Agenda item - Member Engagement

A Member Question has been received from Cllr Bruno De Oliveira (copy attached).

45.1 The chair answered the question as follows: Thank you to Cllr De Oliveira for his question. Public trust and transparency are incredibly important, and I think amongst the main reasons that we are having this call-in, so I am grateful to him for raising this. However, as this question is directed at cabinet, it is not for me as Chair of the Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee to say how cabinet will do anything. The relevant cabinet member, Cllr Jacob Taylor, is here today and has agreed to answer Cllr De Oliveira’s question.

Cllr Taylor said: Thank you Cllr De Oliveira for submitting the question. A lot of the substance will be answered in the presentation. I agree that these are the assets of the city council and therefore the people of Brighton & Hove and have been acquired and held over many years. As Councillors we are stewards of these assets. I take that, cabinet takes that, and the whole council takes that extremely seriously. When considering our assets, the use of assets and how we can unlock sites for housing, we have to consider those issues very carefully and also balancing it with the financial needs of the council. In terms of trust and transparency, the process that was gone through has followed the constitution, which is that the report went to cabinet where there was a distinction between part one and part two which we will explore and now the decision is being called-in where it will be further scrutinised, and those are the processes for ensuring that decisions are made properly and are transparent. There is a balancing act on what is included in part one and part two reports and I’ve no doubt that members will have questions on that today.