THE MULTI-million pound sale of former council offices on a prime seafront real estate has moved an “important step” closer following a private meeting of senior councillors and officials.

The sale of the grade II listed King’s House offices in Grand Parade, Hove, has progressed after a meeting agreed to “appropriate the land at King’s House for planning purposes” to enable its sale and redevelopment.

It is expected the sale of the 100,000 sq feet office block, which was vacated by council staff in October, to developers to convert into housing could net the council more than £20 million.

A previous agreement to sell the building to a consortium of nine companies collapsed in March.

The sell-off of the property is set to save the council more than £500,000 in annual running costs although that saving has been reduced with the delay on its sale which has added to the £4,000-a-month bill to keep the offices secure.

The Argus was allowed in for just five minutes of the urgent policy, resources and growth sub-committee yesterday afternoon in Brighton Town Hall.

The meeting was attended by council leader Warren Morgan and opposition leaders Tony Janio and Phelim MacCafferty along with top council officials including chief executive Geoff Raw, finance director David Kuenssberg and economy, environment and culture director Nick Hibberd.

Conservative Cllr Tony Janio made the case for not excluding the press from the meeting.

He said: “Too much of this agenda is in Part II.

“Some issues should be put in Part II but as much as possible we should be in Part I, we should be accountable to the public.

“To have an agenda without even a narrative to explain what we are doing is no way to proceed.

“This will be treated as closed meeting and some people may consider that something untoward is going on.”

The council’s head of law Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis and external legal advisors advised excluding press and public from the meeting so officers could respond in detail to questions from councillors.

Cllr Morgan said it was the council’s general principle to try and do everything in public but he was following strong advice to avoid prejudicing the ongoing sale.

The Argus was allowed back in for the closing of the meeting 45 minutes later.

A council spokeswoman said: “The policy, resources and growth urgency subcommittee agreed to appropriate the land at Kings House for planning purposes to enable the sale and redevelopment to proceed.

“This is an important step on the way to the sale of the site.”