Censorship at Brighton & Hove Council: Families Silenced
On 19th January 2026, Brighton & Hove City Council rejected a group deputation from mothers with disabled children living in unsuitable temporary accommodation. The Council claimed their lived experiences constituted “individual litigation” inappropriate for public discussion. After hearing about the Bella Sankey Contract Controversy.
This is the same Council that in March 2021 became the first UK city to adopt the Homeless Bill of Rights, guaranteeing homeless people’s right to dignity, equality, and participation in decisions affecting them.
However, the council’s response reveals..
The Council blocked these mothers from speaking. We are publishing their words here so the public can judge for themselves whether these are “inappropriate complaints” or evidence of systematic policy failures requiring urgent democratic scrutiny.
Meanwhile, six families have launched complaints…
Six mums have launched complaints to democratic services and councillors in Brighton and Hove after they have had their brave deputation Gatekept, delayed causing them to miss out on the participating in two important meetings pre budget, on very thin and vague reasons, essentially they want the lead speaker to edit out the fact she took the council to tribunal because she represented herself and won. We have created the full deputation which you can see below, bringing the deputation denied to life so you can see and year why the Administration and Council officers are so worried.
As a result, the mums are publishing their full deputation…
Deputation
My name is Kiera. I am a mother of four. I am here today because I had to become my own lawyer to get my children the basic rights you tried to deny them. I took this council to a tribunal for my son’s EHCP with no legal support, and I won. On that same day, I watched you lose five other cases. You are losing 98% of your tribunals because your decisions are unlawful.
You are doing the same thing with our housing. You have kept my family of five in a two-bedroom temporary flat for eight years while children with severe medical and learning needs suffer.
You tell us there are no homes, but we see the truth: you are now diverting permanent council homes into temporary accommodation to feed a £19 million private contract you signed in secret by the leader of the council over Christmas for an organisation called Base One, for 209 units. You aren’t managing a crisis; you are manufacturing one.
Before my sisters speak, you need to understand the machine you have built. It isn’t a housing service; it is a Billion-Pound Pyramid Scheme. To educate this chamber and the public, we have mapped your system into its four core pillars:
You have created a Wealth Siphon: a funnel where £30 million of local taxes flows through this chamber annually, building a Billion-Pound Wealth Transfer over ten years that exits our city into offshore accounts.
This is anchored by a Debt Poison Pill: your TA providers use these guaranteed contracts to leverage billions in bank debt, holding the UK economy hostage so you are too afraid to stop the drain. Only a fraction of that money ever reaches our rooms; the rest is pure, extracted profit.
You protect this profit with a Legal Fortress of ‘Part 2’ secrecy and a banding system designed to protect the revenue of professional landlords, not the safety of the person.
For the families, this is a Resident Trap: a maze of silence where Shannon waits six months for a text, only to be offered Eastbourne or the North, before being dumped into the lowest priority Band C2. The system isn’t broken; it is working perfectly to keep us exactly where the vultures want us: profitable, desperate, and silenced.
(Shannon) I have been sleeping on a floor in a box room for 13 months with my autistic three-year-old because an officer ‘sold me a dream’ and then ghosted me. I’ve been trapped in temporary limbo for 14 years, I’ve been told my Band C1 priority will never change because i am ‘accepted homeless’.
This is a wealth siphon. You spend £30 million a year of our money—a new i360 every two years—on private landlords and vultures. Now, you’ve announced a ‘short-term scheme’ to take 80 permanent council homes away from people like us on the waiting list and put them into the temporary system. You are raiding our futures to pay for your forensic governance failures.
We, the mums and families living in these hostels and temporary rooms, are not victims asking for charity—we are witnesses to a crime. We have lived experience of the gatekeeping (promises broken, officers ghosting, bands set impossibly low), the desperation (our children in unsuitable spaces, no privacy, no permanence), and the hypocrisy (the council building in-house homes for asylum seekers through the Home Office, but only temporary slums for us).
Now, Kate will show you what happens when a family is caught in that trap for fourteen years
Hi all I currently have 2 girls 13/9 both have additional needs aswell as my self with mental and physical health i have been in temporary accommodation since September 2012 currently in my latest property since march 2014.
We have been told we are entitled to a 3 bedroom property and still all these years later still stuck with no help on rubbish c1 band and being told as im accepted homeless i can not have my banding changed also. Why? Is this legal?
When we speak, we do not speak as campaigners or advocates; we speak as residents whose lives prove the system is designed to fail us:
We are not here to listen to your ‘budget pressures’ or ‘forecasting errors.’ We are here to tell you that the mums and families of Brighton are standing together. We demand:
- 1. Immediate Suspension: Stop the Base One contract and the diversion of permanent council homes into the temporary system.
- 2. Priority Realignment: All families with children who have an EHCP or documented disability must be moved to Band A immediately. Housing is health. Housing is education.
- 3. Independent Audit: We demand a public investigation into the ‘Part 2’ secrecy of the £18.86m direct award and a full audit of the ‘vulture landlords’ profiting from our misery .
You lost in the tribunal because you broke the law. You will lose in the courts for what you are doing to our housing. We are not standing for this. We are taking our city back.
Over the last decade, Brighton & Hove Council has systematically dismantled the public housing system. It has replaced it with a private profit machine.
Every year, the council spends £30 million on temporary accommodation—plus a forecast £12 million increase in 2026-27. That money doesn’t build homes. Instead, it transfers wealth directly to private landlords.
These landlords operate from shell companies. They leverage council contracts to borrow billions from UK banks. Then they funnel profits into offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
Meanwhile, the council’s own housing stock—the homes meant for people on the waiting list—is now being diverted into temporary accommodation to mask the failure. The result: families like Shannon and Kiera, with disabled and neurodivergent children, are locked in impossibly low bands, trapped in unsuitable spaces, while the council enriches private vultures and the banking system that backs them.
This is not a housing crisis its a housing catastrophe. This is institutionalised theft from the homeless, organised by the council, enabled by the banks, and protected by legal structures designed to hide the truth.
WE NEED REFORM PATHWAYS – A LEARNING COUNCIL APPROACH
Current System (Unlawful & Inefficient)
- Band C1 gatekeeping → no allocation prospect
- Template suitability decisions → medical evidence ignored
- Defensive legal advice → shields unlawful system
- Nightly-paid block contracts → £41/night, no permanent housing
- Opacity & gatekeeping → no democratic participation
This is what the council have stopped or delayed, it all silences, those suffering a failed system. If you have been impacted by this story or had similar issues do Contact us