The King Alfred site was the popular choice for a new swimming pool and leisure centre – rather than on land south of the West Hove Sainsbury’s supermarket.
More than 3,600 people responded to a consultation about plans to build a new pool and leisure centre serving the Hove and Portslade area.
Brighton and Hove City Council said that they were overwhelmingly in favour of the building afresh on the existing site.
If – as expected – the council’s cabinet agrees a set of proposals next week, the new pool and sports centre could be open to the public in just under four years’ time.
The cabinet is being asked to agree to spend up to £47 million on building a replacement for the King Alfred site on the site in Kingsway, on Hove seafront.
The Labour cabinet is being asked to approve the spending as part of Brighton and Hove City Council’s medium-term capital investment programme, funded through government grants, selling property and borrowing.
Cabinet members are also being asked to approve a £2.7 million budget for the planning application process – from the £47 million total – at a meeting at Hove Town Hall on Thursday 18 July.
The next stage of the project would be to appoint a professional team including a lead architect to start the design work.
Papers published before the meeting state that the minimum cost of refurbishing the 1930s King Alfred building and its 1980s extension would be £14 million.
Such work would include asbestos removal, concrete repairs, reinforcing the foundations and renewing the roof.
But if the cabinet opted for land south of the West Hove Sainsbury’s, in Old Shoreham Road, the council would have had to overcome other obstacles including a restrictive covenant.
The preferred option would involve building a “stacked design” on part of the site, with basement car parking, and the rest of the site sold for housing.
An alternative to the £47 million scheme – a low-rise leisure centre with a surface car park – would potentially cost £39 million.
The cabinet is not being asked to choose either the low-rise or stacked design on the existing site at this stage.
A refurbishment would face practical problems. The current sports halls, built above the 1930s “major” and “minor” swimming pools, do not meet Sport England or national governing body standards.
The more recently built leisure pool and 25-metre main pool should have water at different temperatures but share the same supply and a common filter system.
The main pool also has only six lanes rather than eight, limiting its use for competitive swimming. And the gym space, in the former café site, is not purpose-built.
The report said: “The requirement to replace the King Alfred with a new facility has been recognised for over 30 years.
“There have been three previous attempts to deliver a new facility with the last project, undertaken with Crest Nicholson, stalling in 2019.”
The report said that the lessons learnt from the failure of the previous project have highlighted the importance of
- prioritising financial viability and practical deliverability
- retaining control of the project
- keeping the delivery of the leisure centre separate from any residential development on the existing site
- taking a realistic view of what the development is being expected to deliver
The public consultation generated 3,679 responses and a further 128 emails with regular users keen to keep the facilities at the current seafront site.
People living near the other site being considered – the green space south of Sainsbury’s currently used by Portslade Cricket Club – were concerned about the prospect of extra traffic and parking problems.
The cabinet papers said that, on one measure, 70 per cent of respondents favoured the existing site while a “sentiment analysis” found that 60 per cent favoured the existing site and 14 per cent favoured the Old Shoreham Road site.
Campaigners against redeveloping the King Alfred are concerned about the prospect of hundreds of homes on the site, with previous proposals including between 400 and 700 flats.
The King Alfred Community Consultation Group called on the council to extend the current consultation period.
Group representative Carol Wilson said: “While the expected decision to keep the leisure centre on the seafront is excellent news for Benfield Valley, we are deeply concerned about the planned demolition of the King Alfred Leisure Centre and the proposed high-density housing development intended, which includes only a token leisure facility sat beside it.
“We will be proposing an alternative vision: a comprehensive refurbishment and expansion of the existing complex.
“This plan would bring to Brighton and Hove a long-awaited, state-of-the-art, multi-purpose sport and leisure facility, establishing our city as a premier destination for sporting excellence.”
The cabinet is due to meet at 4.30pm on Thursday 18 July at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
What a tragedy. People are so conservative. Prime seafront property is a crazy place to build a leisure centre. Half the catchment area is in the sea! It makes no sense.
The firm that runs the Sea Lanes pool had no problem with the idea of building it right by the, er, sea. And the newly restored Saltdean Lido does brisk business. For some of us, there are only so many days for a swim in the sea either because of the rough conditions, the temperatures or the rain. Few of us want to change back into our clothes when it’s tipping down. But we still like to be beside the sea. It’s a public good and will be funded by housing that brings a public benefit but will, for all intents an purposes, be private property.
Tucked under a bypass though for the Sea Lanes, so less appealling. Still, I take your point about enjoyment.
Oh, and East Brighton is massively underdeveloped for services as well. The disparity is clearly shown in the IMD Index.
Personally, it’s the doubling of cost by keeping it there. Also they lose the revenue from selling the land to pay for this construction, and that’ll have a wider implication to other future projects beyond this one.
They’ll be using what would have been the next project’s fund.
I couldn’t believe the cost difference between the two sites and I also wonder what services/ facilities the city will miss out on because of the lower return and money from the sale of the Alfred site. A few youth clubs would have been nice. But the decision has been made and in a few years once it’s open no one will care. I hope it lives up to expectations.
We do like to be beside the seaside tiddly om pom pom, is what the actual people who constitute the catchment area have actually said in the consultation.