9:49am Thursday 19th November 2009
Brighton and Hove has slipped a position in the annual rankings of Britain’s most eco friendly cities.
It has been ranked third overall in the Forum for the Future’s 2009 Sustainable Cities Index.
The rating marks a slip for the city from second place last year and first in 2007.
Brighton and Hove City Council yesterday said the drop was down to a new scoring system being introduced.
The new table ranks Newcastle first, up from fourth in 2008, and Bristol second, down from first.
David Mason, from Forum for the Future, said: “The three were very close together.”
He said Brighton’s poorer performance was due to the city having the worst ecological footprint, the amount of land required to provide each person with food, transport, housing, goods and services.
Leicester was placed fourth and London fifth.
Ayas Fallon-Khan, Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet member for sustainability, said the city could have finished top under the old evaluation system.
He said: “We’re really pleased to still be in such a high place but disappointed because they have shifted the goalposts.”
He said Brighton had been marked down because of two key changes – measuring bus journey times instead of customer satisfaction and rating the number of Green Flag parks per 100,000 people instead of residents’ views of the city’s green spaces.
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