A HISTORICALLY-significant "hidden gem" of a market has finally lost its battle for survival after the eleventh bid to convert it into offices finally succeeded.

Persistent developers have been granted planning consent to convert Diplock's Yard in North Road, Brighton, into a two storey office block.

Applicants for the successful scheme said the new building would create eight office spaces creating almost 40 jobs for artistic start-ups.

But supporters of the existing yard, which is used for an informal market, are bitterly disappointed at the "sad" loss of the unique space in the city’s historic North Laine.

The North Road site was a barrow yard for rag-and-bone men for 60 years until 1975 and has been home to an informal market since 2009.

Eleven planning applications for demolition or redevelopment as housing or offices have been submitted for the yard since 2004 with three designs also rejected on appeal.

Emma Petrykow of Ringmer-based Flint Architecture told the city’s planning committee that the plans had been amended in response to a number of previous refusals with the latest proposal addressing previous rejections over the design of the roof.

She told councillors that the yard has never been authorised for a market and the site had never been a public space.

Green ward councillor Lizzie Deane said not a great deal had changed since previous plans were rejected last August and Diplock's Yard remaining the same hidden gem with the same historical significance and potential to be thriving market.

She said that the yard had now gained the support of Dr Geoffrey Mead of the University of Sussex – the city’s “foremost social historian”.

She told committee members: “It would be a very sad day indeed if this crucial corner of history was irrevocably lost and the outlook of residents made only marginally less awful because of the loss of just a few inches of roof height.”

Conservative councillor Joe Miller welcomed the additional jobs from the application while Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle said neighbours’ outlook would be improved with a “beautifully formed roof” compared to the existing “tin shack shanty town”.

One resident, who did not wish to be named, said of the committee’s decision: “I think that’s the triumph of money over social responsibility.

“It is one of the few places that are truly individual in the North Laine that will now be lost and “I think its shame on the planning department for allowing it to happen, it’s their responsibility to retain the uniqueness of the area.”