Verdict on the first few months of Brighton & Hove's Green Council

As people start drifting away for their summer breaks, the dust is settling on the first three months of Brighton & Hove's new minority Green Council. Now the fake war of words around protest camps in the city and the petty politiking around Traveller encampments has died down, we have started seeing the emergence of real issues that will make or break this Council. Speaking with Councillors, watching streamed Council meetings and following the twists and turns of debate between our political opponents and the local media, we can already see the contours of battles ahead that hold both promise and warnings for my colleagues.

In the last few weeks, we have had some real cause for celebration. The Council is now intending to bring forward the introduction of a living wage for it's own workers and establishing a Living Wage Commission for Brighton & Hove to examine the opportunties and challenges in rolling this out across the public, private and third sector in the city. With rising inequality hitting women and the vulnerable more savagely as the national cuts bite, this is a discernable step forward and a rallying call for what Greens can achieve if given political authority.

Work is moving forward on a number of other crucial fronts, such as a new city-wide climate change plan, an increase in house building and a re-examination of our strategy for the South Downs. The latter change could be one of the more lasting achievements of the Green Council and I would encourage the Cabinet not to take their eye off the ball here. Alongside good governance, it will be essential for us to have flagship, visible and lasting policy successes to our name by 2015. Linking up our new National Park more robustly with the city has the potential for expanding our attractiveness as a tourist destination for new audiences away from the city centre, bringing revenue and jobs to the outer wards. Broadening accessibility, infrastructure and communicating this well are essential pre-requisites for making this work, but could serve to secure our reputation as the green capital of the UK.

The other positive improvement we are already seeing to the work of our Council is that consultation and participation are now definitely key elements to our work. With each announcement from the Green Cabinet, we are hearing a great deal about how we will be consuting more widely with community groups, unions, business and third sector organisations. If we are to achieve policy changes in Brighton that stick, we need to be basing our decisions on informed debate with the community. So far our record has not been without it's missteps, but there does seem to be a sea-change from the approach taken by our precedessors. As a new administration with limited experience in running a Council, this strategy doesn't hurt us either, because the process will throw up potential political problems at quite an early stage of discussion.

So, where are the problems? We are now at the mercy of our manifesto and public statements before the local elections. The realities of holding power mean that with the best intention in the world, there will be times when we need to take a different route to that publicised earlier. The charge that we will continue to hear, at least for the next 12 months or so, is that we fought on a platform of resisting all cuts. I'm seeing this regularly thrown back in the face of the Cabinet during meetings as the detail starts to emerge of how the Council budget is balanced. The truth is very clear. In our city-wide GreenLeaf newspaper, we explicitly promised to "Resist to the greatest extent possible, Government cuts" and talked of areas that we could cut without hitting front-line services. This was echoed in our Alternative Budget, which clearly laid out areas where funding would need to cut in order to protect front-line services for children, older people and the vulnerable.

We need to challenge this distortion every time it is uttered by our opponents. Common sense, let alone the written evidence, dictates that we need to still balance a budget with more limited resources. We have our local MP, Caroline Lucas, fighting the cuts on the national stage - the Green Council needs to blunt the impact from voters as much as we can. Two areas that we haven't started tackling yet are our pledges to cut £0.7M of management costs from senior Council Officer roles (especially as this funding was earmarked to go back into Connexions) and the cutting of Councillor allowances. Whilst I personally support decent Councillor allowances, so that running for these elected positions are practical options to more than just the independently wealthy, I am nervous that a lack of movement on these points is leaving us open to charges of acting in self-interest once in power. Politically, this is especially dangerous right now.

I've been impressed with the leadership shown by our new Council Leader, Bill Randall and the command of detail shown by Jason Kitcat as Cabinet Member for Finance and Central Services. In these initial months, it has been essential to have credible figures fronting the Cabinet during a difficult transition. That they have managed to do so with grace and good humour is to their credit. Whilst other members of the Cabinet have taken to their new roles with real confidence and energy, there is the impression from some that they are still finding their feet and are uncertain in their portfolios.

The summer break will give a short respite, but we need everyone firing on all cylinders by autumn, because I have no doubt a savvy opposition will start targeting weaker performers once they have had time to regroup. The Conservatives are already going for the jugular in a particularly unsubtle way, with regular digs at our naivety or lapsed pledges. Labour are playing a better, more dangerous game. Gill Mitchell is taking a consensual, team-player attitude and raising opposition to our policies without rancour, always putting the low paid first. Taken together, this will be a potent mix and could cause problems for the unwary.

Overall then, a strong beginning from the Green Council, with several of our key manifesto pledges inching closer to being fulfilled and the outlines of a strong distinctive policy offer to the public. This is tempered with a need to keep mindful of our flank on some lesser manifesto pledges and internal support to less confident Cabinet members. Yet that said, there has never been a more exciting time to be a Green Party member!

Big Brother is watching: scrutinising our elected representatives

At the risk of looking like an incredible political geek, I wanted to share something that I have found particularly fascinating in the last few weeks: the webcasting of Brighton & Hove Council meetings. Who am I kidding? Regular readers already know I'm beyond keen in using technology to open up politics!

Since December of last year, key council meetings, such as cabinet, planning and scrutiny meetings have been streamed on a live basis and are then available as an archive. Agendas, the contributions of individual speakers and associated documentation are also searchable. At a stroke, this move flips the relationship between electing and elected - no longer are we placed in the position of passively asking for information from the powerful and informed. In this new world, voters have it at their disposal if they choose to find it.

This shift has the potential to revolutionise our ability to hold elected representatives to account. A consistent voter frustration with Council meetings has been that they generally need to be held during core working hours, limiting the ability of most voters to attend. This change crucially brings Council business further into the lives of those individuals with limited mobility.

Whilst the new system is not exhaustive in coverage of all meetings, I am impressed with the steps taken by the previous Conservative Council to truly open themselves up to the public eye. Knowing how strongly my Green Councillor colleagues feel about increasing transparency in public life, I am eager to see how they will build upon this strong foundation in their term in office. Publicising this service more broadly would be an excellent first step.

More than before, now that my local party holds the balance of power on the Council, I'm finding this invaluable in informing me about the major local decisions my colleagues are wrestling with. Additionally, it provides a unique insight and opportunity to scrutinise the priorities and performance of our elected representatives away from the glare of election campaigns.

A single month into our new Council, I'll keep my opinions to myself regarding individual performances, but these webcasts are fundamentally shaping my views about the politicians in the city, both external to and within my own party. I would encourage you to check if your Council is doing something similar. If not, I can't recommend this highly enough, especially for those interested in standing for public office, shaping local political policy or keen to hold politicians accountable. Believe me, it's an eye opener!

Green opponents show their cards as Brighton issues take centre-stage

Forget the honeymoon period - Brighton's Green Council is already under sustained scrutiny and attack by the other political parties in the city. They haven't wasted time on such small formalities as an analysis of their own performance at the local elections, they have gone straight to attack mode.

Already, the fault lines are becoming apparent and there are both positive and troubling implications for us in them. The most damning argument is that as a Council, we are dangerously inexperienced and that by appointing new Councillors straight in the Cabinet, we are risking burn-out, or more worryingly, missing something serious in our duty of care to the city. It is worth being mindful of this view, even though I have every faith in our Cabinet. As a non-Councillor, I wasn't party to the decision-making process that appointed our Cabinet, but I would have made the case for inclusion of more existing Councillors with proven track records in this initial year. The workload and level of commitment expected from our elected representatives both inspires and intimidates in equal measure and the culture shock for our new representatives is not to be underestimated. As a local party, we should find more ways to support those colleagues taking the highest burden.

Where the other parties are letting themselves down is that by pushing this quite so gleefully, it comes across suspiciously like sour grapes and carping from the sidelines. This can only serve to paint them as career politicians, more concerned with position than putting misgivings aside and contributing for the good of the city. That said, we cannot rely upon the patience of the electorate indefinitely to cut us slack.

In the month since the Greens took office, two issues in particular have flared up with the potential to damage our reputation quite quickly. This has been our response to traveller encampments on the outskirts of the city and the establishment of a protest camp in the Old Steine, one of the most conspicuous locations in the city. In both instances, the Greens have worked hard with both the groups and the local authorities and behaved in an even-handed and responsible manner. The response from the Conservatives has been to scaremonger that we are making the city a "laboratory" for our social experiments and that we are not speaking up for the majority. Just reading Councillor Ben Duncan's statement on the subject gives the lie to that assertion.

However, they are succeeding to a degree in dragging us into the mire on two "minority" issues and keeping press attention away from the more sound policies, such as our commitment to increase house-building dramatically, review transport policies for the city and the agreement yesterday to install solar panels on all Council-owned buildings.

We need to ensure that we get a clear line on why we support right to protest and how we are approaching the policing of such protest in the city and hammer it home each time we speak to the press. The narrative we are beginning to hear is that our inexperience and focus on fringe issues will make the city less productive and attractive to live in. We need sharp headline retorts to these criticism that strike a moderate balance and stay true to our values of supporting free speech and movement. Wherever possible, we need to reiterate that important though these issues are, we are working to a bigger vision that will benefit and transform the whole city.

Building Green success: The route-map to 2015 (part 3)

Throughout this week, I've been focussing on the fresh political landscape in Brighton and Hove. Whilst the UK is living through some of the most challenging financial circumstances in the last twenty years, those of us here on the coast are entertaining hopes that over the next four years, the Greens can forge a beacon of good governance and an inspiring alternative to politics as usual.

However, this historic opportunity leaves us with a great responsibility to prove that we can be trusted with holding power. Our performance here will have implications for the Green Party's reputation across the country. We can already sense that the national media and our opponents will be quick to use our leadership stance and policies here to extrapolate about the party as a whole, for good or ill.

I believe that to make this term of office a success, we need to identify a strong narrative for what we are hoping to achieve and communicate this relatively swiftly, so that voters feel able to measure us against it. In the current circumstances, we should not over-commit and aim for a series of incremental improvements to the city that leave it a more prosperous and unified place.

For me, the main achievement of a first term in office will be to persuade voters that we can be trusted to pay due respect to the core issues that matter to people. We need to ensure we focus as much on these "bread and butter" issues as the green priorities we have strong credentials upon. Ideally, we should be knitting these together to deliver on multiple outcomes at once.

So what are the main issues of importance for residents in the city? Simple. I think our principal focus has to be upon job creation and retention. Critical to this will be placing the Council's weight behind small businesses, to build an enabling environment within which they can flourish. On the expansion of green jobs, I noticed in response to one of my earlier posts, Ben Ramalingam argued for the active promotion of a commercial green network and to capacity-build these businesses in the Sussex area. We need to assess what our principal industries consist of and identify the extent to which these networks already exist for them. If not, we must take a role in convening these conversations so we become leading hubs of activity and market leaders in the country. I sincerely believe that this is an area where we can work productively with the other political parties as well as the business community

Alongside this, we need to stand firm on our principles that require the Council budget to be re-examined to try and avoid cuts to front-line public services. More than any other party, we stand on the side of the disadvantaged and those most likely to suffer the impact of our greatly reduced settlement from central government. That's why recent talk from the Greens about participatory budgeting and opening up the Council more to the public can only help accountability. You can only argue that "we are in it together" if you genuinely level with the public and propose solutions together in an accountable fashion.

The other area of great concern to residents has been the lack of new housing and the number of empty properties not being put to good use. Only 380 new homes were built here in the last year and this number is nearly half of the previous year. Already, the signs are strong that the new Green Council will reverse this and are aiming for at least 1,000 homes to be built in the next year. It is heartening that the new Leader of the Council and both of his Deputies have professional experience in housing, architecture and planning. I have no doubt this will remain high on their agenda.

What I believe the Green Party can offer Brighton and Hove is to bring all elements of the community into a pragmatic and honest conversation about the future. Our reputation as reasonable outsiders sits well with the view many Brightonians hold of themselves: cosmopolitan, moderate, yet iconoclastic. Perhaps we finally have a Council that can truly represent and articulate Brighton's unique identity?

Building Green Success: Launching Brighton's new Council (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I started my analysis of the transformed political context in Brighton & Hove following the local elections. As our direct competition for centre-left votes, I explored the implications for Labour of our success and cautioned our supporters not to view the result as a repudiation of that party. Labour's approach in the last two weeks has been measured and publicly respectful, however differently their activists may feel privately. Already, I sense an effective pincer movement between their reasoned opposition and the aggressive denunciation of our policies that the local Conservatives are conducting via the local press. We need to quickly find a voice that responds to their challenges and talks over their heads direct to the voters.

Which is why the right choice of Council cabinet is an essential pre-requisite for us to set the tone for the next four years. We announced the first Green cabinet late last week and whilst I have a couple of minor reservations, I am pleased with both the individuals announced and how they have begun to conduct themselves in their first statements on policy.

Bill Randall, our first Leader of the Council, alongside Amy Kennedy and Ian Davey as Deputy Leaders, have an established track record in leading the Green Group of councillors locally over the last couple of years. As well as a strong overview on the key issues facing the city, they are genuinely pragmatic team-players who have maintained respectful and constructive relationships with other political parties. They command respect amongst the local party and are also known as strong advocates for their constituents, regardless of party affiliation.

Amongst the remaining members of the Cabinet, we have a good mix of those councillors with direct experience of political office, alongside newcomers who have been brought forward due to their professional and private experience with particular portfolio areas. This is a sound foundation to work from. Promisingly, I know of several of our "backbench" councillors who could also do a fantastic job in these positions. I hope this first year in office provides these councillors with opportunities to shadow and assist those in the Cabinet - it won't hurt to nurture the largest pool of talent for the Green Group to select from over the course of this Council session.

One issue that is achieving some traction in the blogosphere is the notion that our cabinet could be more gender balanced - I have some sympathy with that view and would call upon the Green Council to ensure that their policies are impact-assessed to ensure that women, children and the vulnerable are not disproportionately affected by the austerity measures we are being placed under. I would also challenge my local party to bring equal representation to bear as a preferred approach in the future.

Later this week, in my final article of this series, I'll be looking at the key political issues facing the city, share my views on how the Green Council should consider tackling them and give thought to the broader narrative we should be building during our time in office.