Much has happened in 2014 to put Brighton & Hove on the map. After working with our neighbouring areas – including councils, universities and businesses – we won ‘City Deal’ status from government, bringing millions of pound of investment to our Greater Brighton region. This includes government funds to upgrade the facilities for technology and digital businesses at New England House.
We’ve worked very closely with the Coast 2 Capital Local Enterprise Partnership and Wired Sussex to win a number of big investments from government and Europe. Particularly close to my heart was winning a Digital Catapult Centre for Brighton.
In the summer we were also named the third best city in the country for small and medium sized businesses to grow, and we had record visitor numbers of 10m people coming to the city. We hope to keep growing that number having started work on building the iconic i360 observation tower and begun the process of building a new world-class conference centre as part of the ‘Brighton Waterfront’ project.
We won the City of the Year Award in Europe, for our work on sustainable travel. Figures this year showed that the number of people killed and injured on our city streets had fallen – meaning our work to improve travel safety is paying off.
This year we also opened two new libraries at Woodingdean and Mile Oak, creating new community hubs for residents to access books and the Internet at a time when most other councils are closing them. We also pioneered, with Sussex Police and Rise, drop-in domestic violence surgeries in council customer service centres.
I started chairing the Health & Wellbeing Board this year, which was significantly reformed to bring together health and council colleagues together on an equal footing for the first time.
2014 has not been without its challenges, but 2015 brings opportunities to address them. Council officers are working on redesigning the refuse and recycling department to give residents an improved service. Work is also due to begin on a permanent travellers’ site, which will help reduce the unauthorised encampments that have disrupted residents and businesses for many years.
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The council is consulting on what is going to be its toughest budget yet, now that our government funding has been cut by some 40%. The debate comes to a head in February when councillors will be agreeing the budget and deciding how best to fund and provide services for residents for the year ahead. After years of dwindling funds for local services, this time mounting government cuts are going to hurt. Combined with the general and local elections in May, it’s certain that 2015 will be an extraordinary year for our city. My best wishes to you all for the New Year.
Jason Kitcat 
One reply on “Some thoughts on 2014”
Well done. And much more going on – such as all libraries open, unlike other parts of the country.
Labour’s cllr Morgan sneers at you/us but I wonder how he would cope if he were in a similar position? Mercifully for the residents, he is not.