DESPITE clear public concern, the city council still appears hell bent on selling off more downland.

From the report for tomorrow’s meeting, it is clear councillors are not being given all the information they need to make an informed decision. This is not acceptable and is placing much loved public assets at risk from being sold off. The report is misleading in many ways, not least because it fails to mention many of the sites already sold. Some of these had an incredibly high public value, two sites being within a nationally important wildlife site, something that was contested by officers for ages.

The report claims that only £25,000 has been raised so far.

Then there are the many downland properties for sale. With current house prices it wouldn’t take many of these to raise the money required for Stanmer Park.

Then again, It would probably only take one city centre property to raise the cash needed but this is dismissed with little thought, even though the social value of such a property is close to nil.

Conversely, with the downland estate, where social value is high, the assets are deemed “underperforming” and so should be sold off. The excuse is that the money is needed to restore Stanmer Park, yet only 50 per cent of the cash from downland sales is being used for this purpose. The rest is being syphoned off elsewhere. If the money from the downland estate was ring-fenced for the South Downs, we wouldn’t need to flog off assets to bail out Stanmer Park. We could then create a long term vision for our downland and safeguard it for future generations.

Chris Todd is from Brighton and Hove Friends of the Earth