Councillors have reluctantly agreed that a developer should pay £500,000 towards the cost of the council buying or building homes rather than include 14 “affordable” flats in a £16 million scheme near the Seven Dials.
They were told that no social housing providers were willing to take on the flats, with Brighton and Hove City Council itself also unwilling to step in.
And rising construction costs – for labour and materials – meant that the project would be financially unviable unless the obligation to provide affordable homes was dropped.
Members of the council’s Planning Committee said that their hands were tied as they accepted the offer of a “commuted sum” of £500,000 from Martin Homes Buckingham Road Limited.
At Hove Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday 4 September), the committee also agreed that the scheme could include two extra flats, taking the total on the site up from 34 to 36.
Martin Homes has already completed the first phase, converting 76-79 Buckingham Road into 14 flats in properties that were originally designed as townhouses.
The company paid £5.5 million for the whole site five years ago and the flats created in the first phase were reported to have been sold for a total of more than £7 million.
These had been intended to form the “affordable” element of the original scheme which was given planning permission in 2019 but, with no housing association willing to take them on, councillors later agreed that they could be sold at market rates.
The developer was then due to build 20 flats on the site of 80 Buckingham Road, on the corner of Upper Gloucester Road, with 14 set aside as affordable homes there.
But the rising costs and inability to find a social housing provider to take on the 14 properties reflect recurring problems as the council’s planning policy bumps up against the financial realities facing councils and housing associations.
Planning manager Jane Mostyn said that increased building costs were among the reasons for the £500,000 figure which was reached after a viability assessment.
The committee was told that similar commuted sums had been used to buy the Kubix flats, in Whitehawk, and to buy back former council houses and flats across Brighton and Hove.
Conservative councillor Carol Theobald said that it was a pity that the “much needed” affordable housing would not be provided on site.
She said: “I think they’re getting away very lightly with this but it’s been an eyesore for so long and I hate it when I go past it. It looks absolutely dreadful.
“Will this hopefully make them actually do it or are they going to come back and say: ‘We can’t afford the £500,000 now?’ I almost give up.”
Green councillor Sue Shanks shared her frustration that a building formerly owned by the council had been sold instead of being used for affordable homes.
She said: “The only other option would have been to try to buy it back over the time it’s been sitting there empty.
“It does need to be finished and a lot of people in that area will be really pleased if it gets finished.”
Labour councillor Tobias Sheard said that the council looked like “mugs” as city centre flats would sell for much more than £500,000 each.
He said: “We have had our pants pulled over our heads and we’ve looked like idiots right now.
“They’ve got away with 14 houses and they’ve given us £500,000. If anyone in this room can show me how £500,000 can buy you three houses in this city, let alone 14, I would love to hear it.”
Labour councillor Jacob Allen, the deputy chair of the Planning Committee, said that he usually felt confident about defending the way that he voted – but not this time.
He said: “I just don’t know how I can look someone in the eye who says why did you vote to turn 14 properties into a £500,000 lump sum when, according to Right Move, property in Buckingham Road has an average price of £330,000? That’s 1.5 properties on site with this money.
“It’s just unbelievable that this is policy-compliant and this is the state we’re in but if this went to appeal, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh said that she nagged the previous administration to buy the building using a compulsory purchase order but no one was interested.
The Buckingham Road site, which covers about a third of an acre in all, was once the home of Brighton Grammar School, which occupied a three-storey Victorian corner building at number 80.
The school, now known as Brighton, Hove And Sussex VI Form College (BHASVIC), moved to the corner of Dyke Road and Old Shoreham Road, Hove, shortly before the First World War.
The site was also home to the Sussex Maternity Hospital, which ended up occupying 76-80 Buckingham Road and which closed in 1971.
Number 80 was demolished in the 1970s and replaced with a modern building which hasn’t lasted as well as its 19th century neighbours. It was used for adult social care after the maternity hospital closed.
Greedy developer. As a construction professional I’d avoid this building as the original reinforced concrete skeleton looks like it’s suffering from spalling and so structurally unsound.
Dear Sarah, was there mention of how the commuted sum of £500,000 was calculated?
I ask because reading into the Affordable Housing Guidance – Commuted Sums & Vacant Building Credit, documentation for BHCC, gives a range of £118,200 to £297,100 per unit, based on its zone and number of bedrooms. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/planning/planning-applications/affordable-housing-guidance-commuted-sums-vacant-building-credit
It may be mentioned in the report that went to the committee.
It’s possible the £500k is the calculation provided by the developer to the District Valuer and agreed by the Dav as being affordable.
Not a great precedent. But of course they are not the first to do this.
The system, whereby true affordable homes are built, is f***ed.
The biggest modern scam is ‘shared ownership’ and then leasehold properties with monthly ‘maintenacne’ charges.
The answer is probably to stop selling off council land (our land) and brown field sites to greedy, profit-driven developers, and for the councils to be allowed to build modern council homes instead.
Then again the problem with that solution, is that councils are no longer geared up to getting good value in the building process, because it’s dog eat dog out there.
A council that accepts it isn’t one that’s for the county … *Gagging noises*
That building has been left to rot and crumble for over ten years. The developer sold off two bed flats in the other half of this scheme for over half a million each so this is not much by way of community compensation. The next phase of course will be to declare the skeletal structure unsafe and pull the whole thing down and start all over again. We see this happen time and time again!
Now there will be no affordable homes included I assume they will have to remove the parking spaces as well, in accordance with the council’s car free policy for new developments.
Lol BHCC making dumb decisions yet again. £500k is not 14 affordable flats. Equally saying the scheme is unviable is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. It’s 5 mins walk from the station, these flats will be on the market for £500k each once built.
And yet again Brighton residents who need the affordable housing are being let down by greedy developers and weak council red tape.
When is the new Labour going to stop this happening? I am so tired of seeing these overpriced developments being given over to the high wage earners who mainly aren’t even real Brightonians, pushing the real people who keep this City working, Further out into the burbs.
Shame on the Council, developers and Government for turning a blind eye over and over.
Big developers and their associates in Planning offices across the country have been getting away with stuff like this for decades. Some developers stop after breaking ground to squeeze more units, taller buildings out of planning departments. All eventually get approved. I would like to see compulsory purchase orders from the gov when this happens and then the gov can continue home building with a low cost on the land. Big developers would soon be out of business and the workforce wouldn’t even see too much loss as the same amount of work would be available.
It’s really simple .. no housing association or council is interested in partnering on providing social housing on the site – margins on development sites like this are usually 5%, on a difficult site like this maybe 3% .. if the developer can’t make any money on the site they will leave walk away and build somewhere else and the eyesore will remain..