The developer behind plans to build 101 homes in Benfield Valley has stepped up efforts to be able to press on with the project.
Hollybrook Homes was granted planning permission for the scheme on Wednesday (2 September), according to Brighton and Hove City Council’s website.
The decision follows a vote by the council’s Planning Committee in April last year when it was “minded to grant” planning permission – subject to conditions.
The conditions appear to have been met but the council has still not granted landlord’s consent so Hollybrook intends to take the matter to the Land Tribunal.
Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw, who represents Hangleton and Knoll, said: “This changes nothing and our position remains clear: we will fight this development and the council will not vary the covenant on the land.”
Fellow Labour councillor Faiza Baghoth, who also represents Hangleton and Knoll, said: “We stood on a promise to oppose development of Benfield Valley and we will continue to do so.”
The Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor said: “This is part of the planning process and has nothing to do with the council’s position on the land.”
Councillor Taylor added: “Our position is crystal clear: we’re not removing the covenant on the land. We’re not going to do a deal with the developer. Indeed, they are appealing to the land tribunal – and we’re fighting it.”
The plans were submitted in July 2024 by a consortium of two companies, Benfield Property Ltd and Benfield Investments Ltd.
The site, off Hangleton Lane, in Hove, is understood to be held on a lease by Benfield Investments, which had been working with Hollybrook Homes, a respected developer, on plans for the site. The freehold is owned by the council.
Although councillors felt obliged to grant planning permission because the application complied with planning law and policy, initially this appeared to be academic.
In part, this was because a covenant has restricted the use of the land for leisure and recreation since it was gifted by the Sainsbury family more than 30 years ago.
They gave the land to what was then Hove Borough Council when the Sainsbury’s superstore was built at the southern end of the valley by the old entrance to West Hove Golf Club.
Also, a prolonged campaign by neighbours, dog walkers and nature lovers highlighted the potential loss of ecology, wildlife and biodiversity in what has been described as Hove and Portslade’s last green lung.
Before the council’s Planning Committee discussed the application in April last year, Labour councillor Alan Robins, a member of the council’s cabinet, wrote to David Godden at Benfield Property.
Councillor Robins wrote: “As you know, the current lease restricts use of the land to outdoor recreational and leisure purposes.
“And the council as landowner would need to consent to the implementation of the development where this is outside the terms of the lease.
“We have not received an application from you in this respect. While the council is keen to facilitate the building of housing in Brighton and Hove, as landlord we are not minded to agree to vary the lease relating to this land.
“The site is of great importance to the city and our residents and we are keen to continue to preserve and maintain the use of the whole of the site in its current form for the benefit of our residents.”
Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove and Portslade, has turned out to support campaigners at the site in the past.
Mr Kyle said: “The councillors, the community and myself always said that this area is a valuable social, leisure and outdoor space so I’m over the moon that there is a legal document which proves this.
“Thank you to all the residents who have contacted us and stood firm with us on this issue.”
The council reluctantly allocated some housing on the site in the City Plan, a strategic planning document, under pressure to meet the huge demand for new homes in Brighton and Hove.
The Conservative councillors at the time, Dawn Barnett, Tony Janio and Nick Lewry, unsuccessfully tried to prevent the land from being earmarked for housing.
But the Greens said that a government planning inspector had in effect given the council no choice but to include Benfield Valley along with various other “urban fringe” sites as potentially suitable for housing.
When Labour won the three seats in Hangleton and Knoll ward in 2023, they did so having pledged – like their Conservative opponents – to fight any plans for housing in Benfield Valley.
The council remains keen to build new homes and the target set by the government is demanding, forcing councillors and officials to confront some difficult decisions.
And on the near horizon is the future of the Hove Park Lower School site, also known as the Valley Campus, which is due to become vacant in just under two years’ time.
Work is already under way behind the scenes to work out the best use for the site, with new homes the most likely option.
And it would be surprising if talks were not taking place with Hyde, the housing association, which was allocated £350 million by a government agency, Homes England, last month.
The grant is intended to help the council’s joint venture housebuilding partner to fund 2,250 new homes outside London – an opportunity that the council is well-placed to exploit.
The Condition needs to be that they cannot break the Sainsbury Covenant and will be sued for doing so more than their development is worth.
May not get a choice in the matter, depending on what comes back from the tribunal. Could very well exercise S84 to remove it. Planning permission tends to be heavily in favour of the developer, after all.
A covenant should be put on developers especially here as we have been blighted by them this past twenty five years ,or so and not much back from them in regards to social housing/ affordable housing, every square inch of land is being swallowed up by these greedy bar stewards, this place hove,Brighton, shoreham, has been hijacked to death ,its about time it was stopped as it is congested to capacity one can hardly breath with all the high rise buildings and urban sprawl we now have to accommodate, so called students,,who know full well that there nothing guaranteed about jobs when they have done (studying)
Well said, Seanus. We have acres of empty properties, vacant floors above businesses and shops doing nothing and old buildings which could be repurposed with existing infrastructure already in place. And now, acres of newbuilds no one can AFFORD to buy or rent. Why do we need to keep building more new properties no one can AFFORD to buy or rent??? In most cases with no extra drain provision either, which is disastrous for our waterways and beaches. It makes no sense. The government needs to be stood up to on this ridiculous insistence that we are short of housing and have to destroy our towns, cities and countryside to meet ridiculous and impossible targets. The only housing we are short of is affordable. There are now entire unaffordable blocks empty in London, which is scandalous.
The main challenge with building affordable housing is, perhaps ironically, the affordability of building affordable housing. You need to subsidise the construction quite significantly with grant funding.
It may be one’s age, or perhaps the state of one’s grey matter, but one confesses to being entirely perplexed.
Brighton and Hove City Council has granted planning permission for 101 homes on land which Brighton and Hove City Council owns – while Brighton and Hove City Council simultaneously insists that it will fight to prevent those 101 homes ever being built.
The Council’s Not-Young Jacob assures us that the position is “crystal clear”.
One can only admire his confidence.
Before one is once again corrected by one’s esteemed neighbours ChrisC or Benjamin™ – that little trademark still confounds me – I appreciate, of course, that the Council wears two hats here: one as planning authority and another as landowner. Planning decisions must be made according to planning law and policy, rather than simply according to whether councillors happen to like the proposal.
But surely there is a rather more fundamental question.
How did we arrive at a position where land considered sufficiently suitable for 101 homes to receive planning permission is simultaneously considered sufficiently important to protect that the Council is prepared to fight a developer at the Land Tribunal to stop those homes being built?
And one should not forget the rather wonderful provenance of the land itself – gifted to the people of Hove by the Sainsbury family more than three decades ago, with a covenant intended to preserve its use for leisure and recreation.
The Houses of Bracknell and Sainsbury have, of course, crossed paths on innumerable occasions over the centuries. One therefore feels a certain ancestral obligation to observe that when a family gives land for the public’s enjoyment, accompanied by a covenant seeking to preserve precisely that purpose, it seems rather more than an inconvenient footnote in a planning file.
Add to this its subsequent allocation for housing in the City Plan, councillors elected on a promise to oppose its development, and a Council now simultaneously granting permission and resisting implementation, and one begins to feel that municipal policy has disappeared entirely through the looking glass.
Perhaps somebody at Hove Town Hall might explain, in words suitable for those of us without the benefit of “crystal clear” vision, what the Council actually wants to happen to Benfield Valley.
Lady Bracknell
We see the same Schizophrenia in evidence with the King Alfred redevelopment Lady B. A third party rabbit appears to be operating the controls in the council’s head to act against its own residents, when a few kind Councillors with a conscience are still trying to serve us and buck the bullying. Or whatever wickedness it is that is going on behind the scenes.
As written, it is because they are two independent processes. A planning permission may be granted, but that doesn’t relate to desired outcome. Gasworks, for example, is an excellent example of these two processes independence.
If BHCC are the landlords, why did they allow the planning application to go forward? It seems to me that something underhand is in the offing or someone made mistakes when granting the lease.
JamesK, one fears this is a tale almost as old as politics itself. Time and again, those entrusted with a little power acquire the unfortunate impression that it was bestowed upon them as recognition of superior wisdom, rather than lent to them by the people they were elected to serve.
There does seem to have taken hold among certain members of our Council the rather peculiar conviction that they know best. All the more remarkable when some do not even reside in the wards they represent, yet feel perfectly qualified to pronounce upon communities, places and institutions understood rather more intimately by residents, experts and long-standing bodies which have served this city for decades.
By all means govern. Take difficult decisions. One may even, on occasion, disagree with the people who elected you. But first one must listen, understand and retain that most unfashionable of political virtues – humility.
Nothing disengages the public quite so effectively as a know-it-all.
Except, of course, a know-it-all who knows rather less than everyone else in the room.
Yours, with the humility one so wishes were contagious,
Lady Bracknell