James Epps President, Brighton and Hove Estate Agents’ Association

 

Brighton and Hove Council has applied for parts of the city to be exempt from a plan to relax rules on transforming offices into homes.

I have to say we don’t entirely agree with the council’s stance. Having canvassed many of our clients there is a general view that the aspirations of the City Plan in terms of the amount of office space the city wishes to deliver over the next 17 years is completely unrealistic. A blanket approach is not going to work and the council must think outside the box.

It is clearly established that Brighton suffers from a lack of a) quality stock and b) small unit starter space. However, protecting poor quality stock in out-dated office buildings, offices above shops and mutli-level buildings that were constructed in Victorian times or older and that have been converted to offices over time, is not the right approach. If you bring in this blanket exemption you will hold back much needed regeneration in the central city area.

Brighton has never been able to justify new office development – those limited number of buildings that sprung up in the 1970s and late 80s were a result of boom times in the office sector, which we are unlikely to see again for many years.

Perhaps the council should take a more creative approach to being at the forefront of planning policy thinking. How about having a policy that encourages developers to build office space over affordable housing? I think this would be a breath of fresh air in the local economy and get things moving for Brighton and Hove, rather than office development being overly protected in respect of inappropriate buildings and a housing development being held back by high affordable requirements.

I don’t feel the Brighton and Hove Estate Agent Association can support the proposal that there should be a blanket exemption on the areas proposed.

In our view this is a great opportunity to have a natural cull of inappropriate buildings and stimulate rental growth in the office sector. This will in turn stimulate office development.

All this said, the worst thing that could happen is the council making a ‘pig’s ear’ of this as we already have clients now sitting on the fence and not making decisions because of the potential of this coming in shortly. The delays and uncertainty hold back the local economy.

It is time to widen this debate.