Conservatives take great civic pride in our historic city and care about protecting the City’s heritage.
Recent events have shown that the city council doesn’t have the ability or will to look after the city’s heritage after removal and we need to ensure a semi-independent body, made up of experts and the council, itemises and catalogues all the city’s heritage to ensure these pieces can’t go missing.
At next Thursday’s full council meeting the Conservative Group will be bringing forward a proposal to establish such a new body as a priority item to protect the City’s heritage for future generations.
Conservatives take great civic pride in our historic city and care about protecting the City’s heritage. One simple step the last Conservative administration in Brighton & Hove between 2007-2011 took was to ensure that there was a programme set aside to keep the seafront railings painted and well maintained every year. Our Conservative administration also restored the seafront bandstand to its former glory.
This current Labour-Green council has let things slip to an unacceptable point.
The issue of the Council’s treatment of the City’s heritage has been simmering for some time but came to a head last month after a pair of historic seafront lanterns that had been contracted to be taken down and inspected were discovered for sale on Facebook marketplace for £545.
The council had decided to temporarily remove 20 lanterns but at least two found their way onto the black market.
It was thanks to the investigative journalism of The Argus Newspaper that the pair of lanterns that had been listed for sale on Facebook marketplace were recovered and returned to the City.
After the identification and recovery mission a member of the council administration expressed shock at what they described as a strange event.
But what then transpired suggests that this was perhaps not so strange at all and instead only the tip of the iceberg.
After the publication of the article in the Argus, investigations by local journalists found a multitude of further examples of the city’s heritage either for sale or left to decay after removal.
This list includes three Amon Henry Wilds dolphins, originally part of Victoria Fountain – found abandoned in Stanmer Park and a Volk’s Railway sign with the modern Brighton & Hove City Council logo on it was found for sale in Burgess Hill.
Further concerns have since been raised about the safety of cast iron elaborate tops, with the Brighton’s coat of arms, valued at £3000 by a historian.
The answers provided by the Council to the events of last month have so far have been insufficient.
The Council has still, 3 weeks on, been unable to provide our councillors with confirmation that all 20 seafront lanterns that were contracted to be removed are safe and sound.
A week after the incident the Council wrote a letter to the contractor to seek assurances and said it was waiting for a response. But that isn’t good enough. A letter is a weak response and doesn’t provide anything like the urgency that the matter deserves or City residents would expect.
The Community’s residents and heritage groups no longer has the have confidence in the council’s ability to manage the heritage of the City.
One incident this year perhaps sums up the council’s mismanagement over the previous decade. The City’s famous Madeira Lift, which was restored under the previous Conservative administration and reopened by Councillor Mears when she was council leader in 2009 and was in good working order, had to close this year after it was stripped of copper by thieves last Christmas.
When Conservatives asked the Council why it had not been repaired, the council said that full repairs were not possible because the surrounding Madeira Terraces, recently added to Heritage England’s ‘at risk’ register, had deteriorated to such a state that they could not guarantee workers safe access.
This perhaps sums up the Green-Labour Council’s approach to our heritage: it is simply not a priority issue for them. The Council’s main heritage committee is treated as a revolving door and there have been 4 different Labour and Green Chairpersons this year alone.
For the Conservatives heritage is important and we see it as our heritage as an important part of protecting and growing this city’s £886m tourism economy.
That is why at next Full Council meeting Conservative team will be moving a motion to set up an Independent commission with the aim of a establishing a list of all heritage assets including those in situ, in storage and undergoing repair elsewhere – for which the Council has responsibility.
We need to provide our residents with the peace of mind going forward that our heritage is being properly looked after by an independent body that cares for and values it.
We are not prepared to leave our remaining heritage in the hands of a council that simply doesn’t value it and will be fighting this case at the council meeting on Thursday.
