• | Home
• | Places
  • Streets
  • Maps
  • Census districts
  • Plaques
• | People
  • Residents, etc
  • Architects
  • Film-related
• | Civics
  • Laws
  • Administration
  • Wards
  • Elections
  • Charities
• | Numbers
  • Population
  • Housing
  • Health
  • Finance, rates and taxes
  • Prices
  • Speed
• | Words
  • Press
  • Books, plays
  • Quotations
• | Film
  • History
    • 1: Off to a good start
    • 2: The troubles begin
    • 3: Sound and decline
  • Cinemas
    • History
    • Openings, closures
    • Cinema directory
  • Films
    • Silent
    • Silent: Shoreham
    • Sound to 1999
    • Sound from 2000
    • Only set in Brighton
    • Short fiction
    • Short non-fiction
    • Newsreels
    • Watch online
  • Places
    • Places
    • Studios
• | Narrative
  • Places
  • People
  • Civics
  • Transport
  • Communications
  • Film
• | Timeline
  • General history
  • Film history

REFERENDUMS

Vestry meetings were regular gatherings to decide issues of local interest. On occasion polls were taken. For instance, the controversial matter of imposing a church rate was settled after four days of polling on 24 November 1836 by 1,702 in favour and 1,389 against.

October 1928
Sunday cinema opening
Hove Borough Council had resisted Sunday cinema opening from the start—a stance upheld by the Divisional Court of Appeal in March 1915. A vote in the Council in June 1926 retained the ban by one vote. Four years before national legislation permitted referendums on the subject, Hove Borough Council arranged a local poll (technically not a referendum) as the equivalent of a town meeting.

3 January 1931
Transport merger
The Brighton, Hove and District Transport Bill 1930 aimed to create a unified transport board for the two boroughs and adjoining districts to take over the existing bus and tramway operations in collaboration with the private aperator, Thomas Tilling Ltd. The completed negotiations required the consent of the local electorate. The merger was rejected in Brighton by a narrow majority on a low turnout of only 23 per cent. Consequently no poll was held in Hove, where any form of merger with Brighton might have been seen as a step towards a fuller amalgamation.

5 June 1975
Continuing membership of the European Economic Community
The first ever national referendum was in fulfilment of a pledge in the Labour Party's manifesto for the 1974 general election to allow the people to decide if the UK should remain a member of the EEC, which it has joined under the Conservative government in 1973. Nationally, in a 65 per cent turnout, the vote in favour of continued membership was 67 per cent. Votes were declared by county.

18 October 2001
Directly elected mayor
Local authorities were required by the Local Government Act 2000 c.22 to move from the committee model then prevailing to an executive model, led by an elected mayor if the local electorate approved. Accordingly referendums have been held to date (April 2013) in 37 local authorities, 13 of which were in favour of an elected mayor, 24 against. Brighton and Hove's referendum was the first, and so far only, all-postal vote held in the city; nonethless, 'turnout' was poor.

5 May 2011
Alternative vote
One of the conditions imposed by the Liberal Democrats in return for forming a coalition with the Conservative Party was that a referendum should be held about replacing 'first-past-the-post' elections with the alternative vote (AV). The referendum was held on the same day as many local elections, including that for Brighton & Hove City Council. The only parliamentary constituencies to vote in favour of change were six London boroughs and four others around the country: Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin. Brighton & Hove, however, had the narrowest margin against of any constituency.

22 May 2014
Council tax
A referendum on a 4.75 per cent increase in council tax was proposed by the minority Green Party adminstration, subject to agreement by the full council at its meeting on 27 February 2014. Any local authority that wishes to implement 'an excessive increase in council tax' (defined for the current year as being more than two per cent) must hold a referendum under the coalition government's Localism Act 2011, which amends the Local Government Finance Act 1992. The date set was that of the elections for the European Parliament. The election would have cost £230,000, compared with £350,000 if held on a different day from the European election. In the end a settlement was reached and the referendum was not held.

23 June 2016
European Union (Brexit)
The referendum on whether to remain in or leave the European Union was the most bitterly contested and divisive of any election in modern times. Nationally the result, by a relatively small margin, was to leave. Locally the result was very different.

Source: Electoral Commission

Page updated 12 February 2023