A city centre is bucking the national trend and generating private sector jobs.

According to a newreport from the think-tank Centre for Cities, the city centre hub of Brighton and Hove accounted for more than 60 per cent of new jobs in the entire area.

While other cities have seen a flight of people and jobs away from their centres, in Brighton and Hove there was a 4.3 percentage point increase in the city centre’s share of private sector jobs.

The authors of the report picked out Brighton and Hove as a place which is leading the way.

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Tony Mernagh, chief executive at the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, said: “The reason why Brighton is such a successful city centre with a retail vacancy rate well below the UK benchmark of 14% is because it has managed to marry a truly unique retail offer with a cultural and artistic offer that is the envy of many cities of similar size in addition to considerable office-based, non-retail employment space.

“On top of this we have a significant residential population that lives within a spit of the city centre itself.

“Add in a superb transport system delivering people into the city centre with great efficiency and we are well ahead of the curve when it comes to the 21st century city centres alluded to in the Centre for Cities report.”

Gavin Stewart, manager at the Brighton Business Improvement District, said; “In Brighton we enjoy one of the lowest retail vacancy rates in the country of just over 6%, but it is clearly other factors that have supported that sector to stay on track while other centres in the UK have seen empty properties rise to over 26%.

“The report from the Centre for Cities highlights the success we have experienced in Brighton in retaining private sector businesses in our city centre, thus providing a high level of customers for our retail sector for an additional five days week.”