Between 100 and 200 people turned out to plan the next phase of their opposition to a seafront tower in Hove this evening (Thursday 17 March).
Plans for a block of flats known as the Sackville Tower were withdrawn last Thursday (10 March) by developer Hyde.
But the Hove Seafront Residents’ Association met at The View, in Kingsway, Hove, opposite the vacant old Sackville Hotel site.
The meeting was chaired by Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove. He congratulated and thanked Angelique Henderson and her colleagues in the campaign group.
It heard from Councillor Andrew Wealls, a Conservative. He was cheered when he said that a senior council planning officer said today that planning policy was to restrict buildings on Hove seafront to six to eight storeys.
And they were praised by another Conservative, Councillor Robert Nemeth, who said: “I’m pleased that this application has been withdrawn but I would urge caution.”
He said that anger with the architect or Hyde was unfair, adding: “My anger is with policy that means Hove is over-populated.”
As a result there was huge unmet demand and prices had rocketed as a result.
He said that Brighton and Hove’s share of the national housing shortage was 30,000 homes, adding: “This building was just 100 flats. Think where 30,000 are going to go.”
The City Plan – the blueprint for the area – allocates land for 13,200 homes.
Councillor Garry Peltzer Dunn, a fellow Conservative, said: “I’ve got every sympathy with Hyde as a developer and landlord trying to provide people with accommodation.
“They want to provide as many people with homes as possible.”
But he criticised Labour for blocking a request by the Save Hove campaign group to create a planning brief for the seafront which might have settled the question of the height.
Clare Moonan, a Labour councillor, said: “It was the wrong building in the wrong place.
“We’ve got a housing crisis. We need to build thousands of homes in this city – and we’re doing that. But it needs to be appropriate.”
Residents urged Hyde to “be neighbourly” and to come and engage with them.
Angelique Henderson said that she and her fellow campaigners weren’t against development. They just wanted to it to be good.
She said: “We will accept six to eight storeys but we will not accept anything higher.”
Mr Kyle urged the campaigners to lead the process, put forward solutions and get something they can be proud of.
He said: “We are a fair city and we need to build for the people who were born here and want to live here.”
Mr Kyle said that he would be asking Brighton and Hove City Council chief executive Geoff Raw about his trip this week to the MIPIM property conference in Cannes.
While there Mr Raw announced a joint venture with Hyde to build hundreds of new homes in Brighton and Hove.
Mr Kyle said that there were good reasons to be at events like MIPIM and he wanted reassurance.
A show of hands at the end indicated an overwhelming majority of people would accept a building of six to eight storeys on the site.
Mr Kyle is meeting Hyde again next week.
Clare Moonan “We need to build thousands of homes in this city – and we’re doing that.”… BHCC are NOT doing that… Why did she say that? We need at least 13,000 – there are not even plans for 1300? Is this a misquote?
Identified need over the lifetime of the City Plan (Pt 2 in prep) is 30,000.
The identified sites figure to satisfy Planning Inspectors scrutinising the City Plan is 13 000 – that is, sites around the city which are identified and required to produce minimum set amounts of housing on them over the lifetime of the City Plan. Places you can know are going to be developable.
It is expected that windfall sites produce the remaining need – typically when a site comes forward (eg garden grabs, houses, offices, hotels, factories demolished for blocks of flats, etc). And this figure historically DOES cough up most new housing.
There is outstanding planning consent around the city that just needs to be used and isn’t. There is landbanking by developers waiting for the right moment for the right level of profit to trigger development too.
ALL of it is forecast need for the lifetime of the new City Plan, not right this minute.
PROFIT & GREED beat NEED indeed.
30,000 homes needed and you guys can’t even agree on a block of 100! NO! NO! NO! You say!
This city is as doomed as the west pier…
JUST BUILD ALREADY BEFORE I DIE PLEASE!
At last someone talking sense: Cllr Ribert Nemeth correctly identifies the problem, i.e. our city is overcrowded, we must face reality, we cannot go on accommodating more and more people. Already the Planning Inspector has agreed that our green spaces, including parks, can be considered for development: do we teally want to live in a city with no open spaces. for recreation? Look at the awful development at the Marina and they have still to build the tower blocks! Whilst we can use redundant buildings and unused office blocks for residential accommodation in the short-term the only sensible answer is to relocate businesses and government agencies to less populated areas of the UK and build homes there. Fortunately I won’t live long enough to see our once lovely city ruined by those in charge who won’t face facts and will try to find 30,000 more homes in an already overcrowded area of the UK.
Many of the flats in the Sackville Tower would be second homes for people outside Brighton and Hove, so would not conribute to Brighton & Hove’s housing shortage, but who would drive the price of the flats up.
GREED INDEED NOT NEED. Brighton & Hove need rentals to allow the people on the housing waiting list to rent, people need reasonably priced flats, but tower blocjpks of flats are not suitable for bringing up children.
We need to test the posibility high densiity and low rise developments.