The council has been given £21 million to rebuild more arches under Kings Road.
Dozens of arches, stretching from Kings Road playground to Shelter Hall, need to be replaced as part of an ongoing project which started more than a decade ago.
Because they form part of the A259, Brighton and Hove City Council was able to apply to the Department for Transport, which this week announced its bid was successful.
Councillor Trevor Muten, Cabinet member for Transport and City Infrastructure, said: “It’s great news that we’ve been indicatively awarded £21 million from the Department for Transport for the ongoing restoration and refurbishment of the Kings Road arches – a vital part of our seafront.
“This funding will support phases four and five of the project, which runs behind the King’s Road playground and paddling pool (phase four) and the area west of Shelter Hall (phase five).
“We’ll be going out to tender for this work shortly and plan to begin construction next year.
“When work begins, we’ll work closely with traders, businesses and leisure facilities to minimise disruption.
“The A259 and lower promenade will remain open throughout and every effort will be taking to keep the upper promenade as open as possible and any inconvenience to residents and visitors kept to an absolute minimum.”
The Kings Road arches redevelopment began in 2012 – and became more urgent when the arch housing the Fortune of War pub collapsed in 2014, closing the seafront road above for several months.
A planning application for this next phase submitted by the council to itself last year, written by R H Partnership Architects, says: “Structural failures along Kings Road in the last two decades have led to the wider development works along the seafront to provide safe support for the heavily trafficked road.
“Resolving the arches’ weakened integrity is the primary driver behind this development scheme and requires a wholesale structural overhaul as opposed to a material renovation.
“The listed railings [on the upper promenade] require replacement as the current railings are of an unsafe height and represent a risk to the public
“New railings will be produced as faithful reproductions of the existing with only minor modifications to increase their safety. Detailed moulds will be taken from the existing to produce the new cast iron elements.”
As well as shops, restaurants and bars, the stretch of arches also includes the council’s seafront office and the lifeguard store.
The masonry arches will be replaced by concrete, and the new facades will be made of brickwork in the same design as the previously refurbished arches.
The new arches will have improved ventilation, and low-demand air-source heat pumps.
The council is preparing an application to the Department for Transport for funding for both this phase and phase four, which is due to be submitted next March.
The first phase saw the arches just west of what is now the i360 site redeveloped. After that, arches to the east were redeveloped, followed by the Shelter Hall.
Intersting that the figure is £21 million when the council said before that the project will cost £27 million and they anticipated £24 million of funding from the Department for Transport.
My understanding is its essential work to ensure the road above the arches is maintained and remains viable and safe, so wonder if the council will need to top up the £3million difference in the amounts they anticipated and have received, or whether any aspects of the plans will need amending.
Prev aricle here: https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2024/10/18/next-phase-in-kings-road-arch-project-could-start-next-summer/
Some form of match funding is usually required from local councils.
It’s possible since the bid was put in that costs have been reassessed or the DoT has knocked some elements out hence the reduction in the grant.
Important to remember that the road part will actually be the cheaper part of the project.
It’s the works to the arches that actually hold the road up – it’s actually a viaduct – that are the expensive part.
The majority of the costs of the west street / shelter hall scheme was for work on the arches holding the junction up and not the hall and beach level works.
Wonderful opportunity to squeeze in a cycle lane along Kings Road
Indeed, a wonderful opportunity to widen the promenade to include the cycle lane, rather than to narrow the existing seafront road, creating the traffic bottleneck currently there – as the Greens stupidly did with the last cycle lane imposed on the A259.
You can actually have your cake and eat it, if only you think outside the ideological box, and with real-world empathy for the commuters and city visitors who have no choice but to be in a car.
Note that most goods and services are not delivered by bike – and those that are, are probably not good for you.
As you know Billy, Greens only ever had a minority administration so ALWAYS needed the votes from other parties in the city to pass anything – often this was your beloved Labour 🙂 (who run the council with a majority now and who are closing 3 libraries, have closed 2 schools and Bright Start nursery, and who are proposing to close the city’s only indoor tennis court – the list could go on).
Not quite sure why you needed to make your point and make it political, but seeing as you did (as you do so often) just a reminder that defending Labour is pretty pointless right now when you consider what they are doing locally and nationally.