Brighton & Hove City Council
People Overview & Scrutiny
4.00pm8 July 2025
Hove Town Hall Council Chamber
MINUTES
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Present: Councillor O'Quinn (Chair) Gauge (Deputy Chair), Cattell, McLeay, Parrott, Shanks, Sheard and Meadows |
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Other Members present: Joanna Martindale (Community Works Rep), Adam Muirhead (Community Works Rep), Becky Robinson (PaCC) and Dr Anusree Biswas Sasidharan (Community Works), Jasmine (Youth Council Rep)
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PART ONE
1 Procedural Business
1) A Cllr Anne Meadows for Cllr Ivan Lyons. Apologies from Cllr Mackey, Lesley Hurst, and Sara Fulford.
B There were no declarations of interest.
2 Minutes
2.1 RESOLVED The draft minutes of the People Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting of the 18th March 2025 were approved.
3 Public Involvement
3.1 There was no public involvement.
4 Member Involvement
4.1 There were no member questions.
5 Chair's Communications
5.1 The Chair gave the following communication: As this is the first meeting of the People Overview & Scrutiny Committee of this municipal year, I’d like to welcome our new members, particularly Cassie Hoffman-Kazlauskas our new Parent Governor Rep, to the committee.
Today we will be hearing from Cllr Paul Nann, Cabinet Advisor for Homelessness, on the council’s ambitions to tackle homelessness. The council is currently working on its policy regarding Homelessness and when it is more developed the policy will come to this committee for scrutiny. Todays’ report is very much to provide an understanding of the current situation and its complexities.
We will then have a presentation from Cllr Emma Daniel, cabinet member for Children, Families, & Youth Servies, on the council’s support for those pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. This is an area which is currently being reviewed by the government with the focus on how to improve outcomes for SEND pupils. Brighton and Hove Council are thus anticipating changes in SEND policy which will inform their own policy going forward. We will be able to scrutinise that policy when it comes to this committee later in the year or early next year. For this item I have invited some guests to also speak to the committee in order to provide extra depth of experience and knowledge on this subject. We have Euan Hannington, who is head teacher at Rudyard Kipling School, and Kirsti Hadley, who has lead campaigns on this issue and has lived experience of it with her son. Kirsti was also a co-organiser along with b of the Mental Health Summit that was held recently in Saltdean. I’d like to thank them both for taking the time to join us as I’m sure that they will be able to provide an important perspective for members.
We also have a scoping report on our proposed next Task and Finish Group, the first for this committee, which will be on antisocial behaviour in council housing and housing association properties. This will be a major piece of research on an issue that is causing major problems for, and often blighting the lives of, residents in all types of social housing not just in Brighton and Hove but across the country and we look forward to being able to put forward some well thought out recommendations to the committee in January 2026.
6 Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Verbal Presentation
6.1 Cllr Nann, Cabinet Advisor on homelessness, and Aaron Burns, Head of supported and Temporary Accommodation, presented to the committee. The main themes were: Statistics setting out the seriousness of the issue; national context of homelessness and the housing crisis; the context of the strategy and its emphasis on prevention; how to help those with multiple compound needs; the vision and priorities of both the Housing Strategy and the Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy.
6.2 The committee asked a number of questions which included: the impact of Covid; the impact of short term lets on the housing market; the number of older homeless people and how they would be helped; youth homelessness; women being made homeless after having children taken into care; impact of moving customer services into libraries on those seeking housing support; Seaside Homes; the impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill on the private rental sector; reconnection policy; methods of engagement; prevention measures; identifying people who are homeless; if there were common data sets or definitions with other agencies; communication of the policy when being rolled out; increasing engagement.
7 Meeting the needs of Special Educational Needs and Disability learners
7.1 Cllr Daniel, cabinet member for children, families, & Young People, presented to the committee, the main points of the presentation were: An overview of SEND in the city and nationally, the number of those receiving support locally and nationally, the provision within the city, the primary need trend locally, spending and funding,
7.2 Euan Hannington, Head of Rudyard Kipling School presented to the committee, his main points were: 30% of his children are in the top 10% of poverty in England, 31% of the children have special educational needs, that his school has seen an avalanche of additional needs in recent years and is struggling, a personal story of child X and how Euan was trying to help keep him in school, that 70% of year 6 children with SEND achieved expected standards in reading writing and maths compared to 26% nationally, his policy to try to keep SEND pupils in school whenever possible as this is best for them, but that this comes with a cost that is not met by the additional funding for SEND pupils, and that his school was soon benefit from an Alternative Provision Specialist Task Force that would greatly help SEND pupils.
7.3 Kirsti Hadley, SEND campaigner, presented to the committee. Her main points were: The stress that SATS exams place on all pupils but especially those with SEND; the need for inclusive teaching; the Sussex SEND Summit; her lived experience of diagnosis and trying to access education and support for her son; and her desire to see a more radical approach by the council.
7.4 Members asked questions and made comments on a range of issues including: alternative provision; the need for advocates; if SEND/SEMH children were included in policy setting; acknowledgment of intersectionality; SEND units at schools; the tensions around funding between local authorities and national government; Equalities Impact Assessment; the rise in diagnoses ; the limbo families face while waiting for a diagnoses; the importance of youth workers and having them work with schools.
7.5 RESOLVED
The People Overview & Scrutiny Committee:
Agrees to note the report and the detailed information in Appendix 1.
8 Antisocial Behaviour in Social Housing Task & Finish Group Scoping Report
8.1 Luke Proudfoot, Overview & Scrutiny Officer, presented to the committee highlighting the scoping report, which sets out suggested lines of investigation for the Group and the draft Terms of Reference, which included proposed membership and duration of the group. He said that membership would be arranged through the political group whips.
8.2 Members asked questions including: If members of the group had to be members of the committee, and if private tenants would have suffered antisocial behaviour by council or housing association tenants would be listened to.
8.3 RESOLVED
That People Overview & Scrutiny Committee:
agrees to establish a Task & Finish Group to scrutinise the issue of antisocial behaviour in social housing.
agrees Terms of Reference, membership and duration of the Task & Finish Group as set out in Appendix 2.
9 Drugs & Alcohol Strategy (For Information Only)
The meeting concluded at 7.33pm
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Signed
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