Schemes have come and schemes have gone since the locomotive works in Brighton shut more than 30 years ago.

But no one has managed to produce a scheme for this brownfield site that makes commercial sense and satisfies planners.

Now the New England Consortium has made a determined effort to unlock the huge potential of this site next to the station.

It has made the scheme car free in many places. It is helping to solve the housing problem.

It's providing jobs by creating the headquarters of a language school and it is building a £1 million community centre.

The project is linked to the London Road shopping area and it will be fully landscaped. Top architects have been brought in to design it.

But there's still one problem as far as some of the objectors are concerned. It includes a supermarket, which will have a car park, generating traffic in the city centre.

Planners will have to work out whether that is a price worth paying for a development which has many plus points.

They should remember many people in the centre would far rather have a supermarket there than stuck on the edges of the city and that it will replace an existing, outdated store in London Road.

It's worth pressing developers to provide more low-cost housing than is currently proposed and to ensure a bus runs through the development.

But this scheme is coming close to the sort of development Brighton has waited too long for on this derelict site.