This past weekend marked one of the most exciting annual events in our city and beyond when thousands of young people from our communities were given an opportunity to open up the Brighton Festival. The Children’s Parade was coordinated and supported by Same Sky organisation along with Carousel who ensured a wide range of schools and students were able to participate. It is lovely to see the photos in this paper which help inform all of us of what took place on Saturday. In the middle of last week I attended a very different event entitled ‘the Big Debate’ which is an annual event in Brighton and Hove that is organised by the Chamber of Commerce. The title of this year’s debate was ‘Future of work: Are we doing enough about future skills?’ and one of the themes that emerged from the discussion was how vital leadership is from Government agencies at both a local and national level as well as from Businesses and places of education. Thankfully at least one of the speakers took the trouble to point out that leadership is not restricted to older people and of course in a city like ours this is self-evident with many people in their 20’s and even late teens establishing businesses and participating in party politics. However despite these examples, the reality is that young people and children can all too often be ignored or treated as bystanders whilst decisions get taken that will have a major impact on them. This year represents the final Centenary period of World War 1 and it is shocking to remember that children who were only a few years older than the people involved in the parade, would have been preparing to go to France 100 years ago as they had no idea that the war was about to end. It is always good to treat the Childrens Parade as a reminder for policy makers and the providers of services that the young people in Sussex need to be treated with respect and their needs must be treated with the same priority as those of us who manage to have our voices heard because we are eligible to vote and pay taxes.

 One of the aspects of the Big Debate that was a disappointment for me was the level of attendance by City Councillors. There were a number of Council Officers present and clearly some of them may be in a position to report back to the elected representatives who are responsible for decision making, but it seemed rather sad that Julie Cattell was the only Councillor on the list of people who were booked in to attend to the event. I have been involved in many discussions with people who work for local government across Sussex where the challenge of persuading local businesses to turn up to Council run events is seen as enormous. It may be that our Council does not face this challenge, or is not so concerned about the need to engage with businesses when it comes to skills and training provision. However it does seem that this event offered a very useful opportunity for the business community to be heard by both the training providers and the commissioners of training services such as the Councillors who sit on the Children, Young People and Skills Committee. Julie is not part of that group and so the whole of that Committee had not planned to attend, even though the subject matter was a good fit for their area of responsibility.

 The failure by elected representatives to act in an effective way when it comes to engaging with businesses and the wider community is of course not limited to City Councillors. One of the issues that has recently been made public is the failure by the Government to start to raise funds for electric car charging points across the UK. They announced in the autumn budget that they intended to spend £400m on this important form of infrastructure of which £200m would come from taxpayers and the balance would be raised from the private sector. The budget took place at the end of November and yet over five months later the Government has still not recruited anyone to begin to hold discussions with businesses on this subject. Such provision when it is established will significantly improve the prospects of the Government making electric vehicles a much more accessible solution to transport owners. This delay means the Government has failed to raise a penny towards its own target and it will delay the outcome by the same length of time. It also calls into question their commitment to this objective.