The council has put one of its main offices up for sale £5 million to bring in cash to help fund its £240 million “capital investment programme”.
Brighton and Hove City Council is moving staff out of Bartholomew House, also known as Barts House, in Bartholomew Square, Brighton, so that the ground, first and second floors will be vacant.
The third and fourth floors are let to Freedom Works for a base rent of £122,000 a year on a contract that runs until 2039.
An advert suggested that the site could keep being used as offices or, with planning permission, as a hotel or for holidays lets, prompting housing campaigners to start a petition calling on the council to turn it into temporary housing.
The proceeds from the proposed sale are intended to go towards the capital spending programme which includes a £113 million investment in housing in the coming financial year.
An advert for the building said: “The property is offered for sale on a new long lease for a term of at least 250 years at a peppercorn ground rent.”
Housing campaigner Daniel Harris, who started the petition, called for an emergency council meeting, suspension of the sale and greater transparency.
The read or sign the petition, headed Emergency Petition – Stop the Batholomew House Giveaway, on Change.org, click here.
Mr Harris said that the office space could be turned into temporary housing by the council.
He said that he was worried that the space could be converted into short-term holiday lets – as happened with the old Green Diamond offices to the east of the square.
Mr Harris said: “The council has a good history of converting in-house assets to temporary accommodation over the last few years. Palace Place has just been finished. Why on earth has this happened?
“This Labour council will forever be seen as the council who gave away the i360, writing off the £51 million owed, the council which sold off our best assets and made this city much poorer in the long term.”
The petition also raises the council’s £19 million contract with Base One to provide temporary housing for homeless people.
Brighton and Hove Housing Coalition, of which Mr Harris is a member, has already raised concerns, saying that the company had assets of just £55,000 and was incorporated in May 2023.
Labour councillor Jacob Allen, the council’s cabinet member for customer services and the public realm, said that the cabinet agreed to explore selling the building on a long lease to raise money to tackle frontline services including homelessness.
Last October, the cabinet agreed to sell unwanted property such as disused offices to raise, in the first instance, about £10 million, with the aim over the coming years of buying 200 homes for temporary housing.
This is expected to reduce the significant sums that are currently paid to private landlords.
Councillor Allen said: “We are moving services out of Bartholomew House as part of our efforts to reduce property costs on buildings we operate.
“This is a good thing for local taxpayers and services because we shouldn’t be wasting money on half-empty buildings but using it to support frontline services that residents need.
“The building has planning protection in place for it to be used as office space and the third and fourth floors are currently let as offices.
“While technically it would not be impossible to change the use, the council would have to demonstrate there is no demand for offices in this area in order to do so.
“We are working hard to ensure residents can continue to access housing advice and homelessness support once the service relocates to Hove Town Hall.”
Councillor Allen said that housing advice and homelessness support would continue with the same opening hours, saying that people could contact them by phone, online or in person at Hove Town Hall.
Brighton Town Hall next?
Hmm, I think that’s pretty unlikely. Consider that Brighton Town Hall is a Grade II-listed building and still serves a civic function. It’s also used for weddings and events, so it generates income while also having heritage value. You’d be hard pushed to change anything in there beyond what it is now, and the protections probably make it undesirable for developers.
We have a few developers who comment on here from time to time, I’m sure they’d be able to say with a lot more certainty than I!
More selling the family silver. They can’t manage money to save their lives.
So you’re advocating that a building is left empty, costing money whilst providing no benefit? No offence, James, but stay away from my bank account, lol. There’s more than just an upfront payment. Businesses move into this, that’ll attract business rates, and selling this will save on maintenance and repair costs. Converting into housing would likely be extremely expensive to do since that usually means major structural work, fire safety redesign, plumbing, and meeting standards, so you’re better off reallocating into things that are already designed for accommodation.
It’s pretty financially competent, actually.
Yet they have the cash to buy the Royal Mail Delivery Office in North Road. 🤔🤔
I didn’t think they were buying North Road PO?
“[The council] has no plans to buy the Royal Mail site in North Road, Brighton, which is likely to be much more expensive than the Denmark Villas site.” https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2024/11/06/council-expects-royal-mail-deal-to-deliver-more-homes-at-lower-cost
Benjamin, that’s a pretty big assumption. Nobody is suggesting the building should just sit empty. The point people are raising is how it should be used before rushing to sell it off on a 250-year lease.
The council is currently spending huge sums on temporary accommodation and even signing multi-million pound contracts with private providers. If Bartholomew House could be converted – even partially – into temporary housing, that could reduce those ongoing costs and keep the asset in public hands rather than handing control to a private developer for effectively the next two centuries.
Yes, office-to-residential conversions can cost money, but so does paying private landlords year after year. Selling public assets for a one-off £5m while housing costs keep rising might not look so “financially competent” in the long run.
The real issue here is transparency and long-term thinking. Once a building like that is leased out for 250 years, it’s essentially gone from public control. Residents are right to question whether that’s the best option when the city is facing a housing and homelessness crisis.
The assumption GPT is incorrectly making here is that the council hasn’t considered alternative uses before marketing the building. In practice these decisions usually follow an internal options appraisal. It’s another reason, that, for the sixth time, I’m advising you to not rely on GPT to generate a full reply, because it makes comments with glaring weaknesses.
Use your own words, ask GPT to refine them if you need to.
Look at green diamond aka formally council owned priory house, thats a much much smaller plot and was also some how given away under Labour. same rulebook 10 years or so later, except we have learned. there is plenty of empty private empty assets available, and community which can take coworking, i won back the valley social centre in brighton a big social centre community owned which needs tenants.
The fact is this council knows its buying back duds on there flagship buyback scheme, wait until the data comes out, i estimate over 200 plus of the claimed buy backs will be demolished in 5 years and cannot be counted, in essence, locals are being misled.
This is why the plan to repurpose makes sense, if its okay for migrants why not citizens? its already worked well for loads of buildings reporposed into good quality temporary the council gets the rents for, this will be the best plan for the city, watch the council boast about palace place being completed soon and new tenants moving in. why not go further and convert barts house too. This is a very practical & viable alternative to the current broken model everyone is paying for in council tax rises!!!
Be interesting to see who buys it.
It won’t be a huge amount of office space.
Could be a good ‘shared work space’ opportunity!
Seems like a fair decent space. You’ve given me a thought…thinking of all those that were displaced from New England House, they may very well be interested?
New England House should also not be sold and should be repurposed into homeless housing / social housing mix as a continued council owned asset generating social value and income or demolished and still an inhouse building. Valley Social Centre has plenty of office space, a lot of vacant spaces across the city.
Public need lower rents council can help by outbuilding the private sector, forcing 60% affordable homes now.
no one here should be spending all there wages on rents, the town centre and night time economy is dead, its killing our city, people need money to enjoy life, not make all them penniless. locals could redevelop, new apprentices. New jobs. Give facilites. Create a Community.
Anyone in comments endorsing this stealing and depreciation of public assets which wont even cover the interest on the £15m borrowed to line the private sector, needs to have a word with themselves. Whose interests do you really comment for? political parties your a member of? hmmm those in power now? this new borrowing will cost every citizen even more adding on £11m interest alone, one opposition councillor said, making this city poorer.
I urge progressive councillors to stand up for the entire city here, your confined to wards, but all your most vulnerable residents used this place and many were not helped and caused trauma, turn this into a flagship city converted asset of hope. put your money where your mouth is i dare you Labour PROVE ME WRONG HERE!
I call on council officers and particulary directors in housing and adult social care to lobby the CEO for this asset to repurpose, stuff leaving to insist. dont let this go!
New England house will probably be demolished if it’s not fixed and was an asset for small business. Employment is important. Shouldn’t be turning office and industrial into housing
From what I was reading up on New England House, the costs of retrofitting the building to be compliant with fire safety regulation is prohibitively high. Makes me feel like a regeneration is the most likely outcome of that particular site.
It’s already a co-working space on the top two floors. Check out the company, and the ownership a lot of changes at Xmas.
Not sure who is using it, but the fact is just around the corner the Councl have just converted palace place where phase three will be unveiled, just been to see, they look lovely.
Why are the Council not relieving the housing crisis and giving away assets, 250 years. That’s 250s of lost rental income.
There could be a hybrid model, still.
Let’s get back to the drawing board.
Palace Place was originally built as residenntial so easy to comnvert back from offices to accommodation
Bartholomew House was built as offices.
Office >>> homes conversions aren’t easy nor are they cheap.
Mr Harris said:
“This Labour council will forever be seen as the council who gave away the i360, writing off the £51 million owed, the council which sold off our best assets and made this city much poorer in the long term.”
The council NEVER owned the i360 so was never in the position to give it away.
It had little option but to write off the Tory / Green incurred debt and if they had been in power they would have taken the same decision.
Bartholomew House can never be desctived as a best asset. It’s an aging office building draining finances in rates and running costs that would be better utilised on paying for things like social care.
Ageing buildings can still be assets as they can be repurposed. Bartholomew House is considerably younger than Hove Town Hall. All it takes is a bit of imagination and a strategic investment. Public assets should not be disposed of in such a fashion that, in the long-term, is detrimental to the community and offers no benefit to the public purse. Look at the sale of council housing for a reminder.
I certainly appreciate the optimism, but to repurpose offices like Barts as housing would require an excessive amount of money to make it legally compliant. So much so, you’d be better off spending the money on building purpose-built elsewhere. I think we also have to consider that the sale isn’t just £5m, but also the income that is generated from business rates every year afterwards, and savings made by not having to maintain the building, which I would gently counterpoint and say it indeed offers a benefit to the public purse.
On your other point, Right to Buy certainly is a detriment; I’m watching this new pilot. The logic behind it seems reasonable, and could be a good alternative until RTB is removed completely from legislation.
The council seem to have really missed a trick here.
Make it holiday let’s, get a management firm to run it and cash in hard. Use that money to pay for housing to be built yearly elsewhere. But don’t flog it for a pittance, that’s just stupid
Also known as a hotel! Either way, still runs into the same fundamental issue as converting it to housing; the building was designed as offices. However, reading the article, that’s exactly what they seem to be hoping to do with the capital receipt here, using that money to pay for housing to be built elsewhere.