly by sustainable modular methods, with minimal disturbance to the ground, and to create proper communities, none of which would ever happen with the current proposal, which is purely a profit-driven exercise by a greedy and cynical developer whose parent company has already been involved in fire safety issues in blocks of flats.
Nobody at all is opposed to decent housing on the site for local people, but that is a million miles away from what what the current proposal is. Just do some homework on the subject, please.
I appreciate the time you took, but “Low density housing that doesn’t lower local house values” would have served just as well.
Could you expand on that comment, please, because I don’t understand what you are saying.
You are talking totally ill-informed rubbish. I can’t speak for house values generally in the vicinity of the proposed development – all I know is that my ‘house value’ – this is a half-subterranean maisonette that is falling apart is not as it might appear to be on something like Zoopla. Why is it that you must automatically and very simplistically associate an objection to a development with a desire on the part of one or more individuals to ‘preserve their house values’? Just come and take a look around the immediate neighbourhood – yes, some of the very adjacent properties are HMOs where landlords are raking it in, but many of them are just subterranean rentals or people like me, old and struggling with a substantial mortgage just to keep a roof above my head.
This is nothing to do with lower local house values as far as I personally am concerned. I still have a hefty mortgage on an almost subterranean maisonette – the back portion of which is falling apart – and then these developers tell me that I am one of at least 6 properties that will have all their daylight cut out by the development and they are not even sorry – can’t be helped, they say, and we are lucky to have had the daylight for as long as we have had.
I just knew that you would go for this sort of very ignorant/cynical reply (you have history in this respect). In my case this is nothing to do with ‘lower house values’, as you put it. I would be extremely lucky to sell this awful pit for any reasonable sort of price, although I am not looking to sell it, even if I could. In my case, and I am only speaking for myself, I would be completely overshadowed, plunged into darkness and possibly poisoned by released toxins over a very long period – this proposed development is merely a few yards from my property – and if you can’t even be bothered to read any of the stuff on the council website about the truth of it all (like it is toxic, a fire hazard etc etc), and you obviously haven’t, then your cynical opinion is worth less than nothing and you are advised to try to engage any brain you might have and read it all) You have all this totally wrong, I’m afraid, but I would very much like to know where you live and in what circumstances. If you don’t live in the vicinity of the gasworks and this development proposal, then your opinion is worth even less than zero. As I said before, do the homework, read the maze of documents on the council website, think about it all and then see what you think – if you are able to!
Does anyone know the councillor candidate own stated profiles and plans or where to read them? Voters need to know!
It helps to have other Candidate profiles and not just the public relations machine,including paid staff that is the so-called “Green” Party!