This Thursday there are important elections in Brighton and Hove where everyone has the opportunity to vote for the Labour Party and send this toxic Tory government a message, writes council leader Bella Sankey.

First in the police and crime commissioner (PCC) election where our excellent candidate Paul Richards is seeking to unseat the Tory PCC for Sussex. And there are important council by-elections in Queen’s Park and Kemp Town where our two experienced candidates Milla Gauge and Theresa Mackey want to continue our work to make Brighton and Hove into a cleaner, greener and fairer city.

Every month I receive a significant number of emails from residents about antisocial behaviour, open drug taking, drug dealing and people being made to feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods and communities. Our Labour councillors Jilly Stevens, Andrei Czolak and Alison Thomson in Regency and Brunswick and Adelaide wards are so concerned about it that they are planning a public meeting with senior police officers in Brighton and Hove on how to tackle the issue. As a city we’ve always had our struggles with crime and antisocial behaviour but the current situation is like nothing I’ve seen before. While these are increasingly regular occurrences, we cannot allow them to become normalised.

These incidents are also not just anecdotal. Official crime figures published for last year showed that in 2022/23 there were 28,758 crimes recorded in our city. Violent crime is up and trust in the police to respond to “low-level” crime is down. Compared with the South East and with England, the proportion of the city’s population using opiates or crack cocaine remains significantly higher.

What is the council doing about this, residents ask me, and where are the police? We have been fighting against the tide following 14 years of Tory misrule. Everyone knows that prevention is better than a cure. And it follows that crime always spikes when services are cut, poverty increases and people can’t get the opportunities we all need to thrive. Almost 14 years since the Tories came to power, crime and public disorder, has never been so bad.

On top of that it was the Tory and Lib Dem coalition government that cut 20,000 police officers from England and Wales and who have failed continually to properly resource police. In the last 14 years the Tories could have completely overhauled the criminal justice system, instead they put their efforts into the disastrous privatisation of the probation service which they then had to spend even more time and money reversing. Their rhetoric of being tough on crime is laughable.

I want to reassure residents that as your Labour council we are doing absolutely everything in our power to improve community safety. Our Community Safety and Crime Reduction Strategy was approved last month and sets out the council’s three-year plan to tackle crime and disorder with our partners. We have recently consulted on our new VAWG (violence against women and girls) strategy which will soon be published and details how we will support women fleeing domestic abuse and violence, as well as ensure a safe environment for women and girls in our public spaces. We work closely with the police in different forums and I meet regularly with our Chief Superintendent.

What nobody in our city has ever asked me is “where is the police and crime commissioner?” but that is exactly what I’m wondering right now - what has Katy Bourne been doing? Katy has been the Conservative Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner for 12 years, working throughout that time under a national Conservative government. Yet antisocial behaviour and crime in our city is at unprecedented levels and most of our residents have never heard of her. This is shocking on many levels but not least because as Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, Katy Bourne is responsible for setting the strategic objectives for policing in Sussex, updating a police and crime plan and setting the force’s £400 million budget.

That is why the upcoming police and crime commissioner elections on Thursday are so important. I want to see that resource prioritised in the right way and in a way that serves Brighton and Hove. Labour’s candidate, Paul Richards, has committed to investing in more police on the streets of Sussex, which means more foot patrols and a greater presence in our community. Paul will immediately set about recruiting new officers, deploying more PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood police teams. In line with Labour’s national mission, Paul will also immediately work on rebuilding trust in policing and the criminal justice.

With Paul as our PCC and with a new national Labour government I am confident that Sussex will be safer. Please vote for Paul Richards on May 2.

Bella Sankey is Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council