Demand can’t be met by tight city boundaries

You will spot one difference from those in most other British cities.

There are remarkably few new houses and flats on the market because so little space is available for them.

The city is hemmed in by the sea to the south and the Downs to the north.

To the west side there are Southwick and Shoreham while on the east there are Telscombe Cliffs and Peacehaven.

Yet the City Plan, which has just been approved, says that another 13,200 homes can be built there by 2030.

How will Brighton and Hove cope with this extra influx of people?

Making the modest assumption that there will be three people in each new home means almost 40,000 new residents.

And will that number of homes be squeezed into the city in the next 14 years? I very much doubt it.

At least the figure of 13,200 homes is more realistic than the original estimate of 30,000 to meet housing need.

But let’s take a look at one small part of the plan – Shoreham Harbour at the extreme south west of the city.

Only a small section of the harbour at Aldrington Basin is actually within the city boundaries and even that is earmarked for 400 new homes.

There was a time when the harbour was called the biggest brownfield site in the south east. Not anymore.

Trade is booming there and you have only to look at the vast acreage given over to steel imports to realise this is so. It is vital in providing jobs for local people.

A decade ago there was talk of 10,000 homes in the whole of the harbour. It was a preposterous prediction and I shall be most surprised if today’s much more modest targets can be achieved.

I can see that 700 homes could be provided at Toad’s Hole Valley in Hove, the one large greenfield site south of the Brighton bypass.

But can there really be room for 1,130 in the London Road area even including the New England Quarter?

The answer must surely be no.

There should be doubt over whether 875 homes can be shoehorned into Lewes Road or 515 around Edward Street.

There is no question about the demand for housing. Many Londoners, unable to live in the capital where even a modest terraced house can cost more than a million pounds, are buying places in Brighton.

This is causing a sharp increase in property prices, forcing many people on low incomes to leave Brighton for Worthing, Lancing, Shoreham, Peacehaven and Eastbourne.

Some of the housing can be provided in new tower blocks and this is already happening at the Marina where new homes will have a far greater impact on the environment than the Brighton i360.

It is possible that in the most sought-after sites in the city, underground extensions will soon be built. On recent visits to London, I was amazed to see so many subterranean properties already under construction.

Even a modest house building programme will be of huge benefit to the cash-strapped city council. It has unusually large proportions of land and property. New build equals new money and plenty of it.

I appreciate the need for new housing, especially at the affordable end of the market, in a city with low wages and soaring property prices.

But sites are in short supply and there will be objections by neighbours to many of the proposed developments.

I fancy we will not be seeing more than a handful of new homes in the agents’ windows in the foreseeable future.

The remains of the West Pier.  Picture: David McHugh/Brighton Pictures

Strollers along the prom nearly all agree that the remnants of Brighton’s West Pier make a romantic ruin, especially when pictured at sunset with starlings flying nearby.

But talk of preserving the hulk in its present state is tosh proposed by people who have no idea of the practicalities.

The pier head is in a parlous plight.

Chunks of cast iron come loose during nearly every storm.

They sink beneath the waves but are still there, razor-sharp obstacles for anyone foolish enough to go near them.

Stabilising the structure would be a tricky task to say the least as it can only be reached by sea. New supports would be needed which would spoil the beauty so many observers wish to retain.

No one has the money to pay for repairing a ruin and it simply is not going to happen. Far better to let nature take its course and see the old pier slowly slide into the sea.

Then we can concentrate on building a replacement pier with exciting architecture to complement the i360 observation tower, two symbols of this century rather than a rusty relic from the past.