Construction Voice: Is the Brighton and Hove City Plan on track?

Flo Powell, Joint MD at Midnight Communications, writes for Brighton Chamber about their latest Construction Voice event.

Five years on from the launch of the Brighton and Hove City Plan, and Brighton Chamber’s Construction Voice event, ‘City Plan: aspirational and achievable?’, the Chamber brought together the great and good of the property and construction sector, with expert panelists, to discuss the progress of the City Plan at ‘Construction Voice: is the Brighton and Hove City Plan on track?’

Joined by Liz Hobden, Head of Planning at Brighton and Hove City
Council; Peter Rainier, Principal Director at DMH Stallard; and Kelvin MacDonald, Senior Fellow, Department of Land and Economy at University of Cambridge, and Board Member of Brighton Housing Trust; with the panel expertly chaired by Ed Allison-Wright.

The Council’s City Plan was hailed as ambitious when it was launched in 2016, and Liz took us through the successes and challenges over the last five years. The plan set out the housing delivery target, retail and employment land requirements to 2030 – including 13,200 homes and 140k sqm additional employment space.

The Plan identified eight development areas, 18 strategic site allocations and 22 strategic city-wide policies. Of the 18 sites, 12 had made progress including Preston Barracks, the Edward Street Quarter and Circus Street developments, and the Hove Gardens site.

Liz mentioned some major challenges with three development areas: Brighton Centre and Churchill Square, the seafront including the King Alfred Site and the Brighton Marina. Each site has had no real progress.

The target of 13,200 homes is over 20 years (2020-2030) which is 660 a year. We are not achieving this at the moment, on average achieving 481 homes a year.

The target for 30% affordable housing is quite far off. Over the life of the plan, only 23% of the housing has been affordable, and much of that was down to the council’s own delivery rather than planning application negotiations.

Student housing was hailed a success story with 4,500 rooms delivered over the life of the plan, freeing up homes in multiple occupancy to be bought by families.

In terms of employment space, the plan’s ambitious target was an additional 140,000 sqm. However, the city has had a net loss of 28,000 sqm over the last 10 years.

So…is the plan on track? There have certainly been some successes – Lewes Road, Preston Barracks, Circus St and Edward St Quarter are all excellent developments for the city. However, we’re down on employment space, we haven’t achieved the affordable homes target and three of our big projects have all stalled.

Peter Rainier suggested three Rs:

1.Review – a review of the City Plan is due.

2. Reform – significant planning reforms are on the way, and Brighton has been picked as one of 20 cities to take the brunt of new housing delivery.

3. Resources – the planning system is key to the city and the council needs to resource it properly.

Kelvin MacDonald brought a piece of history to the discussion – the original Brighton Borough Plan!

Kelvin noted that Brighton and Hove has a huge challenge in terms of affordability to buy or rent, and called for a focus on the levels of depravation in the city.

The council has more than 20 different strategies on the go – the City Plan therefore needs to tie in to all the other objectives the council has.

The attendees were then split into groups to try and come up with some solutions:

• Affordable housing target could be increased

• Build more student housing to free up more family homes

• The process for dealing with local objections on planning applications should be sped up

• Transport infrastructure needs to be carefully considered with new developments

• Create ‘coherent neighbourhoods’ with local amenities and workspace

• ‘Windfall’ sites could be identified to add to housing target

• Introduce more flexibility at retail sites to allow more pop-ups

To answer the question ‘is the city plan on track’ is therefore a difficult one. In terms of housing delivery, affordable housing and employment space? No, it isn’t. There’s no doubt that the council’s planning department have made improvements and is striving to meet its targets, but the city is facing huge challenges and therefore the finding of this discussion is that a review is needed, and quickly.

With thanks to event sponsors DMH Stallard.

Flo Powell is Joint MD at Midnight Communications and regularly writes for Brighton Chamber. To read Flo’s full write up, head over to the Brighton Chamber blog here.

Construction Voice is organised by Brighton Chamber in collaboration with RLF. Graves Jenkins, Lewis & Co Planning and Hayden Consulting.

Find out more about Construction Voice and past events visit the Chamber website.

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