The Green Party has launched an online poll to test public opinion on the future of the controversial Brighton station site redevelopment.

City councillor Keith Taylor and environmental campaigner George Monbiot toured the 15-acre site as the poll initiative was launched.

The New England Consortium, backed by Brighton and Hove City Council, plans a £100 million redevelopment including new homes, shops and a Sainsbury's supermarket.

The supermarket proposal has provoked bitter opposition, with critics claiming it would increase traffic and kill trade on nearby London Road.

Mr Monbiot said each new supermarket cost an estimated 276 jobs and food retailing on the site should be devoted to small business, preferably selling Sussex produce.

He said: "If this is approved it will be devastating for local employment, it will also be devastating, as far as I can see, to the environment because of the increase in traffic movements."

Councillor Taylor, who is the Green Party's General Election candidate for Brighton Pavilion, said the plan put big business first.

He said: "We are giving people a chance to make their views known. The station site is important to the whole city.

"We mustn't allow this precious resource to be frittered away on a development whose sole purpose is to deliver maximum profits to the developer and the landowner."

His Labour opponent David Lepper said there had been consultations on the site's future and earlier proposals for a larger supermarket had been rejected by the council.

He said: "Any proposal for a supermarket on the site must fit in with the North Laine and London Road shopping areas and there should be strict tests of its likely impact."

A planning application for the Railtrack-owned site, which has been derelict for more than 30 years, has yet to be submitted. The consortium, formed in 1999, includes Railtrack, Sainsbury's and Gleeson Homes.

Votes can be cast at www3.mistral.co.uk/greenparty
May 17 2001