Happy New Year to all our residents across Brighton and Hove and I hope that however you celebrated everyone managed to have some restful, peaceful, time over the festive break.

We hosted lots of family and I got stuck into cooking and baking with the whole experience very much sponsored by Baileys (on ice!).

I love our city at this time of year. The magic of the Pavilion ice rink, the joy of the Santa Bus, the Christmas lights on Amberley Drive and Thornbush Crescent and the way our unique independent shops and artists become treasure troves of present ideas and seasonal inspiration.

Every year of my adult life I’ve done a frantic present dash around town on Christmas Eve and this year – once I was fully recovered from Covid – was no different.

I believe 2023 was a year of mixed fortune for our city. Our beloved football club qualified for the Europa League and finished the year with a strong run, qualifying for the knockout stages of the League and thrashing Spurs at home in an electrifying Premier League game.

We also elected our first Labour majority administration for the first time in over 20 years – an historic win and an opportunity to make our city fairer and better and to deliver on the promise and reputation of Brighton and Hove.

However, now nearly 14 years into continuous Tory rule at Westminster, the wheels are well are truly off and the combined impact of their austerity economics and the Tories’ self-serving style of politics are being felt deeply in our city.

Food bank use in Brighton and Hove is at unprecedented levels and we’ve been seeing up to 50 households a week presenting as homeless. With inequality and poverty growing, so too does mental health breakdown, addiction, crime and antisocial behaviour.

The Tories have tanked the economy so spectacularly, the Resolution Foundation reported last month that this will be the first Parliament on record where living standards will have fallen. British households are projected to be £1,200 poorer going into the General Election 2024 than 2019.

I’m excited and optimistic about Labour’s opportunity to win in 2024. We are not complacent and following the scale of our defeat in 2019, we know we have to work hard to win every vote.

Locally, in our first six months in office we’ve set out to deliver on local priorities. We’ve rescued our in-year financial position from the bankrupting Green-set budget we inherited; we’ve driven a marked improvement in the reliability of rubbish and recycling collections; re-opened public toilets; restored our lifeguard service and persuaded Southern Water to fund year-round testing of our sea-water. In 2024 we have graffiti and weeds in our sights.

We’ve taken action on air quality by expanding data collection, clamping down on engine-idling, bidding for funding to electrify the number 7 bus route, and developing plans to enforce our smoke control areas. We’re developing a much more coherent approach to achieving net zero by 2030, focusing on system-level decarbonisation rather than eye-catching pet projects favoured by the Greens.

In housing we’re bringing in new enforcement powers to fine rogue landlords who don’t make necessary improvements to private rented accommodation; we’re consulting on a new landlord licensing scheme to drive up standards in the private rented sector and we’re conducting a review of the impact rent controls would have on affordability in Brighton and Hove.

We’ve tendered for the first phase of our Madeira Terrace restoration project which will see the first 28 arches restored, and a new lift and stairway created as well as re-greening the Green Wall.

We’ve also accelerated the timetable to rebuild the King Alfred leisure centre in Hove to ensure the city has a high-quality, accessible and sustainable leisure facility. The construction of the first new park in the city in 100 years is now well under way on eest Hove seafront and we’re also developing a new softplay facility at Withdean.

We’re consulting on a new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls and have taken action to prioritise domestic abuse survivors in housing allocation. We’re also consulting on a landmark proposal to give priority to free school meal applicants in secondary school admissions, the first council in England and Wales to propose this policy and this has been widely welcomed by educationalists and think tanks nationally.

We’ve reaffirmed our commitment to be a City of Sanctuary and we took the Tory government to court and won over their scandalous policy to abandon child refugees in a hotel in Hove.
With this new year comes an opportunity to win a Labour government in Westminster.

Your Labour council working in tandem with a Labour government could transform our city and country, giving Britain and Brighton its future back.