THE Brighton Centre should consider cutting or freezing prices in its final years to avoid losing business, councillors have argued.

Calls have been made to cut the prices at the venue in a bid to avoid business dropping off ahead of its planned demolition.

The Brighton Waterfront plan would see a new conference and performance venue built at Black Rock on the seafront while the existing 1970s Brighton Centre would be bulldozed to make way for an extension of Churchill Square.

Council officers have proposed increasing fees by up to three per cent at the centre for the next financial year which would see the cost of hiring out the main auditorium rise from £11,700 to £11,930.

The centre is now considered outdated and would require a makeover costing more than £100 million.

Previous plans to regenerate the site in the mid-2000s were eventually pulled but the uncertainty over the venue’s future hit business hard – a consequence councillors are now keen to avoid a repeat of.

Green councillor Ollie Sykes said: “Have councillors considered discounting prices at the Brighton Centre so as not to lose business in that period of upheaval while building Brighton Waterfront?”