Brighton Society objection : BH2019/00127 64 – 68 Palmeira Avenue & 72 – 73 Cromwell Road Hove

The Brighton Society accepts that sites such as this in this part of Hove will face pressures for re-development with higher density housing schemes than exist vat present. But proposals such as this one are far from the ideal solution, particularly in situations where they will have a major effect on an adjacent Conservation Area.

What the application documents fail to show at all is any indication of the effect on the delightfully scaled and detailed terrace within the Willetts Estate Conservation Area directly across the road from the site shown below.

In relation to this terrace, the design of the proposed new block of flats and 80-bed hotel is overbearing and inappropriate in this particular location.
It is entirely feasible to come up with a design which significantly increases the number of new dwellings on the site, but which is sympathetic and polite to the buildings within the Conservation Area immediately opposite.
The application documentation makes no reference to the visual quality of the terrace of houses opposite and appears to deliberately avoid showing the quality of the buildings within the Willetts Conservation Area.

The question has to be asked – Is this development polite, in keeping and in character, scale and materials with the 2-storey terrace with its red brick facades and white painted woodwork within the Conservation Area directly across the road from the site? The answer has to be emphatically No.
It will have a severely detrimental effect on that part of the Conservation Area.

Back to the drawing board.