People wanted a better design, more seating and a sports hall without natural light when asked about the plans being drawn up for the new King Alfred Leisure Centre.
Brighton and Hove City Council has now submitted plans for the swimming pool and leisure centre on Hove seafront after taking into account feedback from thousands of people.
In the latest survey in October and November last year on the council’s website, almost 600 people responded. More than 90 per cent said that the project “aligns with resident demand”.
Details of four years of public engagement have been included with the planning application for the new £65 million seafront sports facility.
The council said that thousands had had their say before the plans went in for land next to the current King Alfred site – formerly an underground bowling alley and more recently Laser Zone as well as the surface car park.
The last set of plans that went on show at a public exhibition attended by 300 people in October won broad support.
In response, 592 surveys were completed on the council website and 422 people filled added their own opinions, with a further 95 completing comment cards.
More than three-quarters expressed neutral to very positive views about the outside of the building while 83 per cent rated the inside from neutral to very good.
It was in this final consultation that 90 per cent of commenters agreed that the plans “aligned with resident demand”.
In the open comments, people welcomed the modernisation but called for more murals and greenery.
They also wanted the building to reflect the art deco heritage, with 35 of the comments saying that the design was “bland, boxy and generic”.
There was disappointment with the small size of the proposed water play area, the lack of a lagoon and also the small soft play space.
During the consultation process, sports groups were among the early responders in the first phase in 2022.
Swimmers wanted more spectator seating and two 25-metre pools while badminton clubs wanted no natural light and six courts in the sports hall.
A less mainstream sport, the Brighton Rockers Roller Derby, wanted a bigger sports hall with line markings.
Community groups were included in the 2023 consultation, with more than 50 people taking part in a workshop – and drop-in sessions were held at the centre and venues elsewhere.
I never knew about these consultations, maybe I was too busy working to pay the exorbitant council tax rises. A small section of the community hardly equates to endorsement of these ridiculous plans.
What ‘thousands’? How many people asked to swap the largest sports centre in the south east for a smaller King Alfred with only one Sports hall for almost all non-swim and gym activities? How many people asked for a ‘changing village’ and how child and woman-friendly is this? Most council consultation seemed to be random display boards with post it notes in the KA foyer or carefully-curated mini focus groups of 12 in the ballroom etc. Unless we are meant to count the usual underadvertised and pre-angled online ‘Your Voice’ with no opportunity for honest feedback. I don’t see how any kind of sporting competitions will be held here as it is just too small. The timetable will be rammed. Then the 400 new Hove beach flats will come along, with their residents demanding local leisure facilities in a new hub which is already operating over-capacity. Some of the drawings in the plans are quite disturbing. The architects do not seem to have put their best people on the job with inexplicable floor levels creating multiple accessibility issues to start with.
I’m very much a member of team “tear down the current building and give us something new” but these plans absolutely scream BARE MINIMUM, and I don’t believe for a second that planners have listened to what residents actually want. We want a bigger pool, a proper (separate) family amusement pool, an adults spa area like the one at Splashpoint and SAFE FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN single sex changing. All they’re proposing is a tiny, uninspired shoebox thats only promise is not to upset someones profit from building flats that aren’t needed or wanted.
I guess part of that is because people were in outcry about the building potentially being in a different location, at a much better value. The offset of it staying where it is was that the scope would have logically been scaled to compensate. We might have seen a grander design if people were not listened to in the first place, but then we would be hearing from the same complainants now that they were not being listened to.
Bit of a catch-22 I reckon!
A downmarket offering considering the prime location of the site. The plans are almost impossible to download and see properly. There needs to be a full scale paper plan exhibition with a scale model as part of the legal planning application process. There are no legible building material specifications either. It looks like something which hsa been designed by a team who have never visited the site- outsourced to some Autocad farm in the far east perhaps. It relates architecturally to nothing around it.
Which plan are you specifically having trouble viewing, and on what device?
This woeful scheme will have much less gym space, not more as claimed because the huge Fitlab would be closed down.
What’s more, King Alfred is being deposed by naming it KALC. Who would ever “I’m going to KALC “?
Although to be honest, you could call it anything you like, people are going to call it King Alfred. See Palace Pier for example.
Benjamin
I think the issue many people have isn’t the name — people will always call it the King Alfred regardless, just like everyone still says Palace Pier. The real concern is whether the city is getting a leisure centre that actually meets the needs of residents.
From what’s been published, a lot of people feel the proposal looks like a scaled-down facility on one of the most valuable public sites on the seafront. When you reduce sports hall space, have only one hall for multiple activities, and limit things like family water areas, it raises questions about long-term capacity for a growing city.
Consultations are important, but many residents say they either didn’t know about them or felt they didn’t meaningfully influence the final design. That’s where a lot of the frustration seems to come from — the perception that the end result still feels like the “minimum viable” project rather than something ambitious for such a prominent location.
It’s also worth thinking about future demand. If hundreds of new flats are eventually built on the existing King Alfred site, that will increase pressure on the very leisure facility that’s already being designed smaller.
Most people I speak to aren’t against rebuilding the King Alfred at all — they just want something that genuinely reflects the scale, heritage and long-term
Exactly this. We don’t want to be asset-stripped and stand by whilst politicians tell us ” it’s all we can afford” and “it’s in the best interests.” Look at what recent decisions have cost US. There is another proposed disposal of a central site, by Brighton town hall, for a paltry £5m. That is nowhere near the market value. It’s no good setting up an inquiry later on, as that just incurs more expense and results in no benefit other than telling us something we already know. I give the high-profile recent i360 as a prime example. Councillors should be custodians of public assets not wannabe CEO’s a là Hanson.
Benjamin
I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I’ve been using King Alfred to swim for the past 25 years and was hoping for something a bit more aspirational and special for this unique site. Yet I also wonder what constraints the city is dealing with here? There was a decent amount of public consultation and a good and experienced development team has come up with this. I don’t think the council is out to short change the community. So there must be various constraints on a 65 million development which I think would be well served by the city doing a better job communicating. It seems there is a tendency to justify and focus on how great this new development is, but it can come across as a bit defensive without articulating the tradeoffs that have needed to be integrated in this project. And I’m excited about a new King Alfred and accept that I won’t get all I wished for. The good enough approach when it comes to public projects and all the stakeholders to be considered.
I think you touch upon a point that I feel really weakens local democracy, and that’s the aggressive tic-for-tac we see in political discourse, like when you see a Conservative being against something simply because it was suggested by Labour; without a constructive debate on refining the idea to be the best version of it. Claiming everything is perfect is, of course, silly – but the political discourse is such that defensiveness comes out on all sides. No wonder we see a decline in political engagement over the years.
Even thinking of how I conduct myself, I’ve definitely strayed into that territory. It’s a good reminder for myself to elevate my own speechcraft.
When the Benfield site was stated to be about £45 million in comparison, I think it is a reasonable point to highlight that the cost of following the people’s consultation, in this instance, was approximately £20m, and because of that, naturally, some consolidations would have had to have been made. I prefer the big dream to a pragmatic pull-back approach. I think it is more promising than a minimal viable product.
Thanks for the comment, Charles. It was very thought-provoking.