Council tax freeze pushed through by opposition parties

There will be a council tax freeze in Brighton and Hove in 2012/13 after the Conservatives supported a Labour amendment to the Green administration’s budget.

A lively and at times heated five hour debate ended at Brighton Town Hall as had been predicted, with the Tory group deciding to vote with Labour rather than seeing the Green plan to increase council tax by 3.5% passed.

The city will now receive a £3m grant from central government to subsidise the freeze, although the Greens had argued that this one-year offer will leave the council £3.6m short in 2013/14.

Labour were branded Blue Labour by Green councillors during the meeting and accused of forming a LabCon coalition, but it was the Conservatives who voted in favour of the Labour amendments.

As well as freezing council tax the other amendments to have been passed include reductions to the budgets of human resources and decentralised training and development.

The City News publication will also be scrapped, while the proposed increase of the cost of renting an allotment plot has been reduced.

The city’s mobile library may also now be saved, although Labour admit that partner agencies will be required to fully fund the project.

The amended budget was then passed by councillors from all parties, although after nine rounds of tedious recorded votes where by each councillor says ‘for’ or ‘against’ the proceedings seemed to get too much to Labour’s Craig Turton who appeared to faint and had to be taken to A&E.

For the record the budget was approved by 53 votes to 1 with the Green Party’s Cllr Alex Phillips the one to vote against. The Goldsmid ward councillor was particularly upset with Labour during her brief speech and gave Cllr Mitchell’s team a look of true disdain.

As the Conservative amendments were rejected it means the Bright Start nursery is safe having been identified for closure by the Tories once more, while the mayoral number plate CD1 will be sold, much to the fury of a number of Tory councillors.

Before the budget was put to the vote the vast majority of the 54 councillors had their say, although the outcome always felt like a foregone conclusion.

The Green Party councillors focused their anger on Labour and accused them of colluding with the Conservatives to produce near identical amendments and support the Tory government’s council tax freeze ‘gimmick’.

The Green leader-in-waiting, Cllr Jason Kitcat, who devised the budget as cabinet member for finance, branded Gill Mitchell‘s colleagues Blue Labour and he and his fellow Green councillors expressed their sadness at Labour’s perceived turn to the right.

Labour denied suggestions of secret deals and said the similarities were purely as a result of both parties having received similar advice from finance officers in the council.

The Tories said the Greens first year office had been wasted and dismissed their achievements, while former leader Mary Mears and former Mayor Carol Theobald described the budget as the worst they had ever seen.

While accusations of Labour and Tory collusion was the central issue the name calling and childish behaviour was most extreme between Tory and Green councillors.

In a debate over the sale of CD1, Councillor Lynda Hyde, who described the number plate as ‘historic’ and ‘much-loved’, dismissed the minority administration for only having two Brighton-born councillors, this prompted Cllr Ania Kitcat to later respond to say inclusion of people coming into Brighton had benefits, including the prevention of inbreeding – a comment which took everyone in the chamber by surprise.

Her husband Jason Kitcat later praised his wife for ‘rejecting xenophobic comments from Tory benches’.

The best joke of the night came from Cllr Ben Duncan, who when questioning the continued Conservative desire to scrap Bright Start nursery, suggested if one of the children from the centre had previously thrown up on Cllr Geoffrey Theobald‘s jag.

While the debate had its lighthearted moments there was real anger in the public gallery, including from a union member who feared for the future of his job as a result of cuts outlined in the Conservative amendments.

He and others heckled Cllr Ann Norman in particular as she demanded a reduction to funding for trade union facility time.

There was also plenty of anger directed at Labour’s councillors from their Green counterparts, but Labour leader Gill Mitchell stressed their support for the council tax freeze was as a result of what they were hearing from residents.

This often led to the poll in The Argus newspaper that showed 68% in support of the council tax freeze being highlighted as proof, although debate has raged as to what extent the question was loaded in favour of that answer and to whether much should be taken from the paper’s demographic.

However, the decision has been made and the Greens must now look forward to their second year in office with a budget they largely created, but the political mudslinging will intensify in 12 months time when the impact of the removed council tax subsidy will be fully understood.

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Posted by on February 23, 2012. Filed under Council News,Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry