Up to 47 people could live in a former school building which would be treated as a big shared house if a newly published planning application is approved.
Lowe Management Limited has applied to allow people to live in the former Brighton Girls junior school building, in Radinden Manor Road, Hove, as property guardians.
The application is for temporary planning permission while the owner, the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), tries to sell the building.
Brighton Girls left the site in 2021, consolidating on its main site, in Montpelier Road, Brighton, and put the building on the market for £4.5 million.
According to the planning application, the site is still being marketed for sale although it was reportedly sold subject to contract in 2024.
The application to Brighton and Hove City Council is retrospective. People are already living in the building which was previously Cardinal Newman Catholic School’s lower school and before that Cottesmore St Mary’s Secondary School.
Floor plans, submitted as part of the planning application, showed classrooms divided into bedrooms, with new corridors as well as extra toilets and shower rooms.
The former school kitchen and dining area would be adapted to provide the same facilities for residents – and the former gym was described as a communal area.
The application, prepared by Maddox Planning, said that Lowe Management was “an experienced provider of this type of accommodation”.
The proposals were described as temporary to ensure that the building remained occupied, with no end date given.
The application included a planning statement which touched on “social impact”, saying: “While it is anticipated that a proportion of occupants may include individuals employed in essential services, the accommodation is not restricted to any specific group.
“The benefits of the proposal should therefore be understood more broadly as contributing to housing supply and making effective use of an otherwise vacant site.
“The occupation of the building will provide natural surveillance and reduce the risk of anti-social behaviour associated with vacancy.
“The continued use of the building will also support the local area by maintaining activity and avoiding the negative effects associated with a vacant and unmanaged site.”
Independent councillor Samer Bagaeen, who represents Westdene and Hove Park ward, has asked the council’s planning team why it had not taken enforcement action.
Councillor Bagaeen said: “Our residents are angry that things have got to this point.”
He said that enforcement action should have been triggered when residents first flagged building work at the site, adding: “Instead, we have been, at the applicant’s behest, waiting for a planning application.”
He also questioned the apparent lack of engagement with the community on the part of the owner, the GDST.
There are currently five comments about the application on the council’s website. Three are listed as objections.
One anonymous objector, whose details were redacted by the council, said: “A development housing 47 occupants would inevitably generate significant noise and disturbance, wholly different from the building’s former educational use.
“There have already been at least two incidents of late-night anti-social behaviour by current tenants in the short period of occupation.”
Another anonymous commenter said: “The proposal makes sense to secure the site on a temporary basis while the long-term future is decided but, unless I have missed it, there are no proposals to limit the use for a specific period of time.
“I would suggest, if permission is granted, that this be limited to say 12 months to give the residents some comfort and if needed a fresh application can be submitted in due course to extend.”
To view the application or comment, click here and search for BH2026/00749.
Already illegal migrants being housed there, once approved, it’s an open door for housing hundreds of them under the lucrative government contracts, and very hard to object to further planning apl
Good to see a rant backup up with assumptions and facebook soundbite fulled anger. Come back when you have a little thing called evidence please
A person can be a bellend, David, but they can’t be illegal.
My friend lives there and I’ve visited more than once so I can say that you have no idea what you’re talking about, everyone has to be DBS checked. Everyone is incredibly friendly and communal stop spreading hate
Yes, David has a good point there, we should make sure accommodation like this continues so the vulnerable have somewhere to stay. Thanks for the support Davidn
No it’s going to be homeless ex servicemen
I don’t see that specified anywhere ??? As of yet specific housing for ex servicemen is just another political spiel, I’m one of many ex servicemen luckily never been homeless nor unemployed but helped a few to get some direction.
🤣
I wonder if they live there rent-free……like they do in your head……
47 of the 200,000 illegal migrants soon to be here.
Asylum seekers can’t be property guardians. Their NRPF status also generally isn’t supported in guardianships.
Need to house more of our own single male and females
Your own?
How many do you have?
Or they could couple up and make some kids, buy a house ect ect lol
We should welcome more doctor’s and engineers 👌🏻
Well it’ll be an interesting a sizeable potential test case if they rent it out to the whole 47, sell the property on or redevelop it, then get told by one, a few, most or all of the tenants that they’ve complied with their lease and don’t really want to move. The owners can’t satisfy any of the new requirements for an eviction order and find themselves having to wait the tenancies out and praying they can convince a magistrate they satisfy the requirements under that situation
Guardianships are typically on licenses, not leases. Means they don’t have the same rights to stay as a tenancy.
My step-daughter is living there, she works part time in a great job, and is in-training to be a teacher. It’s an affordable place to live, albeit temporary. I’ve met other residents there and they are a lovely supportive bunch and they’re ordered and looking after the place really nicely. Fair enough to ask for answers about retrospective planning, but otherwise I think it is great idea and definitely acts as a deterrent to vandalism and break-in. Hope this reassures those who are worried about who lives there.
Giant breakfast club?
Hotel for migrants?
Tool factory?
This will be a good location of a new asylum seeker detention camp when Reform get in. They said they are going to locate them in Green voting towns as obviously this is what people want in them. Perhaps the Green and Labour Party could organise tours of the Crowborough camp for concerned residents.
What’s concerning, is that you’re accepting a party making threats to vote a certain way. The very party that only recently complained about unfounded allegations of forcing people to vote a certain way.
See the hypocrisy?
Why are you framing it as a threat? Surely people who vote for parties that encourage more migrants, would be happy to welcome them into their communities?
This reminds me of the recent Crowborough situation. The councillors and local community suddenly went from ‘refugees welcome’ to ‘far-right’ when the migrant centre was announced. Refugees welcome! Just welcome where you are, not where they are.. not anywhere near their families.
Because they are saying:
“Do what we want you to do, or Reform will do this thing that we think is bad to you as punishment.”
That’s the very definition of a threat, right? Call me old-fashioned, but I think threatening people to vote a certain way is authoritarianism.
Again, why do you think it’s a threat? Where have they said it’s a punishment?
Green voters want it – Reform would let them have it.
Reform voters don’t want it – fine, then they don’t have to.
So who loses here, Benjamin?
Old-fashioned? No.
Deliberately pretending not to understand the argument? That seems obvious.
Reform has repeatedly said asylum seekers are a detriment; it’s like…their core thing that they are proudly known for? There’s very little room for debate that they consider it a punishment. Therefore, I repeat myself, it is the very definition of a threat.
The sign of authoritarianism and coercion by design, straight out of the Trump playbook.
And the danger is that it’s a step away from a slippery slope of normalising exclusionary policies; now start applying that to things like social housing, poor people, and diversity. Those already exist, like slums, favelas. You create such a division in this country that goes against every single moral we hold as a British society.
Benjamin, for some reason I can’t reply to your comment at the bottom of the thread, so I’ll respond here instead. I hope you haven’t censored the discussion?
Since you’ve repeatedly avoided my question – why *you* describe it as a threat or punishment – I won’t keep asking it. But you should probably ask yourself why you refuse to answer it directly.
If you’re not deliberately pretending not to understand and you genuinely believe Reform would actually do that, rather than it obviously being a publicity stunt intended to expose the gap between virtue signalling and reality, then you’re missing the point. The whole purpose of the stunt is to reveal the gap between what people publicly say and how they actually feel when faced with the reality of it near them. And ironically, that’s exactly what this discussion with you has exposed. You won’t simply say, “I see it as a threat and a punishment because I wouldn’t want them near me”. Instead, you deflect to someone else framing it that way.
Refugees welcome! But welcome where *you are*.. just not near me.
And.. there’s the hypocrisy.
So, having migrant centres in your community is a reward for those who support and vote for it, and a punishment for those who don’t, which, depending on perspective, is true of almost every political policy.
Unless, of course, you’re agreeing with Reform’s underlying point that it’s objectively a bad thing to have nearby?
Threads only nest so far, Peter. After that, you have to reply to yourself, to keep it in-line. Basic forum usage; claiming that it is censoring is absolutely ridiculous. I see you’ve ignored my counterpoint as well in favour of a tu quoque, which, honestly, tells me you don’t have a strong argument.
I’ve answered your question, why it is a threat by definition, directly, several times now quite articulately. Your attempts to gaslight and deflect this aren’t going to work; this isn’t about whether I’d want a detention centre near me, rather, it is about whether threatening to punish communities for their political choices is acceptable behaviour. Hint, it is not. The BBC, Guardian, and even GB News all describe it as a punitive measure tied to voting behaviour.
This isn’t a stunt. They’ve proposed a Mass Deportation Detention Act to override local democratic consent. It specifies that centres will not be built in Reform-held areas, but will be prioritised in Green-voting constituencies. Every major party has criticised this as anti-democratic, intimidating, and potentially illegal.
When Reform says, “We’ll punish you if you don’t vote for us,” that’s authoritarianism. And it doesn’t matter whether they “actually do it”; the mere threat is a clear sign of how little they actually regard voters.
So, want to try that again without the obvious deflection?