End of Term Report for the 2011-15 Brighton & Hove Green-led administration

30 April 2015

The Brighton & Hove Green Group of Councillors have unveiled their End of Term Report – ‘What have the Greens done for Brighton & Hove?’. The report was released at a press event on Thursday 23^rd April, 2pm, at the MacLaren Pavilion on the Level in central Brighton.

 

The 44-page report lists 189 achievements for the city during the last four years of the first Green-led local authority in the UK.

 

Cllr Jason Kitcat, Green leader of the City Council during 2012-15, said:

 

“We have delivered on over 85% of our 2011 manifesto pledges and have achieved a huge amount for this city to be proud of, in spite of being a minority administration, faced with four successive years of unprecedented cuts in government funding.

 

• We’ve brought in around £98million in additional funding for numerous projects which have helped to improve parks like The Level and Stanmer Park, bring empty homes back into use, repair the broken seafront arches, make walking and cycling safer and more attractive and bus services more efficient, reliable and less polluting.
• We’ve unlocked long held-up regeneration and development projects, like the i360, Circus Street, Preston Barracks, King Alfred  and Waterfront projects, bringing substantial additional investment to the city, while also enhancing London Road and Lewes Road
• We’ve resolved the long-standing inequalities between council employees working in predominantly male staffed services like Cityclean, compared to those employing mostly female staff.
• We’ve introduced the Living Wage for council staff and supported its uptake by over 200 other local employers.
• We’ve opened up council decision-making with a radically more transparent budget-setting process and a committee system which ensures all the political parties can play a full part in council business”

 

“The Green administration has been visionary and ambitious on behalf of residents, while never forgetting our place in the wider world and the environmental challenges that we all face into the future.”

 

Kitcat added: “Given the likely ongoing austerity policies of central government, the next four years will be extremely difficult for any incoming administration. Our legacy has been one of fairness, regeneration a thriving local economy and One Planet thinking and that’s why we believe the Greens can and should be entrusted with another four years to carry on this good work”.

 

As a light-hearted accompaniment to the report, Cllr Leo Littman has produced a comic video sketch called ‘What have the Greens ever done for us?’ Based on the famous “What have the Romans… ” scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, it features a fictional hustings event where opposition parties are reminded by their audience of the long list of improvements delivered under the Green administration. It’s better if you see the real thing, available on YouTube at:

https://youtu.be/Qy22B-n7IrE or at:  http://s.coop/greens4us

 

Cllr Litmann said: “I believe humour can help get a serious message across, and thought I'd add a bit of comedy to the facts and figures. When I sat down to figure out how to do that, the famous scene from ‘Monty Python’s: Life of Brian’ came to mind. So, with a lot of help from a lot of excellent people, I made: ‘What have the Greens ever done for us?’”