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TOURISM, EQUALITIES, COMMUNITIES & CULTURE COMMITTEE
11 March 2021 |
Agenda Item 73(b)
Brighton & Hove City Council |
WRITTEN QUESTIONS
A period of not more than fifteen minutes shall be allowed at each ordinary meeting for questions submitted by a member of the public.
The question will be answered without discussion. The person who asked the question may ask one relevant supplementary question, which shall be put and answered without discussion. The person to whom a question, or supplementary question, has been put may decline to answer it.
The following written questions have been received from members of the public:
1. RISE UK – Jean Calder
"Recent decisions regarding RISE suggest Council officers may have less of an understanding than they once had of the discrimination, harassment and violence suffered by the city’s women and girls and the legal protections that exist to protect their sex based rights. This creates a de facto equalities ‘pecking order’ which leaves the city’s females languishing near the bottom. What will councillors do to ensure that institutional sexism within the council is identified and challenged and that council personnel (and wherever possible partner agencies) are adequately trained and equipped to protect the sex based legal rights of women and girls?"
"When the current commission for Domestic Abuse services in the city started, six years ago, RISE were asked to set up The Portal as a very important central referral point for everyone who needs to access support. Now that this website is up and running, why has the council decided to scrap it and replace it with a ‘Victim Hub’?"
3. Land Contamination –Imogen Casebourne
“Does the Council agree that the document entitled Land Contamination: Risk Management, mentioned by the Council Leader in his reply to the deputation of 22/10/20, does not give details of safe remediation techniques?"
4. Planning Developer Communication – Stephen White
"In the interests of democracy the council rightly encourages developers to engage with local communities concerning their planning applications prior to submission. But what happens when a developer fails to provide plans that are clear and sufficiently finalised for residents to be able to assess the full potential impact of the development on their own lives and on their neighbourhood and what effect, if any, might such a failure to provide a proper public consultation have on the council’s attitude to the developer’s planning application?"
5. RISE UK – Alice Strutt
"The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women recommended in 2017 that “States should allocate adequate financial and human resources for the adequate implementation of integrated policies, measures and programmes to prevent and combat gender-based violence against women, including appropriate financial and human resources for the establishment and running of shelters, including those operated by non-governmental organizations.” Does the committee think that services for survivors of domestic abuse in Brighton & Hove are more, or less likely to be integrated after April 1st, given there are to be three organisations delivering them instead of one?"
6. RISE UK – MJ Parnwell
"The Brighton & Hove City Council Social Value Framework states that “Every tender will have considered social value and have at least one outcome included, unless there is a legitimate reason not to”. It also says “In considering the social value outcomes, commissioners and procurement officers will need to work out the weight given to social value, which in Brighton & Hove will range from 10-30%”. Please can you tell me what the social value outcomes were for Lots 1 and 5 of the procurement process for Domestic Abuse Services, how much weight these were given in the scoring process?"
7. RISE UK – Ms A
"The Strategic Assessment of Crime and Community Safety, brought to this committee in May 2020, showed that 335 RISE clients expressed a need for housing in 2018-19, but the refuge only had capacity for 58 people. Calls to the helpline and referrals of people at high risk have increased since the start of the Covid pandemic. Will this committee make a commitment to ringfence the £600,000 of additional government funding so that local specialist organisations can create additional refuge places provided separately from the generic contract awarded to Stonewater Ltd?"
8. Gasworks – Pip Tyler
"The City Plan Part One was adopted in March 2016 and Policy DA2 covered major development in East Brighton.
The gasworks site was designated for 2,000 sqm of workspace and a minimum of 85 residential units. Providing a mix of dwelling type, tenure and size the design should positively contribute to the character of existing buildings in the area, creating an attractive urban environment.
The current proposal is for around 700 dwellings - nearly 10X that in the City Plan – where did the changes to the Plan happen to encourage developers to think in this scale and mass?"