Council leader tells opposition: '˜We must work together on budget'

Cllr Warren Morgan, the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council

The leader of the city council signalled his willingness to work with other parties on passing the budget ahead of tonight's crunch meeting (February 23).

As Labour leads the council with a minority administration, it needs the support of the Green or Conservative councillors to get its budget through - and last year it took more than six hours to thrash out an agreement.

But this year, Cllr Warren Morgan said Labour would carefully consider the nine budget amendments put forward by opposition parties.

He said: “We are grateful to the opposition for engaging with the budget process and putting forward some amendments. We are looking really closely at them and we will support the ones we can support.

Hove Town Hall, where the budget will be set tonight

“This has got to be a collaborative effort if we are going to meet this challenge.”

He pointed out that ‘the amount of money covered by the nine proposed amendments is less than £2 million - about one per cent of the budget’.

The council’s budget for the next financial year (2017/18) will go before councillors tonight (Thursday), with plans to increase council tax by five per cent, and cut council spending by £21 million.

Cllr Morgan said the council must make the cuts in the face of rising adult social care cuts and reducing government grants.

Demo against youth service cuts by Brighton and Hove City Council (Photograph courtesy of Brighton and Hove News) SUS-171001-151700001

“We as a sector have reached a critical point,” he said.

The most controversial cut in the budget is the £700,000 cut to the youth service budget.

Cllr Morgan said: “Obviously youth services is the big issue in this budget. Inevitably taking that money, it is going to have some impact and it is going to cause some change.”

There are also plans to axe 300 council staff (around ten per cent of the council’s workforce) - with half of the posts deleted, and the other half transferred to other companies.

Defending the budget, Cllr Morgan said the £21m savings are largely made up of ‘efficiencies, investment, and redesigning services’, and the budget had sought to minimise service and job cuts.

But next year (2018/19) the council will have to find £15m in savings, with a further £11m the following year (2019/20).

“There are now no easy cuts or simple solutions,” Cllr Morgan said.

Tories table six amendments to council’s budget

Reducing the cuts to the youth service and increasing respite funding for families with disabled children will be on the top of the Conservative agenda at tonight’s budget meeting.