Plans to transform an eyesore now include more flats... and no affordable homes.

A developer has offered to pay Brighton and Hove City Council at least £500,000 instead of offering 14 flats as “affordable” homes on the site of an old maternity hospital.

Martin Homes Buckingham Road Limited has also applied for planning permission to include two more flats in its plans for the site, taking the total up to 36.

The extra flats would be contained within the five-storey building in Buckingham Road, Brighton, that already has planning permission. The proposals are due to go before the council’s planning committee next Wednesday.

Martin Homes created 14 flats in the townhouses at 76-79 Buckingham Road and these were intended to form the “affordable” element of the scheme.

But no registered provider could be found to take on the modest number of affordable homes despite approaches to a number of housing associations.

The council has also turned down the chance to take on similar-sized schemes in the past, prompting some to ask whether the policy should be reviewed.

It agreed to amend the planning permission to allow Martin Homes to sell the 14 flats to boost cash flow as it prepared to build 20 flats on the neighbouring part of the site, 80 Buckingham Road.

The amended plans included incorporating the affordable homes in the five-storey block of flats on the corner of Buckingham Road and Upper Gloucester Road.

Martin Homes said in its latest application that the project was “no longer able to support” the affordable element.

And a report to the council’s planning committee said: “Since that time the applicant states that delays on site and increases in building costs have stymied the continued development of the new-build block.

“It is no longer viable to provide the original approved affordable homes on site. This is even taking into account the two additional units now proposed.”

The report proposed accepting a “commuted sum” of at least £500,000 instead as an acceptable alternative. The sum could be higher if the scheme makes more money than expected.

This sum could be used towards the cost of buying or building affordable rented homes elsewhere in Brighton and Hove.

The site, which covers about a third of an acre in all, was once the home of Brighton Grammar School, which occupied a three-storey Victorian corner building at 80 Buckingham Road.

The school, now known as Brighton, Hove And Sussex VI Form College (BHASVIC), moved to the corner of Dyke Road and Old Shoreham Road, Hove, shortly before the First World War.

The site was also home to the Sussex Maternity Hospital, which ended up occupying 76-80 Buckingham Road and which closed in 1971.

Number 80, on the corner of Upper Gloucester Road, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced with a modern building which hasn’t lasted as well as its 19th century neighbours. It was used for adult social care after the maternity hospital closed.

The skeletal frame of the five-storey replacement is visible while work on the site is currently on hold.

The planning committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm next Wednesday.