Here are three items you won't find in Brighton and Hove Council's Local Plan and which should be included.
They can be considered as my contribution to part of the lengthy consultation process into this worthy document which few people will ever read even though it will affect all of them.
One. Park and ride will be provided at Braypool north of Patcham.
Two. A 200-space car park will be provided as part of a new supermarket on the land next to Brighton Station.
Three. A business centre and new park will be provided at Toad's Hole Valley in Hove.
The Local Plan has some genuinely radical ideas, especially on conserving energy and on affordable housing, but for the most part it is the usual wishy washy collection of pious hopes that these documents tend to contain. However three of the most important issues for the town have been funked.
There is a commitment to park and ride without naming a site. Yet the council has already put in a bid to the Government for money to provide this service. If this cash is granted, a site will have to be found and fast. Everyone knows where it will be.
One possible site is Waterhall Valley, close to the bypass, but the plan does actually rule this out for development. The only other possible site is Braypool, a recreation ground on the other side of the A23. Why not say so now?
There is a passionate argument in Brighton over whether park and ride is good for the town or not and that is already being staged. There should be another argument, as part of the plan, over whether a recreation ground north of the bypass is the right site for such a scheme. There's no point in trying to hide it when it will have to be discussed within a few months when, as I suspect, the money will be made available.
Much the same applies over the Brighton Station site. Here, derelict land has been earmarked for many good projects about which there is little quarrel including housing, employment uses and a hotel. The controversial feature is a supermarket which would help to make the whole development viable.
Nowhere in the Local Plan does it say there will have to be a car park for this store. Yet I cannot imagine Sainsbury's, the likely occupants, building a new store without one much as I would wish it myself. A planning application by the New England Consortium is certain to include parking when it is submitted next year. It would rather go against the green credentials of the rest of the scheme and would be seized on by the pressure group BUDD but the council could argue it's a regrettable necessity. Again, why try and hide?
In the original Local Plan proposals, Toad's Hole Valley was on the reserve list for providing jobs yet now it is not mentioned. This is on the understanding that there will be enough brownfield sites to cater for future employment which is a chimera.
The reality is developers want greenfield sites nearthe bypass and this is by far the best one available. It is on the right side of the downland dual carriageway and the owners have offered to donate the rest of the land as a public park, which would be a considerable improvement on the derelict scrubland there at the moment.
It would also be much better than the likely alternative; a mass of new housing that would be mainly taken by incomers rather than being used for local people. The bypass ensured this valley will have to be developed at some point. The plan should accept that and gain the best use possible instead of slowly capitulating later.
I have been so wrong about some major issues before that I have put myself forward as a rees; that is a seer in reverse. But look at Brighton and Hove in ten or 20 years' time and I am confident that these three developments, for good or for ill, will have occurred. Cut out and keep thess predictions so that you can either congratulate me for being unusually prescient, or berate me for being foolish enough to commit myself to them so emphatically now.
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