THE SECOND phase of the £5 million regeneration of Brighton and Hove’s seafront has received unanimous backing from the authority’s planning committee.

Permission for work, which is already under way, to create 19 new beach huts, shops, cafes and storage space in the King’s Road Arches was granted at Brighton and Hove City Council’s planning committee yesterday.

The work, which began when the Victorian arches were discovered to be structurally unsound, is designed to reopen in 2016 to coincide with the opening of the i360.

The first phase of the project to the east of the i360 site opened earlier this summer, with 11 new shops. Councillors at yesterday’s meeting praised the “fantastic” work in breathing new life into the seafront.

Yesterday’s permission is for the arches running west from the i360 site to the subway through to Regency Square.

New railings, replicas of the original barriers but which meet modern building regulations, will be installed above the arches and are designed to last for up to 125 years.

Permission to replace the railings along the top of the arches is currently being considered by the Department of Communities and Local Government.

Green councillor Geoffrey Bowden questioned why so many arches would be used for beach huts rather than mirroring the high number of shops on the part of the arches builders had already completed.

But he said: “I look forward to seeing the bidding wars for these beach huts, the waiting list is enormous so these 19 huts will be very welcome.”

Conservative committee member Graham Cox welcomed the raising of the railing heights, having investigated the death of a woman who fell over them at Fatboy Slim’s Big Beach Boutique event in 2002 in his previous role as a Sussex Police detective.

He said: “I have always been paranoid about these railings ever since. They are at an exceptionally dangerous height, designed when the population was shorter than it is now.

“I am really pleased to see this happening and I hope we can increase all of the railings, as the ones she fell from outside of the Thistle Hotel are still there.”