A row has broken out among city councillors over the impact on traffic of proposals to develop the Brighton Station site.

Green campaigners say the scheme will cause big increases in traffic in central Brighton.

However, Seven Dials Labour councillor Alison Hermitage said the claims were wrong and disgraceful.

The city council's planning committee is preparing to look at the plans for the Brighton station site next month.

The scheme by the New England Consortium contains hotels, a language school headquarters, housing and a supermarket.

It has been billed as an urban village with minimum amounts of traffic and no car parking for the hotels.

The main controversy is over the supermarket, which will have a car park but one smaller than usual for this kind of city-centre development.

Kieran McCann, of Brighton Urban Development and Design (Budd) said: "Sainsbury's is insisting its new store must have a 200-space car park.

"Their consultants' own assessment of the impact of the development on traffic and pollution levels shows the volume of traffic in the area around the station site will increase overall by 25 per cent as a result."

St Peter's ward Green councillor Keith Taylor said: "Councillor Hermitage should already know about the traffic implications of this proposal, not in the least because its knock-on effects will be widely felt in the ward she represents.

"I believe more traffic is the last thing this area needs and the next to last is yet another supermarket."

Coun Hermitage hit back: "Keith Taylor needs to reread the planning brief which is very clear on neutral or even beneficial effects any new development must have on local congestion.

"It is also disgraceful to bandy suggestions of 25 per cent increase in traffic in Seven Dials."

Previous plans for this site have involved much more traffic generation and for many years planners believed it was necessary to create a Preston Circus relief road to serve the development.