SEAFRONT battle royale is looming after planning officers backed the Brighton Wheel to stay in place even after the rival i360 tower has opened.

Despite opposition from other city council departments, officers have recommended the wheel stay for another five years as there are no planning grounds to turn it down.

Bosses at the i360 firmly believe they were given assurances that the wheel would be gone by the time they open next summer.

And a decision to grant the extension for Paramount Entertainments to keep the wheel until 2021 could have a major bearing on council finances.

The authority expects to recoup £1million a year from the i360 to invest in the city’s seafront after loaning £36.2million to the project.

The Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, Brighton and Hove Tourism Alliance, Hove Civic Society, Kingscliffe Society and former Green councillor Stephanie Powell have joined the council’s economic development, seafront team and heritage teams in objecting to the wheel’s application.

They claim that extending the wheel’s stay could “jeopardise” the i360 project and that it would be “illogical” for the council to allow the attraction to rival the publically funded i360.

The tourism alliance described the Brighton Wheel as a “stop-gap attraction” that had not brought more visitors to the city over the past five years.

Wheel bosses will take heart from planning officers’ advice to councillors that competition with a rival attraction is not a planning consideration and there were no grounds within existing planning policy to refuse permission.

The wheel application attracted 84 letters of support praising the views from the attraction and its cooperation with schools and charities while stating that “dire predictions” over loss of privacy or excessive lighting from the original application had not come to pass.

Brighton Wheel spokesman Bill Murray said he saw no reason why the two attractions could not co-exist in harmony and warned that the area around Madeira Drive would suffer if the Wheel was to go.

He said: “The Brighton Wheel is vital for that area of the seafront which is under great stress at the moment.

“We pay the largest rent on the seafront and employ 50 people so we bring money into the council, not take it away.

“We applaud and love the i360, they offer something different with banqueting and corporate options that we don’t. The city is a little light on attractions and we need things by the water to get people to come to the businesses around the area.”

Eleanor Harris, CEO of the Brighton i360, said: “Clearly this is a matter for the council to resolve.

“Our understanding has always been that the wheel’s lease will not be renewed and the wheel’s current lease specifies that the wheel must shut before the i360 opens.”

ALL SET FOR STAND OFF ON SEAFRONT

IT IS like a scene from a science fiction film – two giant metal structures standing off across the city.

In the one corner, the fearless Brighton Wheel welcoming the larger predator onto its habitat of Brighton seafront with no fear for its own safety.

In the other corner: The powerful i360, disturbed to find a rival still occupying land it hoped to call its own.

Can these two beasts be accommodated?

Brighton and Hove certainly gets enough tourists, more than eight million each year, to satisfy both.

The i360 project was designed to create a new hotspot for tourists to visit, an alternative to just coming down Queen’s Road from the station and heading to the Palace Pier and surrounding beach.

Businesses in and around Preston Street are relying on the i360 drawing visitors in the hordes to their front doors. Will that flow be as strong if there remains a closer alternative?

Will out of town visitors even head to the Brighton Wheel thinking they are having a day out on the i360?

The council has a lot riding on the success of the i360.

It took out a low-interest loan of £36.2 million from the Public Works Loan Board and is lending the money to the i360 at a higher rate.

It hopes to receive £1million a year for the next 25 years to invest in the city’s ailing seafront infrastructure but this is all based on ambitious visitor numbers.

Clearly i360 bosses have huge concerns about what degree a continuing Brighton Wheel would disrupt those carefully constructed calculations. Planning officers have made clear that these arguments are irrelevant for next Wednesday’s meeting.

Instead councillors will have to judge the Brighton Wheel on its stand-alone merits. Having given permission for it to open in 2011, there seems little argument that could be mustered to turn it down this time around.

In fact, the wheel’s case is potentially stronger four years on.

Worries of huge traffic delays in Madeira Drive, bright lights keeping nearby residents awake or its hulking shape blocking off our seafront that were raised back in 2011 have all proved to be more or less groundless.

The difficulty, as spelt out by council officers in their report ahead of next Wednesday’s meeting, is that there “is an absence of a clear adopted vision for the whole seafront” – a point which illustrates why The Argus launch our 2020 seafront campaign.

Officers say because the wheel does not contradict the emerging Seafront Strategy/Investment Plan and broadly fits as a leisure attraction within their current strategy, there are no policy grounds with which to reject their application to stay longer.

A more nuanced and detailed approach to developing the seafront will only come with the development of the City Plan later this year.

But the planning permission is only half the battle.

Brighton Wheel bosses will have to convince council officers to extend their lease and gain highway consent when it expires next summer.

There are very strict guidelines on what grounds planning permission can be refused or granted but no such rules apply to the granting of leases and their extensions.

From the council’s point of view, the lease arrangements agreed in 2011 with Brighton Wheel bosses made it very clear that the attraction would be temporary and there should be no assumption for a more permanent arrangement further down the line.

The officers’ report states that a bond was paid to ensure the removal of the wheel at the end of the lease.

Council officers also point out that the original planned location for the wheel was at the West Pier – meaning it would have been removed last year to allow i360 building work to begin.

Brighton Wheel bosses say that it was not always their intention to stay longer than five years but over the lifetime of the wheel the “community support” and the “landmark” status it has now achieved convinced them it should.

Having invested hundreds of thousands of pounds to install the wheel in place, understandably the owners want to maximise that investment as much as possible.

Wheel bosses dispute any such arrangement concerning its co-existence with the i360 and there were probably many people back in 2011 who doubted whether the i360 would ever leap off the drawing board and into reality.

They say they hope the council “sees sense” and listens to the majority of residents in support of the wheel remaining.

But with so much riding on the success of the i360, it seems unlikely that the council will want to risk jeopardising its success in any way when a decision on the lease renewal is made in the next few months.

The planning application will come before the city council’s planning committee under new chairwoman Julie Cattell next Wednesday.