Brighton needs about 2,500 homes a year and has found sites for roughly 30% of that to 2044. Councillors are now asked whether to build on the city's last industrial land.

Brighton & Hove’s new planning blueprint can find land for only about 30% of the homes the city is required to plan for, and the council is now asking councillors whether it should start releasing protected industrial land to close the gap. The question is put in a report to the Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday 8 September.

The number is stark. Using the government’s standard method, the city needs about 2,500 additional homes a year. The emerging identified supply covers “approximately 30% of this need over the plan period”, which runs to 2044.

Chart comparing Brighton's assessed housing need of about 2,500 homes a year with the emerging identified supply, which covers about 30% of that need to 2044

Councillors are not being asked to decide anything. They are being asked to comment, and their comments feed into the plan.

The plan has a new name

The document that replaces City Plan Part One and Part Two will now be called simply the Brighton & Hove City Plan, not “City Plan 2041” as previously. It will be a single document, and on adoption becomes the primary development plan for the city: the thing every planning application is judged against.

Our Brighton planning applications page explains how to search and comment on individual schemes, and Brighton planning news tracks the plan itself.

Where the land is supposed to come from

The plan has to find room for three things at once, and the report says the land needed “significantly exceeds available supply”.

Homes. About 2,500 a year under the standard method. Identified supply covers roughly 30%. The report also flags affordability and the need for more affordable housing.

Offices. The city has around 800 office premises totalling 560,000 square metres, with 48,000 square metres of new office space added between 2013 and 2023. Assessed need is a further 87,000 square metres over the plan period, which the council says could in theory be met through permissions already granted and sites already allocated, if they are actually built. The complication is a two-tier market: strong demand for Grade A suites up to 1,000 square metres, weak demand for older stock, and 45% of the city’s offices were built or last renovated before 1950.

Industrial space. This is the pinch point. Brighton has 194 industrial buildings totalling 124,000 square metres. Since 2010/11 it has lost 16,000 square metres, there is no vacant general industrial space in the city, and assessed need is a further 56,000 square metres.

The report notes demand specifically from creative industries for artists’ studios, “messy and maker space” and rehearsal space, with a preference for shorter leases and lower rents.

The four options on the table

Officers set out the choices and their drawbacks without recommending one:

  • Keep all safeguarded industrial sites. Supports existing businesses and jobs and stops further losses, but means lower housing delivery and does nothing about the 56,000 square metre industrial shortfall.
  • Release some safeguarded employment land for mixed-use redevelopment. Can deliver significant housing in sustainable locations and reprovide employment floorspace, most likely as offices or co-working. But it worsens an industrial supply problem at a time of negligible vacancy, mixed-use schemes are “unlikely to be suitable for industrial uses”, and the report says the success of recent mixed-use developments is mixed.
  • Re-provide industrial space elsewhere. Mitigates the loss, but officers say they are aware of only one possible site, Hangleton Bottom, and warn of disruption and possible loss of existing businesses.
  • Allow more older office space to convert to homes. Increases housing supply, but increases the need for new offices and “may result in unnecessary loss of spaces that could be upgraded”.

The underlying tension is stated plainly: “Pressure on industrial sites from higher-value residential.” Industrial floorspace is much harder to put back than office floorspace.

The council is a landlord in this too

The report is unusually frank about the council’s own position. It owns industrial units, and many, including at Crowhurst Road, The Hyde in Bevendean and Home Farm, are sold on long leases but still occupied and providing employment space. It runs Industrial House and Hove Technology Centre, and says both need investment.

It also notes the recent decision on New England House to use more of the council’s existing office space for creative industries, artists and makers. And then this: “Need for capital receipts does mean that the council must continue to consider its own portfolio and whether any assets can be released.”

In other words, the same financial pressure pushing private industrial sites towards housing applies to the council’s own.

What it means for you

  • If you rent a workshop, studio or light industrial unit in the city, this is the document that decides whether it survives. There is no vacant general industrial space in Brighton and the plan is weighing whether to release more of what is left.
  • If you are waiting for a home, expect the shortfall to persist. The plan is not going to find land for 2,500 homes a year. The honest question is what share of the gap gets closed and where.
  • Comment now, not later. Feedback from Tuesday’s committee shapes the plan before it is drafted. The council says public consultation will continue throughout the process in line with government guidance, but the choices between the four options above are being framed now.
  • Watch Hangleton Bottom. It is the only relocation site officers say they are aware of, which makes it the place any “we will reprovide the industrial space elsewhere” argument will point to.

The Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee meets at 4pm on Tuesday 8 September at Hove Town Hall, BN3 3BQ.

Sources