Agenda item - Fairness Commission - progress report

To hear from Bill Randall the Vice Chair of the Brighton & Hove Fairness Commission

Bill Randall the Vice Chair of the Brighton & Hove Fairness Commission began by explaining that financial pressures would see the council lose £100m in funding from 2010/11 to 2020. This would have a significant impact on services for both older and younger people including the 170 sleeping rough each night.

The Fairness Commission (FC) had been set up to look at how to ensure these diminishing services were delivered more fairly. While its impact was limited, good ideas were surfacing. One of its key purposes was to get agreement with the community and the voluntary sector on how to spend funds. Three meetings have been held and tomorrow the Fairness Commission was looking at the vital issue of Housing. The 16^th March meeting would look at Older People and well being.

It was beneficial that the majority of commissioners did not live in the city, as we needed to listen more to people from other locations. They came from organisations such as the GMB, the Child Poverty Action Group and Brighton University. A striking comment from one of the witnesses from the Bevy, a dedicated community activist, was that people should live in the wards they represent. The FC has taken a huge amount of evidence from the community.

The FC has the following Terms of Reference. These are to:

·         Examine existing data and analysis to map poverty and inequality in Brighton & Hove

·         Evaluate the effectiveness of existing council strategies, with partners, to deal with poverty and inequality

·         Engage with stakeholders outside of the council and citizens to understand peoples experiences and priorities

·         Examine how the council, with partners, can make significant, tangible improvements to reducing poverty and inequality

·         Make specific and practical recommendations based on the findings of this process

·         Produce ways of checking and measuring the impact of public services to address poverty and inequality

·         Charge the council, with partners through Brighton & Hove Connected, to act on the recommendations of the commission in service delivery and budget setting

He praised the work of Public Health, including Tom Scanlon, including his  ‘bus route of inequality’ which charted the life expectancy gap of 10 years across different locations in the city. Brunswick and Adelaide has the lowest life expectancy which was partly due to the poor housing conditions. The extension of the HMO registration scheme to this area, would address very different issues than in previous areas where it had tackled conditions in student housing.   

Members asked what the FC could achieve and whether it was sufficiently diverse. Bill Randall confirmed that it was an ethnically diverse panel and could make practical suggestions relating to areas such as apprenticeships and the Living Wage. That organisations such as Due East had been involved in participatory budgeting and this could be productive in areas where the community wished this.

Members raised their concerns about the relatively high suicide rate amongst older people in the city, that people may not be claiming benefits they were entitled to and the digital exclusion of many older people. Bill Randall agreed that the impression of older people being well off was by and large untrue and that their appeared to be a lot of loneliness and isolation in this age group. The FC recognised that the council was good at delivering some services, while the third sector were better at other things. He was concerned by the much higher than national suicide rate and felt it was vital to accept that many people would not use social media. He agreed to raise the OPC’s concerns over the location of the FC meeting in Portslade Town Hall as it may not be sufficient accessible for older people.

Bill Randall explained that the London Fairness Commission was also sitting at the same time and their might be a joint statement from them and Brighton FC about rent controls, such as those in Europe. There was concern that key workers such as teachers and junior doctors could not afford accommodation in the city. A recent survey had found that 18% of social housing in the south east would eligible for sale, which would represent a significant loss of provision and could result in money being taken away from the public purse. He highlighted the changing role of housing associations and that the last housing scheme by Hyde in the city contained no rented accommodation, with the cheapest unit at £300,000 for shared accommodation up to £820,000 for the most expensive. Much had been sold to private investors, rather than producing much needed affordable housing. This raised 2 key questions:

-       Who will house the poor?

-       Where will our sons and daughters be able to afford to live?

As mayor he had noticed that older people ran the majority of community organisations, which played such a vital role in reducing isolation, but many of these groups were struggling and also looking for people to take on their work in the future. He highlighted the success of a scheme in Alicante which had housed younger and older people together to offer support to each other.

Concerns were raised by members about Preston Barracks including the future housing of Community Transport, whether it would provide any social housing and if the price of the land was a good reflection of its value. It was also suggested that the FC had a final meeting where council officers spoke to the Commissioners in public. Bill Randall then spoke of the need to protect the most vulnerable such of those in receipt of council tax relief. He felt that the third sector should be a supplement, rather than a replacement for council services.

Members also expressed concern whether the FC would just highlight issues and then make recommendations which the council would be unable to fund the solutions. While Bill Randall shared the concern about whether the FC would be able to achieve the impact it would hope to, he thought it would achieve some of the things it would set out to – but it was unlikely to be given a lump sum to do this as suggested by a member of the OPC. One of the outcomes he favoured was increasing community participation in budgeting.

Bill Randall welcomed the increasing digital industry in Brighton & Hove. Although each company tended to have a small number of employees, this sector brought millions to the city. Many other coastal towns envied us for having something other than tourism to depend on. However there were a lot of minimum wage jobs, and the decline of the manufacturing sector had meant the loss of many entry level jobs in that sector. Mike Bojczuk who works in the digital sector spoke of his work with Digital Eagles to encourage older people to become digitally included.

Bill Randall finished by flagging up the city council’s equality work. He used the trans equality work as an example. The council is seen as a national leader in this work and other public services and the universities are working with it on transgender needs.