Labour's contract with Brighton and Hove

Brighton and Hove Labour today launched its contract with the people of Brighton and Hove - its statement of what it will deliver in office. 

The Contract was launched by Brighton and Hove Labour Group leader Warren Morgan, accompanied by forty Labour councillors and candidates, including Labour's Preston Park candidates Kevin Allen, Julie Cattell and Neil Schofield (pictured below)

Labour Group Leader Warren Morgan (centre, holding contract) with Preston Park Labour candidates Kevin Allen, Julie Cattell and Neil Schofield at this evening's launch

The contract sets out ten points, encapsulating Labour's goals - better jobs, more homes, excellent schools and decent basic services; and Labour's values - fairness, sustainability and competence.

If you elect Labour councillors at the local elections next May:

• We will make collecting refuse, increasing recycling and cleaning the streets a top council priority. The Leader and senior councillors will directly oversee work to improve the service. 

• We will commit to tackle the city’s housing crisis, aiming to build at least 500 council houses by 2019, and securing 40% affordable homes in new housing developments. 

• We will consult on introducing a register of landlords to protect tenants in the private rented sector, promote secure tenancies and tackle rip-off fees through a Tenant’s’ Charter. 

• We will build a new secondary school to meet the growing need for places across the city, and it will be run by the council under powers restored by a Labour government.

• We will work to ensure all schools are accountable and offer excellent education. 

• We will aim to keep any increases in council tax and parking charges within inflation-level rises, with additional income invested in public services, road safety and transport infrastructure that the city needs and residents want. 

• We will establish a Fairness Commission to tackle the growing poverty and inequality in the city, independently chaired, reporting within a year and funded within existing budgets, to set out an action plan for the Labour Administration and partner organisations to implement. 

• We will work to support a broad, sustainable and prosperous economy that benefits all parts of the city, with secure jobs paying the Living Wage and action to combat zero-hours contracts. There will be innovative proposals in our manifesto to help small and medium sized businesses in the city. 

• We will ensure that major projects that are built in Brighton and Hove offer jobs, homes and new facilities for the city, are affordable, are rigorously scrutinised and are delivered on time with private investment not taxpayer debt. 

• We will seek to eliminate youth unemployment in the city within four years, with real apprenticeships and career opportunities for young people. 

• We will aim to keep public services local and democratically accountable, with power devolved to communities. 

• Sustainability and Co-operative principles will run through the solutions we develop to meet the funding challenges we face.

250 days to go: Warren Morgan sets out Labour's priorities for Brighton and Hove

With only 250 days to go until Brighton and Hove's electors go to the polls to elect a new Council, Labour Group Leader Warren Morgan has set out the five key priorities for the administration on his blog.

A winning team for Brighton and Hove - Brighton Pavilion Labour Candidate Purna Sen and Council Labour Group leader Warren Morgan

Warren wrote:

Our manifesto will be published in the early Spring, but a labour council under my leadership will:

• make cleaning the streets, collecting the rubbish and increasing recycling a corporate priority for the city council. Our refuse and recycling service Cityclean will stay in-house, and management of the service will become the responsibility of the Policy and Resources Committee chaired by the Leader of the Council.  

• tackle poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity in the city through a wide-ranging Fairness Commission. Independently chaired and paid for through existing budgets, it will bring together all existing measures and look at what other steps can be taken to tackle low-pay, less secure employment, poor housing and any other factors that limit the opportunities of the more than ten thousand people in Brighton and Hove in poverty, of whom more than four thousand are using food banks to feed their families. In the seventh richest economy in the world and in the richest region in the UK that is a disgrace. 

• boost the economy to the benefit of all, not just a few in the city centre, ensure all young people have access to education, training, apprenticeships and employment opportunities no matter what part of the city they live in. We cannot afford to waste their potential.  

• seek to address the housing and secondary school places shortfalls that will become crises in the next four years, including looking at regulating landlords and the private rented sector to the benefit of tenants. We will have to face the growing costs of social care and find new and better ways of delivering quality care that we can afford through better procurement and in close co-operation with our trades union partners.  

• meet the challenge of adapting to the £100 million in cuts imposed by the Government by working with local voluntary sector, business, community and co-operative sector partners to keep services local, accountable and deliverable where they cannot be kept in-house. We should not, in my view, be spending city council money buying in services from outside the city and losing the value of that spend from the city’s economy. Other Labour authorities, including those in the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network, have developed innovative solutions to cuts in funding. Where there is ageing infrastructure we need to find investment; where there are major projects we need to ensure that decent jobs, affordable homes and real apprenticeships are delivered as part of the package.

These aims are in line with my values, with Labour values of fairness, of supporting those in poverty, of promoting opportunity for all, of making our city and all of our communities a better place to live. Much of this will need the support of a Labour Government elected on the same day. If you share those values and goals then work with us, join us and support our campaign to win in 2015.

Warren emphasised the important of not just electing a Labour Council. but returning three Labour MPs across the city who can make a real difference in Government, and deliver the changes we need at Westminster to support our administration in Brighton and Hove.  Preston Park's Labour candidates, Kevin Allen, Julie Cattell and Neil Schofield will be working tirelessly between now and May to make Warren's vision a reality and to secure Purna Sen's election as MP for Brighton Pavilion.

Brighton hosts fact-finding visit from shadow Minister for preventing violence against women

The Labour Party has announced that Seema Malhotra MP has been appointed Shadow Minister with specific responsibility for preventing violence againt women - the first time a Shadow Minister has been tasked with this role.  Ed Miliband said the appointment demonstrates the importance Labour attaches to eliminating violence against women and girls.

A few days before hand, she visited Brighton to visit RISE, the local service provider for women and children experiencing violence.  She was accompanied by Labour's Brighton Pavilion PPC, Purna Sen, who is a trustee of RISE and has spent decades campaigning to stop violence against women, both  in the UK and internationally, and is an acknowledged authority on the issue.

Purna Sen and Seema Malhotra MP with Rise chief executive Gail Gray during the visit (picture: Brighton and Hove Independent)

Commenting on the visit, Dr Sen told the Brighton and Hove Independent:

“I offer my profound gratitude to the immensely-strong women who came to share their stories. They told us that they wanted their trauma to be useful in preventing the same happening to other women and their children.

“Though I have been working against violence against women for over 20 years – in war, in peace, in the UK and abroad – I am moved and angered every time I hear that women have been failed and my resolve to continue fighting this scourge is strengthened. I thank Seema for coming to Brighton for her first listening exercise in her new role.“

Office

During her visit to Brighton, Ms Malhotra found time to open the new Labour campaign office in Brighton Pavilion - at 179 Preston Road in the heart of the Preston Park Ward.  As well as cutting the ribbon she discussed local and national issues with Labour candidates and campaigners, including Preston Park Labour candidates Julie Cattell and Neil Schofield.

Seema Malhotra MP cuts the ribbon on Brighton Pavilion Labour's new office at 177 Preston Road

Seema Malhotra MP with Purna Sen and Labour activists from across the Brighton Pavilion constituency

Seema Malhotra MP and Purna Sen with Labour councillors and candidates from across the Pavilion constituency, including Preston Park's Julie Cattell (far left) and Neil Schofield (back row, second from right)

Purna Sen launches her 2015 Election Campaign

Labour activists and members from across the city - including Preston Park's three Labour Council Candidates Kevin Allen, Julie Cattell and Neil Schofield, and party members from the ward - gathered in central Brighton on Tuesday 15th July for the official launch of Dr Purna Sen's campaign as Labour Parliamentary candidate for the Brighton Pavilion constituency in the 2015 General Election.

Guest speakers included Sue Marsh - author of Diary of a Benefit Scrounger; former Brighton Pavilion Labour MP David Lepper; and Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

Harriet Harman spoke powerfully of the social effects of coalition policy - especially the bedroom tax - and pointed out that a future Labour Government needs Purna Sen's experience of effecting real change on the national and international stage in Parliament.  Sue Marsh commented that the election of another Tory-led Government would be the final nail in the coffin for the welfare state that Labour created after 1945, while Purna spoke of her passionate personal commitment to social justice and equality.