Gasworks – Berkeley Appeals

From the Brighton Society Newsletter February 2025

As many of our readers are aware from our previous newsletters and website articles setting out our objections, the Berkeley Homes and St William scheme for the gasworks site in Kemp Town was first presented to the council in July 2020, followed by two public consultations. A third, revised, application was refused by the council’s planning committee in May 2024 and, as we expected, Berkeleys lodged their appeal in October.

Early in 2021 AGHAST liaised with our Society and soon after other amenity groups joined to form the Gasworks Coalition.  

The Coalition consists of 14 community groups. These are:

AGHAST (Action on Gasworks Housing, Safety, Affordability and Transparency)

Amex Area Neighbourhood Action Forum

Black Rock Residents Association

Brighton & Hove Heritage Commission

Kemp Town Society

Kingscliffe Society

Marine Gate Holdings Ltd

Montpelier & Clifton Hill Association

North Laine Community Association

Regency Society

Regency Squares Community

Rottingdean Heritage

The Brighton Society

West Hill Community Association

You can find more about the campaign on the AGHAST website brightongasworks.org. Their email address is protestforbrightongasworks@gmail.com

The appeal

The appeal Inquiry will take place over approximately eight working days in March 2025. Fortunately, the Coalition has secured an advocate pro bono to represent us but a crowd-funding request has been set up for expenditure to prepare for the appeal, for costs which may arise during the appeal, plus fees for expert witnesses. You can donate using this link:

https://tinyurl.com/527k88rc. The target is now £25,000 and although the site says the funding appeal runs only to 4 February it has been extended, and donations will still be accepted after that date.

We support the coalition in opposing Berkeley’s appeal and will be making a donation to them on behalf of the Brighton Society. You may like to do so personally as well. We ask you to give what you can in order to help oppose what we believe to be a deeply inappropriate and harmful development.

The council’s grounds for refusal included the following criticisms that we had also identified in our objections:

• The scheme would represent an overdevelopment of the site with excessive scale, massing, density and heights that are not in keeping with the area, which along with the design and material palette would cumulatively harm the townscape, landscape and seascape of the area and its heritage assets.

 

• The housing mix of the scheme, specifically the under provision of larger units, would fail to meet the identified housing need of the city.

 

• The overdevelopment of the site and particularly the excessive height and limited spacing between buildings would result in an unacceptable standard of accommodation for future residents by reason of poor levels of amenity and light to some dwellings.

The Brighton Society has supported the Coalition throughout, and members of the Society have already helped by lodging some of the 1,600 objections to the plans received by the council.

 The alternative

The Brighton Society has always agreed that the gasworks site should be developed. It is an eyesore which has been there too long. But high-rise tower blocks are not the answer. The site cries out for a lower rise development of the sort of housing Brighton actually needs. We need housing at affordable rents, but no affordable housing is included in the application.

Another major advantage would be the far lower impact of development on the heritage assets of the Kemp Town area. Berkeley’s development will tower over the precious Regency architecture of the neighbourhood and would indeed affect the whole aspect of the Brighton seafront from the Palace Pier eastwards to the Marina. Almost all of this consists of listed buildings, mostly Grade I.

The gasworks site is not designated as a Tall Building Zone (TBZ) in Brighton and Hove’s Local Plan (2016) so the application is in breach of this directive.

The diagram below reveals the wind tunnels that would form between the tall buildings

The Coalition has been granted “Rule 6” status giving it the same standing at the appeal as Berkeley and the council. Our objections to the appeal can be treated in the same way as those of the council and the applicant and we can cross-examine the other parties – and be cross-examined in turn.

We are grateful to our editorial colleague, Jeremy Mustoe, who has been extremely busy over the Christmas period drawing up briefing papers in readiness for the appeal and arranging Coalition meetings.

We urge you to use the donate link and contribute as generously as you can.  Thank you