Phélim Mac Cafferty

Green Party Cllr Phélim Mac Cafferty, Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council, has released a statement following the publication of Brighton & Hove City Council’s budget for the upcoming year.

Yesterday evening the city council’s budget for the upcoming year was published. It sets out what the council will spend over the next year and sadly, what services we have not been able to protect, despite our greatest efforts.

This year’s budget is grim and asserts the chronic mismanagement of the economy from the Tory government. Recovery from a crippling pandemic, a deepening cost-of-living crisis, chronic problems hiring and retaining staff because of Brexit, slow economic recovery, Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget, the highest inflation in a generation. These together mean the council has had to make £19 million in savings and cuts.

I believe this is the largest single amount the city’s ever had to surrender in a year to the government’s vicious decisions. It speaks to a government that long ago stopped caring about the direct consequences of its actions.

While we have continued to raise the alarm about the money stolen from the city every year, councillors legally have to set what’s known as a ‘balanced’ budget- one that doesn’t spend more than it raises. We are the only part of government that has these stipulations- another hangover from Thatcher’s hatred of councils from the 1980s.

Greens want more money for public services, and to extend the hand of support to more communities not fewer. We have studied every line of the budget to protect the vital public services on which we know residents of our city rely. But sadly, we have not been able to protect them all.

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Further to this, we are now able to state that the latest budget proposals include the following:

Vital public services will continue to be funded. For example, public toilets will not be cut; high-footfall locations will stay open and sites that were already closed are being reviewed for reopening, as we also do work to make toilets in cafes and other contexts accessible to the public;
We will invest in reducing our carbon footprint and tree planting will be maintained;
Parks and public spaces are staying open, with improvements to children’s play areas;
From nurseries to adult care facilities to Disabled Facilities Grants to help maintain people in their homes, services for the most vulnerable have been protected wherever we can do this;
Building new affordable housing, becoming the biggest provider of affordable rented housing in the city, and providing over 200 additional council homes in 23/24;
100% council tax will be charged on second homes when the council gets the right to do so;

We’ve worked to minimise the total amount of job losses and we’ll actively work with our valued trade unions to, as far as possible, remove compulsory redundancies

Councillors’ allowances are being frozen, and both the Mayor’s office and Council Senior Management are having to make significant savings

Some of these elements mean the budget offers a small ray of light after many months of storms. Sadly, there will still be reductions in service, both now and in the future.

Green Party councillors remain committed to doing everything we can to protect vital services and we will work over the final weeks to budget council on Thursday, February 23 to find other ways to save services.

We ask for your continued patience and support as we try to do the very best for Brighton & Hove at this tremendously tough time.

Yours sincerely

Cllr Phélim Mac Cafferty

Leader of the Council

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This Thursday, Brighton and Hove City Council will consider a proposal from the Green group of Councillors condemning the Government’s removal of entitlement to housing benefit for 18-21 year olds. We are doing this for many reasons, but my letter seeks to identify the disproportionate impacts this proposal will have on the young people who self-define as LGBT+.

The proposals as they stand could have deep and disturbing consequences for our LGBT+ young people. Importantly and as many readers will recognise, not all young people have the option to stay at home. Many young people find that when they ‘come out’ they are rejected from family homes, often have to flee abusive households and face the real fear of community retribution.

According to the Albert Kennedy Trust, of the whole quarter of our homeless young people who are LGBT+, 69% have been actively forced out of home and have experienced aggression and physical violence.

The Conservative Government’s austerity programme has led to a 20% increase in young LGBT+ people seeking the Albert Kennedy Trust’s help with homelessness. With money tighter at home, homophobic parents have been empowered and found it easier to kick dependent children out- with Stonewall saying: “We have seen in difficult economic times that families that weren’t that tolerant anyway, under increasing financial pressure, excluding more.” This benefit change is an ideological kick in the teeth to young LGBT+ people who are to be penalised also now on the grounds of their age, sexuality and gender identity.

I welcome news that in some cases, such as where there has been domestic abuse or harm, this rule will not apply. But I remain concerned that the new rules fail to take into account the exact nature of why people are not able to live at home. Among many others, factors such as fear of retribution that lead to young LGBT+ people leaving home can be far less obvious.

The purpose of the change has been described by the former Chancellor George Osborne as “stopping young people slipping into life on benefits” however at that age, not all young people can afford university; not all will have access to the right employment, training and skills for a job.

The reason many young people need to move out of home or require housing benefit is not because they are ‘not in work.’ In fact figures from homeless charity Crisis show that the 11,000 young people in the country who do claim housing benefit at this age represent just 0.4% of the total annual spend on housing benefit.

I would argue that most – if not the vast majority – of young people do not make a conscious ‘decision’ to live on benefits. Even the figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that almost £10bn in benefits in 2015 went entirely unclaimed. Add to this the fact that housing benefit has already been frozen and welfare rates reduced, the truth is that any young person on benefits has a measly living. As many of us will remember, young LGBT+ population have no choice where they grow up. They often flee home for their own safety, not because they are seeking housing benefit.

So what is the future for young LGBT+ people? Less young people will come out fearing that they might end up on the streets, with no other safety net.

Are our young LGBT+ people being told that they must rough sleep? A damning indictment when all of the evidence tells us depression is already too prevalent for LGBT+ young people.

Our young people have a right to live freely, away from the emotional or physical abuse that surrounds their decision to come out. Any decent society should be helping young LGBT+ people start their adult lives in a positive fashion, not be damned by Tory ideology that implies the poorest people relish in living off state benefits and have plenty of other options.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty
Convenor of the Green Group of Councillors, Brighton and Hove City Council and Green Group Spokesperson on the Policy and Resources Committee and Planning Committee