Substitute councillors could hold the key to whether the controversial Laing O’Rourke plans for Brighton Marina are approved.

Brighton and Hove City Council’s development committee meets at 2pm today to discuss the bid to build more than 1,300 flats on the site along with shops and offices.

The decision is one of the biggest the council has faced in recent years.

Last night it emerged that two members of the committee asked to be replaced before the meeting.

Tories Denise Cobb and Dee Simson will be brought in for fellow Conservatives Ken Norman and Dawn Barnett.

Coun Barnett said she was committed to running a party in Hangleton for the elderly and Coun Norman said he had a prior engagement related to his role as cabinet member for adult social care.

The controversial multi-million pound project would create 800 jobs and provide 1,300 new homes.

Planning officers have recommended that the proposals should be given the go ahead if the developers agree to spend millions on public facilities for the area.

Developer Laing O’Rourke has said it will appeal if the application is refused. The Planning Inspectorate would then rule on whether or not the plans should be allowed.

The council could face a six figure legal bill if it lost the appeal.

The Argus called every member of the committee to ask them how they would vote and whether they had already made their decision.

Of the 12 councillors on the committee, only eight were available – Tories Geoffrey Wells, David Smart and Carol Theobald, Labour members Bob Carden, Les Hamilton and Juliet McCaffery and Green councillors Ian Davey and Amy Kennedy.

All of them, from both the Tories and the opposition, said they had not yet made up their minds which way they would vote and said it would be wrong of them to do so.

The planning committee is made up of six Tory councillors and six opposition councillors. They were given committee papers, which run into hundreds of pages, last Friday.

If the decision is tied, the chairman Lynda Hyde has the deciding vote.

Coun Norman said he had arranged a substitute for the meeting a fortnight ago after realising he had other commitments.

He said he had done the same for several planning committee meetings in recent months.

Two co-opted members – John Small, the chairman of the council’s conservation advisory group and Roy Pennington from the Brighton and Hove Federation of Disabled People – sit on the committee in an advisory role but do not have a vote.

The substituting of committee members is allowed at any time before meetings take place.

In February last year the then ruling Labour group substituted councillor Juliet McCaffery from its children’s families and schools committee when the decision was taken to bring in catchments and lottery for secondary school places.

She was replaced by Gill Mitchell an hour before the meeting in which the vote was tied and the deciding vote in favour of the move was cast by committee chairman Pat Hawkes.