What a truly awful shambles the city council meeting was on Thursday.

Councillors had gathered to decide a vision for the city’s future, the Core Strategy, but the spectacle left me far from inspired.

The Conservatives who run the council without a majority had clearly been unwilling to discuss ideas properly with the other parties beforehand.

The consequence was a hotchpotch alliance of opposition parties tabling a raft of alterations. Halfway through, the meeting broke down and party leaders disappeared to horse-trade for over an hour. When the meeting restarted, councillors voted on all the remaining amendments with no more debate allowed, so any questions or voices of dissent weren’t heard. In the end the Tories shunned the plan by abstaining while Labour, the Green Party and Liberal Democrats voted in favour. The opposition now seem to own the plan, which still contains large chunks they said they oppose. How absurd. Why couldn’t they all have talked some more rather than leaving the city with a vision few of them seem to really support?

Harriet Taylor
Preston Park Avenue, Brighton