My month has been like all my others in this role – invigorating, at times challenging, and always purposeful. At our November Cabinet Meeting we took key decisions to enable our city to keeping driving forward and improving.

Our proposed deal with Royal Mail to enter a long lease for Patcham Court Farm means we can finally deliver a modern, sustainable, sorting office for the city, helping to improve the reliability of our postal service, retaining around 380 unionised postal service jobs in the city, while also contributing to our Net Zero ambitions and freeing up two city centre sites for housing and more employment space. Before making our decision on this your listening Labour Council considered the other suggestions that have been made for the site, including housing and park and ride. While viability for housing or park and ride on Patcham Court Farm did not stack up, we have managed to link this deal with our plan to acquire the Royal Mail site by Hove Station which could enable hundreds of council and affordable homes right where they are needed, close to schools, jobs, transport connections, green spaces and leisure facilities.

Myself and Cllr Gill Williams, our cabinet member for housing, visited the site last summer as well as the existing sorting offices at Denmark Villas and North Road. The two existing sorting office facilities in the city are very old, poorly insulated, heated by burning fossil fuels and powered by a grid that is nowhere near decarbonised yet. Their city centre location means that HGVs have to come right into the heart of the city, bringing their particulates, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants with them, undermining our air quality. What is proposed here would see those replaced by a brand-new facility, powered by solar and heated with heat pumps. The fleet on site would be fully electric, and HGVs would be able to access the site directly from the A27, reducing both pollution in the city and fuel use overall.

It’s surprising therefore that the new Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, Sian Berry, has been loudly campaigning against this proposal, ignoring the sustainability gains and the opportunity for new housing. Or perhaps it’s not surprising. Time and again Green politicians are unable translate their rhetoric into coherent policy making and their Party seems incapable of taking strategic decisions in the long term interests of residents. Green MP for Norfolk, Adrian Ramsey has been similarly campaigning against onshore wind turbines in his constituency. So much for this new crop of ‘Green Voices in Parliament’.

Over the course of the planning process, local residents raised concerns around the impact on Patcham and in particular the localised flood risk and impact on our drinking water. Our report to Cabinet acknowledged these issues. We approved a recommendation proposing that an impermeable membrane is installed to protect the aquifer, with all water draining from the site into the sewerage network. This includes a drainage strategy to reduce the rate of surface water run-off from the new delivery office site to decrease the discharge rate to below Southern Water’s permitted rate. My colleagues Cllrs Rowkins and Muten are heavily engaged in work already to address the existing issues around flooding in Patcham and I am pleased we have agreed a position that will allow greater mitigation than currently exists.

Green doublespeak was a theme of my appearance on BBC Politics South East this month where we also looked at the Labour Government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill and the impact this will have in Brighton and Hove. Fifteen per cent of adults in Brighton and Hove smoke, this is the highest in the southeast. Latest GP data shows that there are an estimated 53,000 people, over the age of 15, who smoke.

Our public health team is working with local partners to support people to stop smoking in the city. Most smokers wish they had never started and most started before the age of 20. Smoking claims around 80, 000 lives per year across the country, responsible for one in four of all cancer deaths. Which is why Labour’s new legislation is going to be so important.

In the greatest public health intervention in a generation we are banning the sale of tobacco to anyone currently under 15 or younger this year, breaking the cycle of addiction and disadvantage. We are also restricting the advertising and flavours of vapes which are currently being targeted at young people. We know this intervention has the power to lift thousands of households out of poverty in our city, increase local productivity and economic prosperity, protect children from harm, reduce inequalities, improve quality of life in our communities and save thousands of lives.