LOCAL media such as yourselves have often reported on stories about the building of student accommodation. Although the content of these stories is accurate, sadly they often lead to ill-informed comments along the lines of "The council only ever builds for students".

I think as chairman of the city council's planning committee, it's important that I bust these myths.

"The council" has never built a single student flat. Developers apply for permission to build what they want to build. More often than not, this will be whatever they think will produce the greatest financial return.

In order to change this, would require a countrywide move from a market-led model of planning legislation, based on maximising profit for corporations, to a socially led model, maximising benefit for residents.

The city does have its own planning policies, but these are subservient to national legislation. Under current laws, there is nothing the council can do to prevent an application going forward, if it is legally sound and the planning balance accords with policy.

"The Greens" don't make these decisions. Currently, planning committee consists of three Greens, three Labour, two Conservatives and two independents. None of these members vote along party lines. That would be illegal.

Building for students doesn't increase the number of students in the city. The same number of students will be looking for somewhere to live, regardless of whether developers build custom accommodation for them.

Brighton and Hove isn't full of student accommodation. In fact, while on average university towns and cities contain enough custom-built student accommodation for 40 to 50 per cent of their students, Brighton and Hove only contains around 25 per cent. This puts enormous pressure on our existing housing stock.

Building student accommodation does not prevent local people finding homes. Building enough accommodation to house 40 to 50 per cent of our students, could free up a vast amount of housing for sale or rent to families and other households. When planning committee gives permission for the building of student flats, it will have had no real choice, and even if it did, refusal would just mean more students continuing to occupy housing built for residents.

For a housing perspective, custom-built student accommodation represents a genuine win-win.

Cllr Leo Littman

Brighton and Hove City Council planning committee chairman