THE CITY PLAN
and the proposed
HOVE STATION NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN
The Brighton and Hove City Plan was approved by the Council at the end of January. This strategic plan for the city as a whole identified 8 Development Areas where most of the city’s needs for employment and housing will be met.
The city needs development to enable the economy to grow and provide jobs and also to provide the additional housing needed for its residents.
Hove Station Development Area 6 is one of these strategic Development Areas
The City Plan has established a strategy to take advantage of the long-term regeneration opportunities around the Hove Station and enable its development as a sustainable mixed use area focussed on employment.
The Neighbourhood Plan will include and ‘wrap around ‘ DA6 but it will have to take as given the proposals for DA6 as set out in the City Plan
These proposals are outlined below
Over the next 15 years the Council want to see, as a minimum
- 630 new residential units in mixed use developments (alongside offices) – including 200 in the Conway Street area
- within the Conway Street Industrial Area
– the retention /replacement of 12,000sqm of employment floor space – compared to the 18,000sqm there now
– this will be high quality, flexible, office/business floorspace
– it will include affordable business floor space suitable for small business and digital media/creative industries
- Elsewhere in DA6 the City Plan requires the retention/replacement of existing with an additional 1,000 sqm of employment floor space.
Mixed use regeneration will create a more vibrant area, but this must not at the expense of employment floor space
- Proposals for retail would have to be considered in terms of their impact on existing shopping areas
- Proposals for new development in the area will have to accommodate school, sport and other facilities to meet the community’s needs.
Thecoal yard siteis allocated forwaste management uses.
SO WHAT CAN A NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN DO?
Neighbourhood Plans are new – the law which enables them to be made only came in to force in April 2012. As such the realistic scope of a Neighbourhood Plan for our area will only become fully apparent as the process of preparing it gets underway – and it is underway in some 300 neighbourhoods up and down the country. Read our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs about Neighbourhood Planning).
1. Influence the redevelopment process in DA 6
In the Hove Station case, a Neighbourhood Plan prepared by a properly constituted Neighbourhood Forum will give local residents and businesses their best chance of really influencing the regeneration of the DA6 area
- The City Plan strategy includes ‘ the preparation of guidance to promote and co-ordinate employment focussed regeneration’
- This guidance will include topics such as the acceptable height, mass and scale of buildings, improvement of public open space, essential community services, traffic management and transport , new green infrastructure and the provision of facilities for low carbon energy generation and distribution.
- The city planners have agreed to work with us on the basis that the Neighbourhood Plan could be developed as a key element of this guidance for development proposals for DA6
- All this is in line with national planning policy which says that neighourhood plans cannot be in conflict with approved city plan policies and ‘neighbourhoods should plan positively to support them’ and not undermine them.
2. Develop ideas and proposals for our neighbourhoods
- We can identify the issues that we want the Neighbourhood Plan to deal with in each of the five groups of streets which are immediately adjacent to DA6
We can make proposals for transport and traffic management, pedestrian and cycle ways, community facilities, play facilities and any other issues where we see needs and opportunities for improving our neighbourhoods, in the short term, the medium term and the long term.
