Opposition to a new swimming pool and leisure centre on the King Alfred site spurred senior councillors to criticise campaigners and previous administrations.
At a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet yesterday (Thursday 23 April), a public question asked about the structure of the existing building.
And an opposition councillor asked why the land south of Sainsbury’s had not been chosen for the new leisure centre site.
Carol Wilson asked if the council would allow a full independent structural inspection of the 1930s building and pause further demolition and enabling works until a survey was complete.
Labour councillor Alan Robins, the council’s cabinet member for sports, recreation and libraries, said that a condition survey of the existing building had been completed.
And a wider assessment of the existing building’s suitability to meet current and future needs had been carried out.
He said that this information had informed the business case and was presented to the council’s cabinet in July 2024.
Green councillor Pete West said that the public seemed “underwhelmed” by the leisure facilities proposed in the redevelopment.
He asked if the council regretted its decision to ignore the analysis that suggested a “better option” would be to build the new pool and leisure centre on land south of Sainsbury’s in West Hove.
Councillor Robins said: “Is it the Green policy that we develop on green-field sites rather than brown-field sites and we do that against public opinion?
“Because that’s what we were up against here and the business case presented to cabinet, in July 2024, demonstrated that the sports and leisure centre on either site would represent good investment.”
The Labour leader of the council Bella Sankey criticised past minority administrations run by the Conservatives and Greens for delaying the £65 million scheme.
Councillor Sankey said: “We know that under the years of no overall control under the Green and Tory-led minority administrations, this project for the King Alfred ran aground and got buried in the long grass.
“We won’t be distracted in our mission to deliver a new leisure centre in the west of the city.
“We certainly won’t be distracted by campaigns that twist the truth by political actors that don’t rely on having high-quality public leisure facilities available.”
During discussions about spending £3.5 million from the existing £65 million budget earlier than planned and entering into an agreement with Alliance Leisure on enabling works, Councillor Sankey said the project “could not be more overdue”.
Councillor Sankey said: “I couldn’t feel more sentimental and more entwined with that facility because it’s given me and my family so much.
“But that is why I’m so passionate about redeveloping and ensuring that it stands the test of time as a new shining beacon of a modern leisure centre that is sustainable, that provides activities for every single generation.”
The Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor said that the council was ambitious because it “refuses to accept the managed decline of local government”.
He said: “We want to reverse the stagnation that’s been seen in this city in too many areas and there’s no greater symbol of failure of progress, of managed decline and of stagnation than the current King Alfred site and its history.
“So today we’re being asked whether we can take another step forward in reversing that stagnation and finally making progress on the site.
“I’ll be enthusiastically voting for it today because I want to see us building a fantastic leisure centre that the city deserves.”
The cabinet agreed to bring forward the £3.5 million for enabling works to enable the demolition of the disused bowling alley area which has planning permission.
The article captures the political debate around the King Alfred, but misses that there were also important conduct and governance raised by the meeting. Several Labour councillors in the Cabinet, including Council Leader Bella Sankey, used language that characterised objectors as a ‘very small group’, ‘political actor’ and spreading ‘misinformation’ or even ‘conspiracy theories’.
Whether or not you are in favour of the redevelopment itself (and, to be clear, I’m personally not against it but do not want to see the loss of facilities) this tone sits uneasily with the LGA Model Councillor Code of Conduct, which asks councillors to treat the public with respect and avoid dismissive or demeaning language. It is also hard to reconcile with the fact that the main resident groups on Facebook have more than 1,500 members, that long standing civic groups like the Brighton Society have raised concerns and that many of the more than 500 objections on the planning portal are from parents and disabled people who are worried about the loss of all leisure swimming (apart from a small toddler splash pad).
There is also a process point. The project still needs planning permission and further Cabinet decisions, so councillors must avoid giving the impression that their minds are already made up. Strong statements about being ‘more determined’ to deliver the scheme, combined with dismissive language about objectors, risk creating an appearance of predetermination, which the standards framework specifically warns against.
Further issues around predetermination are raised by Cllr Jacob Taylor acknowledging during the meeting that the administration is ‘sometimes too ambitious’ for officers – a diplomatic way of indicating that officials have raised concerns about the pace.
Committing £8.5m (13% of the total £64m) budget before planning permission is granted goes against guidance on major projects because it creates sunk cost pressure. That makes it even more important that councillors demonstrate open‑mindedness and engage with scrutiny, rather than framing objections as political or illegitimate.
This isn’t about ensuring that residents’ concerns are treated fairly and respectfully, and that major decisions are made in a way that maintains public trust in the process. That is not happening at the moment.
Blablablablablabla nonsense. Get on with it. It needed a bulldozer 20 years ago. She is right as well, it’s symbolic of managed decline. It reminds me of that concrete carpark on Worthing seafront
You call a reasoned, thoughtful comment blah blah blah, only to leave a childish opinion. Deano by name, beano by brain.
Well said and a balanced, objective view of proceedings.
I am all for a new, modern and relevant sports centre fully accessible for all. It is something this community and deserves but the current proposals go nowhere near to addressing these needs and seems to serve only as a diversion to the fire sale of council-owned assets.
Always more to be done! For example, I think East Brighton would benefit from a version of King Alfred.
Benjamin that is a great aspiration for East Brighton, and I hope the council pursues it. But it is not a response to the points raised. The question here is not whether leisure centres are generally good things (I’d hope we could all agree they are). It is whether this one is being built with the right facilities, whether the public has been given accurate information during the consultation, and whether the process has been conducted properly. Those things matter. Getting the process right is how you build public trust in decisions. That is not happening at the moment.
It is Toto. I wanted to speak to Ann’s point, addressing access to modern facilities for sports to the wider community, in this instance, by also considering that we are not limited to just one building in achieving this. Take Alan’s comment below, for example, using further sites to achieve access to sports.
It links into the discussion, because the groups you’ve mentioned, and your own words, ask the question if KA should be the perfect building that caters for all people at all times, or if the wider process should be more aligned with what we do to enable access to sports citywide, and King Alfred is simply a part of a larger puzzle.
100% agree 👍
Quite incredible Bella mentions ‘truth twisting” in the same breath she tries to deflect attention away from her own Party’s part in King Alfred delays.
As always, she’s critical of past non-Labour administration, without noting that Tories haven’t run the council for 15 years, and her Party have controlled the council for most of the last decade. She might also do well to remember the 2009 FOI that came to light which implied criticism of Labour’s handling of the earlier Gehry proposal on their watch. Senior planning officers said in docs revealed that officers were having to compromise their “professional honesty and integrity”, and were being pressured into overdevelopment of the site to the point where it would breach their professional code of conduct. Sounds all too familiar from the “New Labour” bunch we are seeing today at the Council. Nothing has changed on that front.
Whilst I don’t agree with the green proposal for the green space in Benfield valley. Why has no talked about Hove Park school in the Valley?
The council is proposing moving it to Neville which would leave a site with massive outdoor sports facilities already in place. To convert the remaining buildings to indoor sports facilities and a pool would surely be cheaper than all of the options already presented plus giving all residents a much greater range of sports and community activities.
But you know that’s not going to happen because the Council will just sell the site to a developer for peanuts whilst taking out a massive loan to build a doozie on the seafront. Because that’s the MO of amateur politicians playing with public finances.
Would point out that £3.5m has been voted to be spent not £8.5m..
£3.5m was approved at this meeting. As h the Cabinet paper sets out this is additional to the £5m approved on 25 September 2025. The total approved for enabling works is £8.5m.
I know our councillors never listen but I’ll say this anyway.
If Hove park lower school is going to close, why not turn the whole site into a copy of Withdean.
It is already owned by us and has excellent bus routes and road access
Or is there a plan to build more high denisty flats there?
I use the King Alfred twice weekly with the Dolphins Disabled Swimming Club. Established in the KA for about 30 yrs. I learned to swim in the old pool. Please believe me. This place has no redeeming features. I am all for conservation where possible but you would probably have to go to scrap yard to get replacement Crittall windows! The boilers break down, the floor is like an ice rink, the changing rooms are arctic, the lift was out of action for months last year….etc Best idea would be to build a new complex either as planned òr better, at Sainsbury, leaving the current building open. Then when the new one opens. Pull down all the back of KA, conserving the front and ballroom. Then graft flats on the back. Ready made community area, doctor etc within the old part. Simples
This Cabinet meeting was proof, if proof be needed, that the critics are right. The King Alfred project is a shambles and the meeting was given no clear project management steer, no evidence of budget control, no formally-presented paper, no debate and no financial analysis. They also kept lying that the project was ‘ahead of schedule’ when the new start date is Summer 2027 rather than Autumn 2026. This means Council Leader Sankey and her cronies may no longer in power to see ‘spades in the ground’ post May 2027 election. In this eventuality, there needs to be safeguards in place to prevent another i360 Jason KitKat scenario where the culprits of a financial disaster escape scot-free to rinse and repeat at some poor council elsewhere.
As for the new King Alfred itself, Councillor Robins opined it was going to be ‘iconic’, Councillor Taylor was at pains to say ‘there’s no such thing as a perfect leisure centre’, which sounded tantamount to ‘we know it’s not great but we’re going to give it to you’. Not one Councillor could explain in detail why the new centre was going to be £65m better than the existing, and much larger King Alfred, though Taylor trotted out the tired old trope that a restoration would only last for ten years. Sankey waved the extra £ 3.5m pre-construction cost through at the end of the item without even reading the room to check who had voted.
It’s been subject to multiple formal cabinet reports, including a detailed financial analysis in July 2024 and an updated report in 2025. A call-in request was made to review the July 2024 decision, which was subsequently upheld after scrutiny.
Benjamin that is an argument worth having, but it is a different argument, and I notice it does not engage with the points I actually raised.
The question of how leisure provision should be planned across the city is entirely legitimate. But the question here is narrower, whether residents received accurate information during a statutory consultation about what is being proposed now, and whether the removal of existing leisure water provision has been properly justified under current planning policy before permission is granted – not deferred to a future citywide strategy that does not yet exist. The City Plan requires equivalent or better replacement. That assessment has to be made on this application, on the basis of what the plans actually show.
It also requires that the consultation process is conducted properly. Senior councillors repeatedly told members of the public during the live consultation period that slides and water play equipment would be provided – features that the submitted plans structurally cannot accommodate. That is not a minor communications issue. It goes to whether consultees were able to form and submit informed views.
As I’m sure you are aware, decisions are quasi-judicial. That imposes specific obligations on those involved – including that the process is conducted on the basis of accurate information, that consultees can engage meaningfully with what is actually proposed, and that decision-makers approach the determination with an open mind. Those obligations apply regardless of what the wider citywide picture looks like.
And on that wider picture, the King Alfred currently provides the only leisure water facilities in Brighton and Hove. There are no proposals before the council for equivalent provision in East Brighton or anywhere else in the city. Approving the removal of those facilities now, on the basis that the gap might be addressed somewhere else at some unspecified future point, is not a plan, it is a deferral. The City Plan does not permit that, and residents who depend on those facilities – including families with children, disabled swimmers, and those who cannot travel to Worthing or Burgess Hill – are entitled to have that question answered on this application, not the next one.
As I said, Toto, I was responding to Ann, rather than your post. It’s not always obvious with threaded comments. With this post, there are a few errors in facts and interpretation that I will gently push back on later.
I’ve lived in Brighton for 17 or 18 years now. When I first moved here, the King Alfred Leisure Centre was in a sorry state, no longer cost effective to repair, and needed replacing. People have campaigned against every attempt to replace it for this entire time. When the Conservatives ran Brighton, Labour and their activists made it impossible. When Labour or Greens have been in power the other parties have in turn made it impossible for them. Politicians and campaigners are too often selfish, self-righteous idiots who don’t really care about “the cause”, whatever it might be this week, but only about obstructing and annoying their enemies or opponents, or even their allies if they are proper hard left! Meanwhile Brighton still has a ramshackle leisure centre which has had to undergo long closures, costs a fortune to run, and can’t offer the facilities people want and reasonably expect. Congratulations you campaigning idiots.
The majority of people in this city actually want this, and will be glad to see the back of the current KA. Ignore the Brighton Past mafia. What are they gonna do? Complain about it on Facebook some more? Oh no!
Which majority are you referring to? The 8% who supported the King Alfred plan in the planning application feedback? Funnily enough most of those 8% qualified their approval by stating it depended on them getting what they wanted out of the new development or not losing a particular facility. None of the approving comments went into any detail about what was in the actual plans re gains and losses, so they seemed to be from people who didn’t know and and were simply hoping the new centre would be wonderful! Because why would this council not tell the truth?
Did Cllr Taylor allude to the bullying of Council Officers in the face of their professional standards obligations by saying his administration was often “too ambitious” for them at the Cabinet meeting on 23rd April? Let’s hope not. Rotten Boroughs in Private Eye might take a keen interest in such activities. The BHCC brain drain since the last attempt to redevelop the King Alfred is highly noticeable with arrogance now trumping experience and knowledge of planning law and past failures. As for poor Robins, he appears increasingly gaff-prone and even admitted the other day in a BBC South interview that previous redevelopment attempts would have resulted in a “privatised” King Alfred replacement! Not something admitted at the time and something which would have generated even more public uproar. They need to abandon the latest resident-kicking plans before any more money is wasted.