Decision - Review of the Civic Office

Brighton and Hove Policy & Resources Committee Decided 29 Jul 2022 for determination GET /api/coverage

Decision maker

Policy & Resources Committee

Report author

Mark Wall

Published

29 Jul 2022

Reference

6678

As published

the council's own words, unedited

RESOLVED: That Committee agrees to reduce the Democratic Services printing budget by 11k by implementing the arrangements set out at paragraphs 3.2-3.4 relating to the provision of Committee papers; 2.2 That Committee agrees that a further reduction in the Democratic Services budget in relation to the Civic Office support to the Mayor is not be pursued in 2022-2023; 2.3 That Committee notes that a wider review of Civic Office functions and budget will be scoped and discussed with Group Leaders and any review reported back to Committee.

Parsed from the document

gpt-5.6-luna-2026-07-09 · 2687/705 tokens · 5080ms · parsed 9 Sep 2026 11:51

Everything below was read out of a PDF by a model It is useful and it is not authoritative. The document it came from is linked in the rail, and where the two disagree the document is right.

The report proposed saving £11,000 by providing committee papers electronically unless councillors have agreed accessibility-related needs for hard copies. It recommended not pursuing a further £17,000 saving from reducing Civic Office support to the Mayor in 2022–2023, while undertaking a wider review of Civic Office functions and the Mayoral role.

Recommendation

Reduce the Democratic Services printing budget by £11,000; do not pursue the further reduction in Democratic Services funding relating to Civic Office support to the Mayor in 2022–2023; and scope a wider review of Civic Office functions and budget for discussion with Group Leaders and later reporting to the Committee.

Financial impact

£11,000 saving to the 2022/23 Democratic Services printing budget; the £17,000 Civic Office support saving will not be achieved, causing a £0.017 million overspend on the 2022/23 Democratic Services budget, which may be covered by a recurrent contingency budget.

Ward affected

city-wide

Decision maker

Policy & Resources Committee

Date in document

29 Jul 2022

Stakeholders named

parsed

CouncillorsMembers with accessibility needsThe MayorAffected Civic Office staffUnionsGroup LeadersMayor's appointed charitiesThird sector organisations

Next steps

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Implement electronic circulation of committee papers, with hard copies provided where accessibility needs relating to protected characteristics have been raised and agreed with the Monitoring Officer.
Continue supporting councillors’ transition to electronic papers.
Scope and discuss a wider review of Civic Office functions, the Mayoral role, transport and security with Group Leaders.
Report the wider review back to the Policy & Resources Committee.
Undertake consultation with affected staff and Unions if any future reduction in staffing is considered.

Precedents

not built

"Decided elsewhere" is not built Finding the same decision in other councils needs semantic matching over decision text, which is part of the search rewrite. Until then, the council's own decisions list is the way through.