Agenda item - Chair's Communications

29.1      The Chair provided the following communications:

Last month Cllr Nancy Platts announced that she will be shortly standing down as leader of the Labour Group at Brighton & Hove City Council.  Cllr Platts cannot be here today but she has served this Board, both as Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council and Leader of the Opposition, and the Board thanks her for her contribution over the last few years. In her place today we have Cllr John Allock.

Earlier in the spring Coast to Capital invited partners across the LEP region so prepare and submit expressions of interest regarding projects that needed financial support to get off of the ground.  A number of projects were put forward from the Greater Brighton region including a proposal for the emerging inward investment desk, a hydrogen bus conversion scheme and a Healthy Futures Accelerator.  These projects are all aimed at supporting the region grow back stronger from the Covid pandemic, and many are strongly linked into green recovery.  The variety in these projects shows what a diverse and ambitious region Greater Brighton is, and we look forward to seeing how these bids progress over the coming months.  A full list of the projects will be outlined in the Recovery item later in the agenda

Work on projects within the Greater Brighton Investment Programme has continued at pace as demonstrated in the quarterly updates on each Board agenda. I am pleased to report that the Eastside South in Newhaven has recently completed. Eastside South is one of the eight key strategic sites within the Newhaven Enterprise Zone.  The completed project provides just under 8,000 square metres of new commercial floor-space and all of the units within the site are now let.

29.2      On behalf of the Board, Councillor Mac Cafferty expressed thanks to the Chair stating that in his years term, he had acted fairly with a focus on the entire Grater Brighton region.