A planning application to keep a temporary extension at the back of a controversial Brighton factory is due to go before councillors next week.
L3 Harris, the technology company and defence contractor, wants to retain the extension at Emblem House, in Home Farm Road, Brighton, and officials have recommended that planning permission is granted.
The application was due to be debated in March but the council deferred making its decision to take legal advice.
Hundreds of people, including MPs and councillors, have objected to five more years for the temporary extension which dates from 2018.
Protesters have gathered outside Hove Town Hall for every Planning Committee meeting since March and disturbed a meeting this month by calling out from the public gallery in the council chamber.
They have also set up a “peace camp” on the edge of Wild Park, close to Home Farm Road, and two protesters face charges of wilful obstruction of the highway.
The pair – Ash Yoganathan, 27, and Cole MacDonald, 21, have both pleaded not guilty.
A report to the council’s Planning Committee, which is due to meet next week, includes legal advice from barrister Alex Goodman and an equalities impact assessment (EIA).
Mr Goodman said: “It is, in principle, open to council members to take the view that relevant impacts on equality are of such concern that they outweigh other considerations in the planning balance such that planning permission should be refused on grounds of those impacts.
“There is no reason in law why members should not give decisive weight to equalities considerations, nor any reason why they may not give very low weight to them.
“Members should be conscious that if they refuse planning permission, they would be departing from the recommendation of officers who, expressing their professional judgment in the officer report, have recommended that the application should be granted planning permission.”
Mr Goodman said that if councillors rejected the application, L3 Harris could appeal, not least because they would have voted against the advice of officials.
He said that their assessment was thorough and addressed the issues but added that it would be up to councillors to make their decision based on their planning judgment.
The equalities impact assessment (EIA) asked whether there was a “disproportionate impact relating to ethnicity”.
The EIA report said: “Experience of community tensions around the current operation of the premises (recent protest camp) and the consultation responses to the retention of the extension indicate that the decision on this application could have a disproportionately negative impact on minority ethnic groups in the city, principally Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim and Arabic speakers.
“Figures relating specifically to anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic hate crimes are not separated out but there is anecdotal evidence that Brighton and Hove has experienced a rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic hate incidents as well as demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza/Israel hostilities.
“Representatives of local Muslim and Jewish communities have reported to elected members of the council that their respective communities feel increasingly unsafe, isolated and fearful.”
More than 600 objections to the plans have been submitted, with many saying that the company builds products used in conflict zones globally. Most comments referred to bomb racks and bomb release mechanisms.
A petition signed by 130 people was also submitted.
Anna Stavrianakis, professor of international relations at Sussex University, has repeatedly spoken out about the application at protests.
Professor Stavrianakis said: “The legal advice received by the council says that ‘whether or not weapons that may be manufactured at the application site are or should be granted a licence for export is not a matter that is material to the planning application’.
“However, this assumes that the UK’s arms export control regime actually works. Not only has permission been granted for a judicial review of UK arms exports to Israel but ministers have been tying themselves in knots trying to justify the unjustifiable to Parliament.
“UK export controls are broken and it is not safe for the council to rely on them.
“Councillors may take human rights concerns into account when they make their decision.
“Justice demands that they refuse planning permission to a company that makes bomb release mechanisms being used in Gaza.”
Independent councillor Samer Bagaeen, formerly a Conservative, objected to the application. Councillor Bagaeen, who is also a professor of planning, said that the extension was “in breach of planning law”.
Labour councillors Mohammed Asaduzzaman and Theresa Fowler have objected, as have Green councillors Raphael Hill, Ellen McLeay and Kerry Pickett.
The Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, and the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, have also objected.
One member of the public has written to the council in support of the plans along with Conservative councillor Ivan Lyons.
L3 Harris’s neighbour and landlord Paxton Access said that it planned to give the company notice to vacate its premises when its lease expires in 2027.
The council’s Planning Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm on Wednesday 5 June. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
This is not a neutral country,if we were threatened by another country,as of in the past we would act accordingly if people of an ethnic mind set dont like reality then please get out I for one am sick to death of hearing about things these poor ethnic things this country that there living has done to them ,it goes for the indigenous population as well theres a British saying !!! DONT BITE THE HANDS THAT FEED YOU.
And L3Harris won their appeal on 24 July 2025