Supporters of efforts to bring the Hippodrome back into use have collected a petition signed by 3,000 people and handed it in to Brighton and Hove City Council.
The signatures were collected over three open days in support of the owner’s contention that the building is for performance and entertainment after the council said that it had no legal use.
When the Save Brighton Hippodrome group presented the petition at Hove Town Hall, they were joined by Simon Lambor, a director of Matsim, the Brighton family business that owns the venue.
Mr Lambor, 33, handed in a formal application at the same time for a lawful development certificate, with a 500-page dossier of evidence in support to counter the suggestion that the Hippodrome had “nil use”.
The application comes more than a year after Matsim applied for planning permission and listed building consent to revive the 125-year-old grade II* listed building.
He and his family have spent more than £5 million of their own money – with no taxpayer funding – fixing the leaking roof, dealing with dry rot and restoring parts of the interior.
But they said that they had hit a bureaucratic roadblock. They need planning permission before they can carry out any further work and said that they were waiting for the council to set a date to decide the planning applications. The council said that these would be dealt with next month or in November.
Matsim said that it had been in discussions with the council since buying the Hippodrome three years ago when the Victorian building was in need of urgent disrepair.
The discussions have had at their heart the family’s desire to restore the decaying architectural gem so that people can once again come and see and hear live acts perform.
Matsim said: “In June of this year, two and a half years into our discussions, we were told by the planning officer that the they had decided that the building had a ‘nil use’.
“As a result, the council would treat the proposal as a brand new venue that should have conditionality placed on its return to use that would make the project wholly unviable.
“It is of course a 125-year-old grade II* listed performance venue that enjoyed over a century of bringing people together through performance.
“Although it has been closed for a significant period, we believe its established planning use as a theatre for live performance is alive.
“The building’s amazing history is locally prolific and consistently cited fondly. This amazing history also applies to the bingo club years when live performance continued and the building made even more memories for attendees and staff.
“As recently as July 2014 the council acknowledged this fact in writing. At that time, Academy Music Group (AMG) had a lease on the building which required live performance.
“AMG did not dispose of the building until 2017, at which point it was sold to our predecessor.
“All owners and leaseholders during this building’s closed years have spent significant time and sums of money consulting with the aim of reopening it as a performance venue.”
The council’s decision that the building has no legal use was made just months after the council issued a premises licence for the Hippodrome.
The licence, issued last November, allows the sale of food and refreshment until midnight and alcoholic drink until 11.30pm every day of the year.
It also permits live entertainment, including music, dance, plays and indoor sport. The licence covers recorded music and films as well as such live sports as boxing and wrestling.
Drinks licences in the centre of Brighton often have conditions that prohibit “vertical drinking” but the Hippodrome licence allows standing customers to drink in the auditorium during performances.
Mr Lambor said that Matsim’s solicitor had diligently gathering the facts that demonstrate how the building was used throughout its history, with live entertainment continuing throughout the bingo club years.
Mr Lambor added: “We are making an application for a certificate that live performance is a lawful established use and cannot be taken away.
“Any reasonable Brightonian knows that the Hippodrome is a performance venue. It will remain that and have a legal certificate saying so.”
The council said: “We are very keen to see the important grade II* Listed Hippodrome brought back into use. The applicants have proposed to create a new mixed use development in the current application (BH2022/02443) which requires planning permission.
“Although officers have previously expressed a view that the overall use may have been ‘abandoned’ as it has been vacant for the last 17 years, a formal determination has not yet been made.
“The council will review the newly submitted application for a lawful development certificate and issue a decision in due course.
“With regards to the current live planning applications, we have to make sure that the proposals for the building fall within planning and listed building rules and local and national policies before they go before our Planning Committee.
“That is why we have been asking the applicant, for some months, for additional information to support the current application.
“If we do not do this, there is a risk that the decision will not be considered to have sufficiently addressed all relevant matters and could significantly delay the final decision-making stage – putting the future of the building in further uncertainty.”
For more information about the Hippodrome project, visit the council’s dedicated web page as well as Matsim’s Facebook page and the Save Our Hippodrome Facebook page.
I encourage everyone to read the Theatre Trust’s objections to the owner’s plans. Very concerning indeed. They are making changes to the venue which will then make it permanently unviable to be used as a live performance venue, presumably to then use the land for something else when it fails.
Or we leave it to rot.
If the Theatre Trust are that concerned about the building and its future then why didn’t they buy the Hippodrome years ago and finance the work themselves then they could have had the theatre they want rather than imposing their wishes on to the current owners.
Or we leave it to rot again.
The Theatre Trust seem to want it to be like a West End theatre which it never was. It was a variety theatre and later hosted concerts like the Beatles. The new owners have already spent £5m and won’t get that back in a hurry, if ever. The council seems to be putting up unnecessary obstacles when it should be working with the owners.
Fern the council are very supportive of the new owners and are doing what you ask of them and ARE working with them.
For example the council previously granted planning permission for the first stage of the works that have taken place including fixing the roof and making the building watertight.
They have already issued them with a licence to be able to run a bar.
Officers are currently going through the next planning application and as part of that are asking the owners to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Unfortunately these things take time if they are to be done properly and to be legally sound.
Unfortunately the council are not being helpful and seem to be listing more with the Theetres Trust than Matsim. If this family business had not stepped in when they did the roof would have collapsed and that would have been that for the Hippodrome. For the council to suggest the building has a “nil use” classification is a complete nonsense. It has always been a performance/music/entertainment venue of one sort or another. Some common sense needs to prevail here!
Entirely typical of our useless shambles of a council. They have zero respect for the residents of this city or our wishes. They don’t want this building to succeed. I bet they’re collecting petrol cans as we speak!
The Hippodrome as a music venue would be an incredible boost to the live music scene in this city. I live in cautious hope, but I know the planks running this city can and probably will pull the rug out from under our feet at any moment. The area is probably earmarked by them for a multi storey bike rack and second viewing tower to match their enormous success – the world famous – life changing i360!
You’ll definitely fit right into the theatre with dramatics like that! Fortunately, the reality isn’t reflective of your terminological inexactitude.
What you talking about the I 360 is not a financial success in that the operators/owners owe millions to the council after they put money into the project after being swayed by them to give planning permission to build it in the first place! And became a White Elephant due to not getting the amount of people wanting to go up it that they told the council would go up it!!
And to this day I have never bothered to go up it after living here for 27 years
…he was being sarcastic, my friend.
It’s about time the council and the Theatre Trust stopped their objections and interference and let Matsim just ‘get on with it’! The majority of Brighton & Hove residents support Matsim’s proposals, and are fed up with council and the Theatre Trust’s negative interference!
My Dad 84 remembers seeing Laurel and Hardy there after I had commented on the beautiful windows I passed there and thought it was being renovated. As a Brighton tax payer that only gets my bins emptied for my council tax I back renovation. It would be a good use of money and a beautiful asset maybe the council should stop wasting money and spend it on keeping these beautiful buildings..rip off parking also raises concerns as it doesn’t encourage visitors staying longer spending in local businesses. Trypark in the evening as a local…impossible. back these venues…its the future!