It’s almost to the day that 30 years ago I knocked on my first door in Ditchling Rise, near London Road Station, starting my bid to be elected as the first Green councillor in the city.
I had a map with me, showing the vast downland estate owned by the people of Brighton that the Labour majority council was threatening to privatise – flogging it off to balance the books.
It didn’t take much persuasion to convince the proud true owners of our land that this wasn’t something they wanted to see happen.
I didn’t win a seat that year, but came a good second and the following year, in 1996, I took up my place as one among 77 other rather noisy councillors on the newly formed Brighton and Hove Council.
Labour wouldn’t speak with me at first – I’d taken the scalp of their deputy leader as I burst into what had previously been seen as Labour’s safest seat.
I have never forgotten the issue that led to my election and the significance of the meaning our land has for us in the city.
I was born in sight of Jack and Jill windmills and feel a very close connection to the South Downs. I’m proud to have had the honour to represent the city on the national park authority and, while a cabinet member, designated 700 acres of our city downland as statutory open access land – now, forever, accessible to all.
Fast forward to 2025 and I’m glad to say that not only did Labour drop their plans to flog our downland all those years ago but, under more recent Green leadership, a new evaluation of our city downland estate was made and written for the first time into a City Downland Estate Plan.
There was a big consultation, which hundreds of people and interest groups contributed to. This really was the first time the city had properly stopped to think about all the benefits our downland holds for our health and wellbeing, nature recovery, local sustainable food growing, the visitor economy, and for addressing climate change.
We decided to do something together with our tenant farmers, residents and other stakeholders, and it is making a difference.
Labour are back in charge of the council, with the first majority in 20 years, and I have to say I am fearful given their past threats to our downland but I’m hopeful that, having embraced the downland estate plan, they’ll stick to it.
Local government reorganisation is a somewhat unwelcome challenge for the city, particularly to its identity if the geographic footprint of the council were to be forced by the government to become much bigger and no longer able to call itself Brighton and Hove.
Yet this change, if it happens, may be an opportunity to rejig the boundaries a bit where it makes sense. That would be a good thing.
The split of Saltdean, with the west of the settlement within Brighton and Hove while the east lies in East Sussex, doesn’t serve residents there well at all.
The artificial line that runs up Longridge Avenue, preventing children from attending nearby schools, needs to be removed. Saltdean should be made whole and here we have the chance to achieve that.
Looking north, we have the vast open areas of the South Downs. Not many people know this, but 40 per cent of the city is in the area of the national park which isn’t itself a council.
The city owns a lot of land within the national park but our estate spreads further than the city boundary, with a good bit under other jurisdictions.
It would make a lot of sense to incorporate those areas too within the city authority as this would help our delivery of the City Downland Estate Plan and benefit the national park too. I hope Adur, Horsham and Lewes district councils don’t mind me suggesting this.
There would be no dilution of the city’s identity which will be strengthened by incorporating more of the land the people of Brighton and Hove own.
Our neighbour council to the north, whatever it will be, will still include the springline villages like Ditchling that lie beyond the scarp slope.
They will forever remain as they are, very much a part of Mid-Sussex, where I grew up, and my family for many generations tilled the clay and sandy fields of the Low Weald.
Councillor Pete West is a Green member of Brighton and Hove City Council and sits on the Downland Advisory Panel.
Unfortunately , SDNP has been consulting on releasing land on edge of Keymer to facilitate large housing development. Hence, National park is no definitive protection. Numerous objections but will they count?