A £70 million scheme to build more than 200 council homes in Brighton won the backing of senior councillors last night (Thursday 30 April).
The project – the Moulsecoomb Neighbourhood Hub and Housing Scheme – includes dozens of family homes in place of old school buildings which are currently used by social workers who will relocate.
The hub is hoped to include a doctors’ surgery, pharmacy, library, youth centre, adult learning classrooms, community café and meeting rooms.
The whole scheme is planned for a four-and-a-half-acre site west of Hodshrove Road and off Hodshrove Lane.
All three political parties – Labour, the Greens and Conservatives – voted for the project in principle, subject to planning permission being granted.
The scheme includes 232 new homes to be built in two phases over the next three years.
A Brighton and Hove City Council report said that nine of the homes in the first phase would be four-bedroom houses.
There would also be 33 one-bed flats, 36 two-bedroom flats and 14 with three bedrooms, making 92 homes in total.
The 140 homes in the second phase include 58 one-bed flats, 64 two-bedroom flats and 18 with three bedrooms.
All 232 homes would be classes as “affordable”, with rents no higher than 80 per cent of the local “market rate”.
The former Labour council leader Daniel Yates, who represents Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, told a “virtual” meeting of the council’s Policy and Resources Committee: “This is a really important project for me, mostly because the people of Moulsecoomb have been begging us to build new homes so that their families and their friends have access to the housing that they need.
“It’s something we fought an election on – and the Greens fought an election on too – about delivering these homes.
“But it’s not just about that. This is also about repurposing and rebuilding the centre of a community too.”
Councillor Yates warned against artificially inflating the value of the land in a way which would force the tenants there to pay higher rates.
He said that he was aware of the ways in which Green councillor David Gibson and Conservatives Steve Bell and Mary Mears had pushed to keep rents low.
But Conservative councillor Joe Miller said that the project should not be given a blank cheque and needed proper scrutiny.
£300,000 of public money to build a home.. On land already owned.. This is a rubbish.. The police need to look into where the money is going.. Someone is ripping the taxpayers off.
When I was young, I went funfairs and circuses on the site that’s now an old people’s home. I caught buses that started from the bus station that is now a waste recycling site at the bottom of Moulsecoombe Way. I played football on the fields there, basketball on the court there and went to the 67 centre and the hall next to it for cub scouts.
Soon it will all be concreted over like most of Lewes Road.
And they call this progress?
We should spend more on education so people can get a decent job and buy their own home rather than have it funded by tax payers. People seem to just expect everything free these days….if you can’t afford a family don’t have one