Uniting the City

Written by Councillor Paul Elgood and published in GScene on Fri 1st Oct 2004

The appointment of a new Chief Executive is a watershed for the City Council. We wish David Panter well for the future, however getting the new appointment right is critical.

The key priorities for the incoming Chief Executive are complex. It would be too easy, and indeed naive, to limit my comments to just LGBT issues as clearly the Chief Executive has many pressing matters in his or her in-tray and it would be foolish to concentrate on just one of these areas. However, the key LGBT issues which must be addressed include the commissioning of HIV and sexual health services, greater leadership from the City Council on community safety issues and action to properly redevelop the gay Village and pump serious funds into the St James's Street area to finally address the needs of the area and its businesses.

In the wider context, the Chief Executive must get the City Council working again. For a number of years the City Council has been walking a financial tightrope. The key question has to be how the new appointee will finish the processes of modernising the City Council, with the aim of balancing the budget. The supplementary to this question is how then, with such pressures on the Council's finances, will the new Chief Executive improve the delivery of quality and cost effective services for residents. Many residents currently feel that they pay significant amounts of Council Tax and see little value for money in return.

The next significant area is how they will unite the City. The Chief Executive needs to be the leader who brings the City's diverse and mixed communities together, as they are the person who can lead the change process through the functions of the City Council. As Chair of the Equalities Forum I am currently meeting with a wide mix of community groups and they all have one thing in common - they feel alienated from the Council. This must change and we need a Chief Executive who will lead this process.

We don't think it is enough just to appointment, say a Liaison Officer for the LGBT community - yes that should be there - but we need leadership from the top and a organisation-wide approach. This must be done at a senior level, led from the top by someone at least of Director level and not just at an 'officer' level which could be seen as a bolt-on gimmick without real power to ensure change.

In a similar vein, the new Chief Executive needs to look again at how the Council directly communicates, consults and involves local communities and residents. At the moment we have an arms length Council which is afraid to properly engage its residents. Let alone listen to them. The new Chief Executive needs to completely turn the way the Council operates on its ahead and make it an all encompassing organisation.

Finally, the Chief Executive must start to look at the ingredients the City needs to become a truly great European City. The next decade provides Brighton and Hove with a golden opportunity to move ahead of the other UK cities and properly become an international destination with a reputation to match those of San Francisco or Sydney.