Brighton & Hove City Council: local authority assessment

Published: 5 December 2025 Page last updated: 5 December 2025

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Assessment published: 5 December 2025

About Brighton & Hove City Council

Demographics

Brighton and Hove is a coastal, urban area in East Sussex, England. Brighton & Hove City Council is a unitary local authority and is part of the Sussex Integrated Care System (ICS), which includes Brighton & Hove, East Sussex, and West Sussex.

Brighton and Hove has a population of approximately 279,637 people. The ethnic composition of the city is 85.37% white, 4.8% Asian, 2% black and 4.8% mixed ethnicity. Other ethnic groups make up 3% of the population. The city has an Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) score of 5 and is ranked the 89th most deprived local authority, out of 153 local authorities in England. Brighton and Hove has areas of both affluence and deprivation.

The age profile of the population is younger than England averages. 65.5% of the population are aged 20 to 26 compared to the national average of 59%, 14.1% of the population are aged over 65, which is lower than the national average of 18%.

Brighton and Hove City Council has fewer requests for adult social care support compared to the England averages, with 525 requests per 100,000 of the population for working aged people and 5354 requests for people aged over 65. The local authority is consistent with England averages for the numbers of people with long term support needs per 100,000 of the population. 976 working age people received long term support and 5668 people aged over 65 received long term support.

Brighton and Hove City Council has been under a Labour majority since 2023, with 36 Labour councillors, 8 Green councillors, 5 Conservative councillors, 2 Brighton & Hove Independents councillors, and 3 Independent councillors. When the political makeup of the council changed in 2023, the council moved from a committee system to a cabinet model.

At the time of assessment, the local authority had recently changed their corporate structure, which meant a majority of senior leaders had been newly appointed to their roles during the 12 months before this assessment.

Financial facts

The Financial facts for Brighton & Hove City Council are:

  • The local authority estimated that in 2023/24, its total budget would be £556,926,000. Its actual spend for that year was £570,863,000, which was £13,937,000 more than estimated.
  • The local authority estimated that it would spend £134,203,000 of its total budget on adult social care in 2023/24 Its actual spend was £136,437,000, which is £2,234,000 more than estimated.
  • In 2023/24, 23.9% of the budget was spent on adult social care.
  • The local authority has raised the full adult social care precept for 2023/24, with a value of 2%. Please note that the amount raised through ASC precept varies from local authority to local authority.
  • Approximately 4140 people were accessing long-term adult social care support, and approximately 335 people were accessing short-term adult social care support in 2023/24. Local authorities spend money on a range of adult social care services, including supporting individuals. No two care packages are the same and vary significantly in their intensity, duration, and cost.

This data is reproduced at the request of the Department of Health and Social Care. It has not been factored into our assessment and is presented for information purposes only.