An inclusive and fairer city - what we’ve delivered 2023 to 2025

Engagement and collaboration

In March last year, we published a new community engagement framework setting out the council’s commitment to engagement, with a refreshed policy statement and accompanying guidance and tools to support best practice in our engagement with local communities.

Alongside the framework, we launched Your Voice. This new digital engagement tool provides better and fairer opportunities for residents to have their say and to follow engagement projects that interest them. Your Voice is intended to complement, not replace, face-to-face engagement and gives access to a wider audience.

In 2023 and 2024, we delivered Leader's surgeries, giving residents the opportunity to raise policy and strategy issues with Council leadership at surgery sessions across the city. We also hosted a series of events across the city, asking residents to Re-imagine Brighton & Hove. The project identified community-led ideas to tackle graffiti tagging, the cost-of-living crisis, violence against women and girls, and improving health and wellbeing. Insights were fed back to relevant services.

Fighting discrimination and embracing diversity

We won a landmark case in the High Court against the Home Office in 2023 concerning the treatment of unaccompanied asylum seekers (UASC). The judgment led to a change in national policy so that UASC could no longer be placed in hotels and B&Bs but rather must be placed through the National Transfer Scheme into foster placements under the Children Act.

Our commitment to being a City of Sanctuary has seen over 40 Afghan households resettled by the council, alongside our successful Homes for Ukraine scheme. In 2024, we were awarded the Library Service of Sanctuary. The award recognises the efforts of our library staff to create a culture of welcome for refugees and asylum seekers.

In August 2023, we agreed and launched a new Accessible City Strategy to ensure barrier-free services that promote independence and equity of access, opportunity, and representation for disabled people and their diverse identities.

We progressed the development of the city council’s Anti-Racist Strategy with a range of programmes and events, including a multiagency conference for Black History Month in October 2024, to reaffirm allyship and action following the far-right violence of the summer of 2024. Additionally, in partnership with the Family Justice Quality Circle, we developed a ‘family court anti-racist practice statement’, ratified for use in Sussex Family Courts, by the Sussex Family Justice Board.

We have developed a new Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit to support trans and gender diverse children and young people to thrive in their education. The toolkit helps staff and governors make informed decisions about how to promote the welfare of students who are gender exploring or meet the definition of being transgender.

We engaged with and supported diverse community groups, including the TNBI Round Table, Disability Panel, Interfaith Group, BME & migrant groups, older people’s tenant groups, groups tackling violence against women and girls, and city safety forums, to ensure diverse voices shape council policy and services. We delivered a range of cultural and community events, including Armed Forces Day, LGBT+ History Month, and Black History Month, in support of our diverse communities and cultural spaces. This includes support for the city’s LGBTQ+ communities and spaces, meeting regularly with community representatives, listening and responding to concerns.

Working to reduce inequality

With resident, partner and staff input, we developed the Brighton & Hove Cost of Living Plan and set up a Poverty Reduction Steering Group. Extensive support for residents impacted by the cost-of-living crisis has been delivered through the Household Support Fund and the Brighton & Hove Fairness Fund, including food, fuel, and essential items. We have used these funds to provide free school meal vouchers to eligible children during holiday periods and for those educated outside of mainstream school, supported families in buying school uniforms, worked with local food partnerships and emergency support networks, and supported pensioners on low incomes to meet their fuel bills.

Almost 1,000 city businesses have now signed up to the Brighton & Hove Living Wage. These businesses are committed to paying their staff a real living wage, and we continue to work closely with the Brighton Chamber to manage and deliver the campaign.

Our Welfare Rights Team used data analytics to identify and target older people on low incomes to promote uptake of Pension Credit and access to the Winter Fuel payment. We agreed on the Brighton & Hove Food Strategy Action Plan 2025-2030 to strengthen our approach to tackling food poverty. Growing, cooking, and food waste prevention are key themes in our approach.

We supported community activity and volunteering by funding local community and voluntary organisations, fostering active citizenship and stronger community networks. Our Fairness Fund for People & Place funded small community groups working to tackle poverty. Other funding for the voluntary and community sector included the Communities Fund 2023/24, the BME Engagement Fund and the Community Catalyst Fund. In 2024, we brought together different funding streams into a new Thriving Communities Investment Fund for 2025 to 2027.

In partnership with Trust for Developing Communities and social enterprise partners across the city, we secured almost £1.3 million from the Climate Action Fund to empower disadvantaged and underrepresented communities in Brighton & Hove to participate in climate action.