There are a lot of cranes about these days. I think most people moving around the city – and certainly those communities most affected – would recognise that there is progress being made to deliver the housing, work, learning and public spaces that this city so desperately needs.
Whether it is the Preston Barracks site, Circus Street, Valley Gardens, the West Street Shelter Hall or the Royal Sussex County Hospital, some of the city’s most prominent sites and services are being rethought, developed or redeveloped, often after many years of waiting.
Let’s not forget the schemes still in the planning or thinking stages such as Brighton General Hospital, Churchill Square and the King Alfred.
Do not, however, underestimate the complexity of bringing forward these massive investments in the city’s future.
Many of these schemes have taken years to bring together the right ideas, the right partners, the right funding, gain public support, ensure the legal agreements are in place and of course that planning permission and other statutory requirements are met. Only then can cranes or bulldozers appear.
Often politicians have seen these projects through their many stages but it should be remembered that those political faces can change quite frequently while these major projects continue in the pipeline.
In this city, where for the past 15 years political control has swung between three political parties, that means on a practical basis that the person who announces the scheme is rarely in a position of control when the ribbon is cut – but who cares!
It is of far greater importance to keep the right schemes progressing than it is to worry about unpicking the relative contributions of political groupings to the whole.
I welcome the efforts that all those involved in each stage of these projects (and those yet to be announced) have made, including experts, partners, residents and local organisations (and politicians).
I for one will enjoy announcing, topping out or holding a big pair of scissors. But I won’t and shouldn’t claim credit for the whole thing.
There will be hundreds and thousands of people whose contributions, far greater than those of the politicians, should not be ignored.
Councillor Daniel Yates is the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.
I would suggest that Councillor yates is being disingenuous in suggesting that the Circus Street and Preston Barracks developments will in any way help solve Brighton’s chronic housing crisis. Both of these developments are mainly aimed at housing the huge number of extra students (450 places in Circus St & 1338 in Preston Barracks)flooding into Brighton to the deprement of its ordinary residents. Surely we should be concentrating on building homes for workers first…
I would suggest you are a plonker Ron. A new home is a new home and will ease pressure on the housing stock whoever lives in it. If the new homes are occupied by students then those same students won’t need to live in the old homes, freeing more of them up for workers, elderlies, plonkers or whoever…
Stop student bashing. You are boring.
I assume that the all new houses for local people will be at the proposed developments at Enterprise et.al. (see article in today’s B & H news) also a quick check on the websites of several local estate agents shows them still advertising family homes in Saunders Park and Coldean as “suitable for conversion to student lets”. Far from freeing up homes it seems that Brighton council is determined to flood the Lewes Road area with student accomdation without any regard to what they are doing to the demographic of the area… P.S.only people with a poor argument have to resort to insults…