Brighton Youth Centre is asking for permission to use a temporary home while its long-awaited refurbishment takes place.
The revamp of the Edward Street youth centre is now underway after plans were withdrawn and amended at the last minute earlier this year.
The scaled back plans were approved by officers in May. Youth centre activities are now happening at 94 Gloucester Road – previously used by the Paradox Place escape rooms.
The youth centre is now asking for retrospective, temporary permission to use the Gloucester Road venue as a youth centre until July next year, when it hopes the work on the Edward Street building will be complete.
A planning application submitted to Brighton and Hove City Council, written by Lewis and Co Planning, said: “This application does not propose any physical alterations to the exterior of the building, and as such it will retain its attractive, glazed, active frontage.
“This will provide glancing views of the activities within the unit from the public realm, alongside regular customer comings and goings. This will ensure that the unit, and its proposed use will remain sympathetic to the established character of the locality.
Despite the increase in tourism over time, the Conservation Area Study confirms this has not ‘overwhelmed’ the local community aspects of the local character. Focus should be had to ensuring the area does not become gentrified, and the local authority should ensure the locality still provides for, and represents the local community.
The proposal at hand relates to community use, it provides essential services to an underrepresented demographic within Brighton City. Therefore, the proposal is considered to preserve the character of the Conservation Area by ensuring it provides services for the residents, rather than exclusively for tourists.”
The original plans for the Edward Street building included golden fluted aluminium cladding with irregularly placed windows.
The approved scheme has regular windows and a white brick facade, which could be used as a canvas for more striking external decoration.
The new plan retains the gym and music rooms on the ground floor, with a youth club space and kitchen on the upper ground floor.
Offices remain on the first floor, and an enlarged skate park will still be on the second floor, including new lifts.
The original scheme would have included a new cafe, theatre and climbing wall, which are not mentioned in the new application.
The new centre is being built with two grants totalling £6.6 million – £2.3 million from the council and £4.3 million from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, through the Youth Investment Fund.
It’s such as shame that the original plans did not go ahead – nearsighted planning, long-term consequences.
Not having a go at them but I’m surprised Amex didn’t proactively look to give the new centre a boost in funding/ stump up for eg a climbing wall as it seems right up their street for community engagement ( tbf they may have somewhere along the line).
Good that grant funding was secured but whereas the Amex chip-in would be voluntary and admirable if done. I have to ask why a LARGE pot of cash from the developers hasn’t been mentioned. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing those payments are supposed to be for. Rather than brown envelopes to those at the council who can magic away all those “social” “fair rent” units promised in planning applications that somehow, consistently, and miraculously become “not economically viable” & get swapped for said brown envelopes. If something like funding towards a preexisting & displaced community asset doesn’t meet the criteria for said payments stated intent then the system is even more broken and corrupt than we all already thought.
Funding secured be damned. There should be a sizeable additional chunk being handed over specifically so they can have one of the cutback items & certainly not sitting in the councils “pub lunch/ team outings/ biscuits” slush fund