It is extremely disappointing to see a profoundly misleading leaflet circulated by opponents of the King Alfred project. I say this as someone who was a member of the reference group of stakeholder organisations for the King Alfred redevelopment until just three months ago.
This gave me the opportunity to see various documents such as the project investment appraisal which included the projected benefits and costs, how the project would be funded for alternative sites and the scale of the new facility.
First, there is the scaremongering about the ballooning costs. The council plans to borrow the funds to build the new leisure centre so as to go ahead quickly while maintaining the existing swimming pool until completion.
After completion, the council will be able to make available the remainder of the site for what will be high-value development and thus repay the investment loan.
This is important because one lesson from the i360 is that a leisure facility is extremely unlikely to cover the investment costs as well as the recurrent operating costs. This is especially so for swimming pools.
Second, for this reason, the alternative vision is wholly unrealistic because it provides no way of funding the much greater investment cost of the vision facility.
The proposal also overlooks the fact that the King Alfred development is community focused for the western part of Brighton and Hove and not intended for meeting the needs of the whole city.
Third, if the current proposal crashes, then we are likely to have another lengthy period in which the council will be obliged to pay very high operating and maintenance costs for the existing facility which is in a poor state.
I wonder if some of those promoting the alternative vision are in fact those of a Nimby (Not in my back yard) persuasion who see this as a way of forestalling any redevelopment?
The only realistic alternative in terms of financial resources was to have built a new swimming pool with the loss of the green field sports site next to the West Hove Sainsbury’s car park.
The funding would have come from selling the whole King Alfred site for housing development. This alternative would have also been problematic in terms of benefits because of access challenges from much of Hove.
The conclusion that I came to – and I sensed others on the reference group too – is one that recognised all the financial constraints as well as the benefits of the accessible central seafront location for the swimming pool.
It recognised too that the site also complements the recent improvements to Western Lawns – and that conclusion is that the current proposal is the best that is practical in the late 2020s.
I would urge everyone to look carefully at the council’s actual proposal and also the recent report on the i360 debacle before coming to a conclusion.
Dr Edward Clay is the former chair of the West Hove Forum and a member of the stakeholder reference group on the King Alfred.
