Agenda item - Chair's Communications

2.1      The Chair gave the following communication:

Today we are holding a special Place Overview & Scrutiny meeting to look at the ongoing programmes of Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation for Sussex and Brighton. As this subject has an overlap in remit, we have invited members of People Overview & Scrutiny Committee to attend and provide input if they wish to.

We are being asked to note the update to members on Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation and to comment on the plans for both programmes. Any comments will be considered ahead of the Cabinet meeting in June where this will be presented.

We are joined by Cllr John Hewitt, Cabinet advisor on Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation who will be presenting today. We also have with us Alex Voce, Head of the Cabinet Office, and Liz Culbert, Director for Governance and Law, who are on hand to help with any questions. We also have online Lucie Spicer from the Policy Team and two consultants, Julian Osgathorpe and James Stainer. I’d like to welcome them all to the meeting.

Although we only have one item on the agenda, there are a lot of us here this afternoon and so we will have a lot of questions to get through. Can I therefore please request that both those asking and answering questions are as brief and to the point as possible, as we want everyone who wishes to contribute to have the opportunity. So, I’d just like to remind members here that while I’m sure all questions on the timelines and processes involved in the devolution and Local Government Reorganisation pathways will be welcomed and answered by our various experts as clearly as they are able – I certainly hope so, as I don’t think I’m the only one who is confounded by the dizzying speed at which the many and varied threads of all these related changes are proposed to unfold, and I hope to understand it all more clearly by the end of this meeting! – we are not here to try and make or re-make any decisions already taken. We are already on the pathway to both LGR and Sussex wide devolution, and while we are entitled to question and give opinions on the detail of the next steps to be taken, it would be a waste of our own and others’ time to be questioning that they will be.