Agenda item - Public Involvement

To consider the following matters raised by members of the public:

(a)          Petitions: to receive any petitions presented to the full council or at the meeting itself;

(b)         Written Questions: to receive any questions submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the Wednesday 6^th March 2019.

(c)       Deputations: to receive any deputations submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the Wednesday 6^th March 2019.

58a     Petitions

58.1    There were no petitions.

58b     Written Questions

58.2    The Chair invited Jim Deans to state his Written Question.

58.3    Jim Deans asked the following Written Question on the Rough Sleeping Statistics report by Mark Dallen – Item 62:

            “The report shows that the count was at fault the moment it began. Management within council were aware and agreed that snow was expected with wind chill sub-zero. The Head of Housing spoke to me on Tuesday 20th November 2018, asking why SWEP was not planned to open. Why was the figure then used by council to claim a 64% drop in rough sleeping when by the reports criteria on "Rough Sleeping" the numbers clearly have increased. Are council aware that this is a slap in the face to those front-line volunteers including Sussex Homeless Support?”

58.4    The Chair stated that the Council had issued the following reply:

            “The processes followed in both 2017 and 2018 were recently reviewed, and found to be compliant with national guidance. All rough sleeping returns submitted by local authorities are independently verified and validated by Homeless Link to ensure they are robust. Homeless Link are the national charity for organisations working directly with people who become homeless, and they were in attendance during the estimate (in 2017) and at the full count (in 2018). Homeless Link is funded by MHCLG to provide verification, validation, and guidance to local authorities for the annual rough     sleeping street count and evidence-based estimate process.

            Both the counts and estimate single night snapshots provide a way of indicating the number of people sleeping rough and assessing change over time. There is currently no national mechanism for recording every     person who sleeps rough across the year although the rollout of the       Council’s reporting system b-think will allow accurate reporting of numbers on the street.

            The single night snapshot methodology aims to get as accurate a representation of the number of people sleeping rough as possible, while acknowledging that each process has its limitations. We therefore conclude that the rough sleeper statistics stated at the NICE        Committee in December 2018 were based on reliable and relevant data.”

58.5    The Chair then asked if Mr Deans had a supplementary question and Mr Deans confirmed that he did.  He asked:

            “From the report, the formal definition of rough sleeping makes no mention of cars, vans, boats or some of the places that people are forced to sleep.  It does seem that these places are not suitable for habitation.  Is this council suggesting that these vulnerable people living this way are not rough sleeping and if not, why are they not counted as such?”

58.6    The Chair replied that Officers would provide a detailed response to this question through the committee.

58c     Deputation

58.7    The Chair asked Adrian Hart to present his Deputation.

58.8    Adrian Hart presented the following Deputation:

            “This deputation pivots around two issues which I’d like the Committee’s view on. Both have arisen from discussions held by Amex Area Neighbourhood Forum (in Queens Park ward). We became concerned over how our 2018 pro-development resident campaign against what we regarded as a very poor planning proposal (namely ‘The Edward Street Quarter’ scheme for the old Amex House site) was always destined to fail. In short, we did not know what our council knew.

The first issue is how can ward councillors communicate back to their constituents, vital information on neighbourhood matters which they know but citizens do not know? Acting as a ‘forward look-out post’ describes this democratic deficit well as there must surely be instances where ward councillors become aware of, for example, future planning proposals currently in discussion which, if approved, impact on theirconstituents in no uncertain terms. Had ward councillors been able to publicise (fairlyand with their duty to their electorate in-mind) any prior knowledge or worry they have(or simply the facts) in a monthly Ward Newsletter then citizens might have had time to respond and seek rejection or amendment of the scheme. Such a newsletter/ bulletin would be delivered to all ward households as well as by online options.

Following the Edward Street Quarter example, despite developer-led public consultation ahead of application (see Brighton Society comment on this: footnote 1), BHCC statutory notices fixed to lamp-posts became the first indication to public that the proposal had changed (bigger, taller, poor public realm, a mere 20% so-called ‘affordable housing’ as the starting bid and so on). It was too late to effectively oppose. The issue of ‘too late’ is one underscored by the city’s second year of being unable to demonstrate to Whitehall a 5 year housing land supply. However, if our neighbourhood had known earlier that such a scheme was being discussed with planners, it would not, in theory, have been too late. Recently, planners confirmed to us that prior to the start of the statutory time frame (from application to approval) there are indeed real opportunities for a council to have a developer return to the drawing board.

The second issue follows on from the first: will the council accept that there is a democratic deficit here by exploring possibilities of making production of Ward Newsletters a reality? Insofar as leaflets purporting to be ‘ward newsletters’ do exist,these are laden with the party promo items on behalf of party-focused councillors.  ‘Forward look-out’ items might exist in these occasional leaflets but only when a party branch feels it serves party interests. Surely it would be better that our council look into ways of requiring these newsletters to conform to an entirely new model of ‘ward newsletter’?

I note that at the planning hearing for the ‘Edward St Quarter’ one of our local ward councillors on the planning committee commented, seemingly in despair, words to the effect ‘I already have one of these ill-conceived schemes in Circus Street, I don’t want another one in my ward’. And yet communities on the front line of both Circus Street [2] and Amex site had and continue to have little or no communication with residents least of all to warn their constituents and thereafter advise, support, defend or advocate. Indeed it feels at street level and citywide that troubled times inflict evermore distractions on councillors buried deep in party political warfare if not infighting.

And so I end by asking that answers to my questions be placed in the context of 2019 and of, we hope, a new intake of councillors who, if our own Queens Park ward candidates are anything to go by, share my desire for better democracy and for councillors as ‘look-outs’ equipped with new methods of communicating to constituents what constituents need to know.”

58.9    The Chair read the following Response to the Deputation:

           “There is a minimum requirement regarding Members having to attend certain meetings of the Council under the Local Government Act 1972. Beyond that, how a Member discharges their role, what information they publish and how they communicate with the residents of their ward is a matter for the individual Councillor.

All planning applications are published on the Council’s website and the public can get information about important events from the Council’s digital newsletter as well as the Council’s website.

I believe that Councillors of all political Groups do communicate with their residents and represent their issues to the best of their ability. Members do not always know of proposals before they reach the planning application stage and there are sometimes issues of commercial sensitivity in what they are able to share with their residents.