We need to rescue the City Council’s divestment proposals –
They are now at risk of defeat.
Five minutes of your time could make a real difference
Why is this so crucial?
In October 2025, the City Council passed a landmark motion on divestment from companies linked to Israel’s apartheid and genocide. The motion instructed Council officers to research the Council’s exposure to these companies, and to report back in early 2026.
The report has now been released, and it’s a huge disappointment! In short, the report hasn’t done what officers were instructed to do. They have narrowed the focus of their analysis to such an extent that it has made it easy for them to report to councillors that the Council’s exposure is ‘zero’.
We don’t know how this dreadful slippage happened, but we’re trying to find out. In the meantime, there’s a danger that the Council Cabinet will approve the report at their meeting next week (Thursday Feb 12), and that will be the end of it.
This may all sound nerdy and bureaucratic, but this is a crucial moment in the local BDS campaign, and we need to flood councillors’ inboxes to ensure they know that local people are hopping mad.
We mustn’t let this happen!
This should have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our local Council to do the right thing, and agree an exit strategy from complicit investments and contracts. And members of the Cabinet need to know that local people desperately want to see the Council place itself on the right side of history.
What can you do?
There are three steps you can take to make your views known.
- If you live within Brighton & Hove, the most important step is to write to members of the Cabinet, using the template letter lower down this announcement. It’ll take five minutes! You can paste the letter into an email, top and tail it with your own details, and send it to all of the Cabinet members:
- Councillor Bella Sankey (Bella.Sankey@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Jacob Taylor (Jacob.Taylor@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Mitchie Alexander (Mitchie.Alexander@brighton-
hove.gov.uk) - Councillor Jacob Allen (Jacob.Allen@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Emma Daniel (Emma.Daniel@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Birgit Miller (Birgit.Miller@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Trevor Muten (Trevor.Muten@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Alan Robins (Alan.Robins@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Tim Rowkins (Tim.Rowkins@brighton-hove.
gov.uk) - Councillor Gill Williams (Gilliane.Williams@brighton-hove.gov.uk)
- We encourage you to copy your email to your own local ward councillors, if none of them are members of the Cabinet. Your ward councillor may be prepared to lobby Cabinet members on your behalf. You can find your ward councillor’s contact details here
- Join our rally outside Hove Town Hall on Thursday 12 Feb at 1pm – details to be announced. The Cabinet meeting that day is scheduled to start at 2pm.
Thanks as always for your support!
Template letter to be sent to members of the Council Cabinet
Dear BHCC Cabinet Member,
Ref: Agenda item 132, Cabinet Meeting 12 February 2026
‘Response to notice of motion from October Council’
I urge you in the strongest terms to refer this report back to officers, as it does not implement the motion as passed. Like many city residents, I am disappointed to see that Cabinet will be asked to consider a report that is so inadequate, and is so inconsistent with the mandate from Council. At stake is not only the substance of the issues that need to be addressed, but also the principle of democratic accountability.
The Notice of Motion (NoM) passed by Full Council on 13 October 2025 instructed officers to report to Cabinet on the Council’s financial exposure to ‘involved companies’ – defined by reference to a legal position paper as companies that aid or assist violations of international law, including complicity in genocide and violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Cabinet report prepared for 12 February 2026 (Agenda item 132) does not implement the motion as passed. The scope has been narrowed, and the narrowing has not been authorised by Full Council:
- The motion referred to companies that aid or assist violations of international law, wherever they are based. This covers arms manufacturers, military technology suppliers, and companies enabling the Gaza operations. The motion furthermore required officers to examine all Council financial activities, including procurement and its investment portfolio.
- The report by officers changed the language to ‘companies operating in the occupied territories’ – which is inconsistent with the mandated framework.
- The report is confined to the OHCHR settlement database – a list of only 158 companies involved in settlement-related activity in the West Bank.
The landmark legal opinion published last year, and cited in the 13/10/2025 NoM, places local councils under a legal obligation not to recognise or assist Israel in its grave violations of international law, and to do everything in its power to bring them to an end. This means that local councils must take steps to divest from companies enabling or profiting from Israel’s crimes. They must also put in place policies to ensure no future investments can be made in these companies.
The October 2025 NoM has been implemented using a database that enabled officers to conclude the Council’s exposure is ‘zero’. The OHCHR database covers illegal settlement activity only. There are no Israeli settlements in Gaza (they were dismantled in 2005). The database therefore cannot capture any Gaza-related corporate complicity – no arms suppliers, no military technology companies, no companies enabling the military operations that prompted the motion in the first place. No reasonable reading of the motion could produce this outcome.
Why this matters
- Democratic accountability: 36 councillors voted for a specific scope. Officers have substituted a different one without democratic authority.
- Equality and anti-racism: The narrowing removes from review the corporate complicity most directly connected to the gravest harms suffered by Palestinians. The Council’s Anti-Racism Strategy commits to combating racism ‘in all its forms’ – a commitment undermined if a motion responding to the treatment of a racially-defined population is gutted at the implementation stage.
- Consultation failure: The Council has not consulted with Jewish residents who support divestment, and appears not to have consulted Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim communities, despite them being the group most directly affected by the narrowing of scope.
What I am asking for
- The review must be referred back to officers, who must be instructed to apply the methodology that Full Council voted for.
- An investigation by the Monitoring Officer into how and by whom the scope was changed.
- Disclosure of any legal advice given on the change of methodology.
- Disclosure of any equality analysis conducted, including who was consulted.
- Officer training on equality duties, including obligations toward all protected groups
Yours sincerely,