Brighton and Hove is on the up says Cllr Bella Sankey

But though the pace of our frenetic city remains unchanged I think 2026 is going to be a good year for B-right-on: the city on the up where things are slowly changing for the better.

That was certainly the consensus view of residents last Saturday during my canvass of Westbourne  and Poets Corner. Like so many recent doorstep conversations, residents had noticed improvements – from Hove Beach Park  to food waste collections but people remain hungry for improvements in their quality of life and public services.

I spent a long time chatting to an NHS worker. She told me ‘she gets it’: that the years of Tory central government damage to public services takes time to repair, but she’s sick of lurching from one crisis response to the next and impatient for the NHS to be a preventative service rather than such an emergency service. It’s the same across the public sector.

While we are now seeing a real terms boost in central government funding under our Labour Government, the chickens of the Tory years are coming home to roost – increased homelessness, substance misuse challenges and more complex needs among our most vulnerable populations.

We will not shy away from grappling with the most challenging issues head on, as well as focussing on those everyday improvements that can improve quality of life for all. And already this year we’ve made a good start: over 900 ideas submitted to our Better Brighton and Hove consultation – putting power back in residents hands to identify priority improvements in every local area; a new city centre manager to drive improvements in how the centre of the city looks and feels; retaining our A grade on the world-wide list of cities for climate and nature leadership; and a win for our lobbying on pavement parking.

On the latter the Transport Minister, Lilian Greenwood MP wrote to me last week to say that the Government is responding positively to our request for the necessary powers to tackle pavement parking. This is a win for all those residents who have raised this with us, especially the impact this practice has on people living with sight-loss, mobility or sensory disabilities, older adults, parents with young children and anyone who relies on safe, accessible pavements to move around independently.

Your Labour council is never standing still and the new year has also seen us launch new junction improvements between Buckingham Place and Compton Avenue; commence the next phase of the Valley Gardens project, replacing the aquarium roundabout with smart traffic signals and launch a new consultation on community safety.

We’ve started placing communal food waste bins and thanks to pressure we’ve been applying for some time, vandalised phone boxes are stating to be removed – remember the one outside Greggs on North Street? It is no more!

In addition we’ve responded to the Government’s consultation on Local Government Reorganisation and last Wednesday I attended a community meeting hosted by the Saltdean Residents Community Association at St Martins in Saltdean to discuss our proposal alongside the leader of East Sussex County Council explaining theirs. I’m grateful to all those residents who have taken time to respond to the various  consultations that have taken place on this over the past year. I know it may seem never ending, but as someone who lives and breathes local government I have no doubt how important this process is and how vital it is we get it right. The Government’s consultation closed last Sunday and we now await their decision on the future shape of local Government across Sussex.

We also announced last week that we’ve signalled interest in a new government scheme to pilot local authorities taking responsibility for the housing of people seeking asylum, rather than the private firms that currently run the system and take huge amounts of money out of it in profit. Local authorities used to do this before the Tories privatised – and then broke – the system, squandering public money and leaving asylum seekers often in inappropriate and substandard accommodation. Under government plans, they would provide additional funding to local authorities to make more residential housing available so that people seeking asylum can be housed properly. Over time this housing would then remain under local authority control meaning that homes can be used to house local resident households too. It’s this kind of practical, common sense and win-win policy making that will mean over 2026 people start to see the benefits that Labour in power, nationally and locally, makes.

Cllr Bella Sankey is the Labour Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council