Brighton & Hove City Council Reviews 203

My council tax should be amended for deduction from last year but nothing happened even though I received an email notification. I raised three tickets this month regarding this just wanted to add my partner‘s name back to the bill and also remove the deduction but there’s no response for all of those tickets. It’s been more than three weeks now from the first tickets I raised and that is really unacceptable and I cannot reach anyone through their landline.

Requested an address change in nearly 6 months ago... no update. Tried support tickets still no update. Now my property manger is annoyed that he's getting bills.

Awful service.

Made a complaint and got no responce months ago

Brighton council just wrote off millions of pounds and apologised to the Brighton tax payers for the i360 tower, while my wife who has multiple sclerosis virtually wheelchair dependent had her carers help cut to three days a week, plus the roads are in terrible disrepair it used to be such a beautiful city and this lot has ruined it with their stupidity and incompetence so sad. N

Unfortunately on a visit to Brighton I drove across a bus lane 2 years ago in 2024. This fuckhousery of a council spent 2 years sending PCN to wrong address and then passing it to bailiffs and now the charge is 10 times the amount. An appeal takes 12 weeks and they do not take calls to complain or even explain it was them in the wrong… Brighton and Hove council apparently collected 33 million last year in these fines… it’s a legal con and they should be prosecuted. Will never set foot in that shithole of city again….

Refuse note collected Tuesday 13 January. Lovely message on website saying it will be collected shortly. Ha!! That message has now gone and the website won’t allow me to mark the collection as missed. Can’t imagine why… Trying to make yourselves look good I suppose. As a council you are failing your people badly. Bins are overflowing and rats and foxes are having a field day. SHAME ON YOU BRIGHTON AND HOVE CITY COUNCIL

I honestly wish Trustpilot had a zero-star option, because giving Brighton & Hove City Council even one star feels like an undeserved compliment. I have lived in Brighton for over six years. While the city itself is a gem, the Council is arguably the worst local authority in the UK. They have mastered the art of failing their residents while aggressively emptying their pockets.

1. Predatory "Revenue Traps" & Fine Culture The Council has turned the city into a minefield of PCN traps. Many road signs and bus lane layouts feel intentionally deceptive, designed to induce driver error rather than improve traffic flow. While they claim to be "green," their priority is clearly the revenue from fines. In the city centre, you see enforcement officers every 20 minutes—yet you'll wait months for basic service improvements. For local businesses, there is no "education" or "guidance"—only immediate, heavy fines that feel like rubbing salt in the wounds of struggling entrepreneurs.

2. Financial Mismanagement & The i360 Scandal Their financial track record is a disaster. While they demand record-high Council Tax increases year after year, public services are shrinking. They cry poverty, yet they wasted nearly £50 million of taxpayers' money on the i360 observation tower. After the previous operators failed and defaulted on loans, the Council was left to pick up the pieces, forced to accept "pennies on the pound" for assets they funded. It is an insult to residents that we are being squeezed for parking fines while the Council squanders millions on "white elephant" projects.

3. The Pothole Compensation "Wall" I recently tried to claim for a tyre destroyed by a massive, neglected pothole. While reporting it was easy, the compensation claim form is a labyrinth of bureaucratic hurdles designed to make you quit. After an hour of filing, I was rejected with a wall of legal jargon, claiming their maintenance is "perfect." It is sheer gaslighting; anyone driving on our crumbling roads knows that is a lie.

4. Dangerous "Anti-Human" Road Planning The recent re-modelling of Preston Road and London Road is dangerous. They have narrowed junctions to a point where they ignore the physical reality of a vehicle’s turning circle. The new cycle lanes allow cyclists to speed through zebra crossings with zero visibility. They are prioritizing ideology over basic road safety, and it's only a matter of time before a serious accident occurs.

This Council operates like a predatory corporation—fining residents to cover the costs of their own monumental financial blunders. They are incompetent, out of touch, and have zero accountability.

Tried to renew my garden waste subscription by phone today. It gets renewed once every year. Should have been easy as I have had a garden waste bin for more than 5 years now. However found it hard to get through to the right department. Finally got hold of a staff member who advised she could take a renewal payment from me. This she did and subsequently sent me an email confirming receipt. I later in the day received a new email from Brighton and Hove Council welcoming me to their garden waste collection service. However this was wrong, It was not a new application. I do not need the new bin that the latest council memo tells me I will get. I have been with the service for at least the last 5 years and already have a bin, And as I told the staff member I spoke with I simply wanted to renew. How can things get so scrambled I do wonder? There must be a record somewhere that my address already has a garden waste bin and has had so for years. And I did say I wanted a renewal of my existing contract not a new contract. That was my reason for ringing as I was responding to a email prompt from Brighton and Hove Council. I will have to try again tomorrow as I do not want, nor do I need two bins. The person I spoke with at the council was pleasant but seemed to limit the conversation to the her own strict parameters. Now it is something of a mess and I will have to try ringing again tomorrow to sort out the situation which I am not looking forward to. I repeat, I am certain I asked for a renewal of my existing contract as I was responding to a specific message for renewal from Brighton Council. I do wonder why in any dealings with the council things seem to go so wrong as the many testemonies on this site report?

Nadia was an absolute delight & such a friendly person. I would give 10 stars if it was possible. Thank you so much Nadia :)

no chance to return.

The city should be ashamed of itself. scamming people the way they do.

The council reported total penalty charges and parking income at around £12.2 million in 2023–24 for PCNs, with overall parking-generated income nearing £33 million, including permits and off-street charges, that's deliberate bad signage

Be aware of Brighton council, they fine you for driving in bus lanes when they aren’t even marked.
I parked in a disabled space, using my blue badge to visit Brighton pier and allegedly drove in a bus lane to do so.
The picture they sent doesn’t even indicate a bus lane so I’m not even sure this is true.
I think it is just a way of exploiting anyone who chooses to visit Brighton.
now I have to pay a parking fine as I am unable to prove my innocence so be that if you visit Brighton, the the council there may do the same thing to you.
Needless to say, I will never visit their worthless town again.

Hello there,

I would just like to provide feedback on the overall end to end experience for someone using the Brighton and hove council services.

I don’t say this lightly when I say this might be one of the worst services I have used. Impossible to speak to anyone to get help, IVR messages longer than the solution to my problems, and no insight into how difficult they make doing anything for customer. This is from parking through to council tax.

The online service is practically redundant and provides no benefit, it only adds complexity and stress to customer. Simple issues that should be resolved quickly now take up serious effort and time for anyone looking to get them resolved.

That fact this has bothered me so much that I have felt the need to provide this feedback should tell you one thing, but the fact I have never gone to the lengths to provide my personal thoughts and feedback before should tell you another.

I am sorry to all those that have had to experience the stress and inept quality of their services.

If some serious changes aren’t made to how they understand the customer journey and what matters to customer then I think B&H council will grind to a halt, stalled by bureaucracy and waste, unable to deliver any value to those unfortunately living in the constituent.

I have dragged on now, but I hope I have made it abundantly clear my dissatisfaction for the lack of understanding for those using their services.

I also do not blame any individuals within the system either, all those I have spoken to on the phone have been very considerate.

This is not in regards to any individual that works for the city council, just the Council Tax System. I have spent months attempting to update my address with them and set up monthly payments by Email with no response, to this day. I had to call them from my holiday in Greece just to find out how much the direct debit amount would be, after I missed the first payment, because I was not notified that my details had been updated and payments were scheduled. I am now paying more every month because of a lack of communication and there's nothing I can do about it. Lastly, I have attempted to pay online today (as I missed the scheduled payment, which was entirely my fault) and apparently my address details don't match, after I finally thought they had been updated and they must be as I am finally scheduled for payments. After all that, I'm back to square one and will have to call on my lunch break just to make the payments that I have been trying to pay this whole time. Update your systems past 2004, please, I'm begging at this point, I just want to pay my council tax. If I had any kind of difficulty using computers I can't even imagine how i'd get this done. Well I can, as the phone line is the only way to actually communicate in both directions.

The local authority broke the law several times during a court hearing. They knowingly submitted lies in their final evidence. They failed to get proper authorisation for the medical records, subsequently breaking the law by accessing and reading the medical records. They employed the wrong professional to perform the assessment.They broke the equality ack by calling the father paranoid, with zero medical records to support this. They did not perform equal assessments of both parents. They failed to look into the mothers criminal history, and it turns out she has a record for assault. The local authority were not interested in the fact the mother intentionally interrupted family time on several occasions with less than a days notice, and failed to attempt to reschedule the missed contact between the father and son. There were many more failings performed by the local authority, and the kicker, nobody will get in any trouble for breaking multiple laws in order to take the child from the father. It would appear that the local government are above the law.

Brighton Council are useless.
The streets are overgrown with weeds, there is rubbish everywhere and many streets in the city are covered with illegal graffiti and tags. There is no real police presence in the city, apart from when there is a road traffic incident, when half of the station turn up!
The town of my 60s childhood has been reduced to a post apocalyptic nightmare where there is anarchy on the streets and no respect for people or property!

One star is being polite, This City is not worth the £200 increase on my Council tax, Its obvious we are paying the dept of i360. What do the Brighton Council spend tax payers money on as the streets are over grown with weeds, roots bringing up the pavement and grass nothing is maintained just rubbish everywhere that is rarely cleaned up. When I visited Mumbai the streets were cleaner and neater than Brighton.

No compassion

Brighton and Hove Council Tax department is an absolute shambles.

I have had an on going issue since August 2024 chasing weekly with still no response. I do not own a property in Brighton, let alone two properties- yet I am being informed I am being charged 100% surcharge of council tax on an empty property. Which is tenanted, which I do not own. There's not cross wires on the website, all info provided is correct.
It's also saying I've not paid any council tax for 2024, I have confirmation receipts sent from B&HCC via email.

If you want to contact Brighton council you're better off purchasing a Ouija Board. I tried calling at opening time 09:30 but there's already a maximum number of callers in the queue. There is no way to contact this pitiful service.

Roads and footpaths look better in most parts of Eastern Europe. It is also impossible to get telephone help regarding basic council tax account matters like registering for an online account management profile. But they are excellent at issuing late fees, summons notices.