The salary for Brighton and Hove City Council's new Chief Executive is reportedly to be £120,000, in addition to the £100,000 which the council is paying to a private company to recruit the person.

Many council workers will be thinking about what could be done with that £220,000.

We could employ half a dozen social workers to fill some of the 20 posts deleted by our Labour council.

This sum could go a long way towards the cost of refurbishing Knoll House, so the threat of closure or privatisation could be lifted.

Or we could use the money to re-stock or re-equip some of our branch libraries.

Unison is the largest union in the UK and, last week, held its national delegate conference in Brighton.

Opinion poll evidence shows more than 80 per cent of the public is opposed to further privatisation of public services, compared to the 25 per cent of the population who voted Labour.

As our general secretary said, Labour has no mandate for further privatisation and we will fight the Government all the way.

Unison also decided to think again about the money it hands over to the Labour Party.

More and more trade union members working in the public sector are asking themselves why their unions continue to hand funds over to a party whose aims and values are now so opposed to their own.

-Andy Richards, chairman, Brighton and Hove Unison, Town Hall, Brighton