People will be asked for their views on housing need in Brighton and Hove when a public consultation on the new “City Plan” begins in July.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet approved moving forward with the process of creating a new set of planning policies until 2041.
When the cabinet met at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (14 May), Labour councillor Alan Robins asked whether the new City Plan would add to the existing City Plan or effectively “rip up” the previous policies.
The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, said that the council was required to keep its strategic plan updated and up to date.
The next City Plan is expected to follow a new government framework which requires councils to create plans over 30 months, incorporating changes in national law and policy and reflecting local priorities.
Councillor Taylor said: “Do we want to introduce a principal residence policy for certain buildings and can we do that legally? We’ll have to explore that through the process.
“Are there certain sites that were previously occupied, whether they’re former office blocks or otherwise, that now might want to be allocated as housing but previously were not in the old plan.
“This is not about ripping up an old plan and doing something completely different.”
Ideas already floated by councillors in the past year include the principal residence policy mentioned by Councillor Taylor. The aim would be to prevent new builds being sold as second homes or left as empty investments.
Other proposals include introducing policies to regulate short-term holiday lets.
Councillor Taylor said that the council could look again at its policies on shared houses, known as HMOs (houses in multiple occupation).
The current City Plan was approved in two parts. When part two was voted through in 2022, it introduced new policies restricting the number of shared houses across wider neighbourhood areas.
It was also intended to prevent three shared houses in a row and two shared houses from sandwiching a family home.
Existing restrictions on the number of HMOs within 50 metres of another in five electoral wards remained in place.
Controversial parts of City Plan Part Two included allocating housing on “urban fringe” sites such as Benfield Valley and the butterfly bank at Swanborough Drive, in Whitehawk.
Labour councillor Jacob Allen, a former deputy chair of the council’s Planning Committee and an associate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, said that these strategic plans were “the most important document a council can have”.
He said that such plans would give the Planning Committee the “tools needed” to represent residents’ views and the city’s needs.
Councillor Allen said: “Not having an up-to-date and sound local plan is really devastating for a council.
“I’ve done work in Arun, along the coast from us, where developers just have free rein in terms of what they go for, and the inspector has very little choice but to uphold it even when planning committees are quite firm in their decision-making.”
Some 700 people responded to an initial consultation on key issues from November 2024 to January 2025, suggesting themes and ideas to focus as the City Plan takes shape.
- Homes for everyone
- Sustainability and climate change
- A diverse and sustainable city economy
- Design and place-making
- Culture and tourism
- Healthy city and communities
- Biodiversity and green infrastructure
- Transport and infrastructure
The council has been awarded £108,000 by the government to help fund work on the new plan.
It is due to formally give notice of its intention to begin work on the plan by Tuesday 23 June and to carry out a scoping consultation from mid-July to September.
A more in-depth six-week consultation will take place from July to September next year once the council puts together the contents and evidence that are expected to form the future plan.
A finalised plan is due to go before the council’s cabinet in April 2028 and a meeting of the full council a month later before a final eight-week public consultation in the summer of that year.
The final steps are for a government minister, the Secretary of State, to sign off the plan and then for the council to adopt it formally in March 2029.
