A seafront venue’s beach huts helped to cut fights and drug taking along the prom, it has claimed.
Brighton Music Hall is asking for permission to keep the huts and stage for another five years.
It says as well as extending its season into winter, significant problems with antisocial behaviour in the area all but disappeared when they were installed in 2020.
An application to Brighton and Hove City Council, written by Elemental Architecture and Design, says: “The back wall along the terrace was previously used as a meeting point for large numbers of street drinkers and young people selling and using balloon gas.
“The police were called almost daily by the venue in the summer of 2019 (before the stage and beach huts were constructed) as bottles were smashed on Brighton Music Hall terrace and on promenade and fights regularly broke out.
“The walkway was at times unpassable as groups of 50 to 60 people would gather.
“This culminated in a crossparty meeting with police licensing, environmental health, the seafront surveyors and the venue to discuss how these issues could be addressed in late July 2019.
“Here the openness of the terrace and the positioning of the stage were discussed and the impact that enclosing the terrace and moving the stage might have on the issues.
“Moving the stage to its current position has completely eradicated all issues along the back wall.
“Groups no longer gather there as they can no longer see the stage and there have been zero call outs to the police this year about anti-social behaviour along the back wall.
“The second issue was uncontrolled access to Brighton Music Hall terrace particularly from the east.
“The venue found it difficult to control access from the long walkway where the beach huts are now positioned. There were two fights that broke out in the summer of 2019, both caused by parties not approved by the venue for entry and who gained access owing to the open nature of the terrace.
“These fights then migrated to outside Riddle and Finns, much to their distress.
“The addition of the beach huts has formed a protective boundary along this edge of the terrace and formed a single point of entry to the terrace, which, when combined with a meet and greet station, means numbers accessing the terrace, age checks, levels of intoxication and large groups trying to gain entry can all be assessed before gaining entry
“This current arrangement has changed the nature of the venue entirely, making it safer, calmer and a more family friendly environment.”
They would have to provide a statistically significant data case to prove that their current temporary beach huts cut crime, as they maintain. It is possible that the presence of the beach huts has moved the criminal anctivity elsewhere.
In 2019 crime was this bad. In 2020 it dropped massively!
That wasn’t because of your huts you melt. It’s coz we were all locked in our f**King homes most of it.
If anyone on the assessment panel doesn’t reject the application based solely on this low intelligence and/or disgusting attempt to justify something then they should lose their jobs as well.
How low a person do you have to become to try and get benefit from such a thing happening.
I like the damn huts. I like the venue. Sorry, I LIKED the place. If they wanna be this scummy then they can get rekt and I’ll go elsewhere when down the beach.
I approve of the venue, it seems to work for most people. But the narrative that it cuts crime is plainly false, it just displaces it elsewhere. They’re attempting to justify privatising this public space for profit. They’d put turnstiles on it if they could.