Date of meeting: 7 July 2022

A period of not more than fifteen minutes shall be allowed at each ordinary meeting of the Council for the hearing of deputations from members of the public. Each deputation may be heard for a maximum of five minutes.

Deputations received:

(i) Kingsway to the Sea – Joanne Heuston

This deputation is submitted on behalf of the residents and owners of Welbeck Court and Berriedale House, Kingsway BN3 in response to the Kingsway To The Sea (KTTS) proposals, specifically the west lawn between the bottom of Berriedale Avenue and Wish Road. In the FMG report dated April 2022 the site is referred to as Zone 8 and Section 8. It is at the quieter end of the seafront, and is the last remaining open space on the coast between Hove Lawns and West Sussex.

Our neighbours are mostly retired. Typically for flats, we have a small communal front garden, which is shared by all occupants but no private outdoor space. The plans for KTTS include installing a cycle pump track, a roller-skating loop and a new skate park on this green space, which is directly in front of our homes.

Contrary to the narrative put forward in the KTTS project proposals we see the site used every day, by people of all ages and for a wide range of activities. It is popular with school classes, dog walkers and regular running and PT clubs; it is used for yoga, kite flying, picnic, football, racquet sports and even camping.

We want to retain this multi-generational, multi-use site as open space, to ensure that residents of all ages can use it, and to protect it for current occupants and future generations and to ensure that those who need peace and quiet in Brighton & Hove still have somewhere to go. We would be grateful if you could consider whether the proposed development on this site is appropriate and also to consider whether the proposals respond in any way to the needs of older residents of the city.

We recognise that the existing infrastructure is in need of support, improvement and on-going maintenance. We appreciate that there may be demand from younger residents for more facilities but the demographics, confirmed by the latest Census (1), show that there are more residents aged 65 and over than younger than 15 in the city. Tables within the KTTS proposals show the beneficiaries are expected to be 45 and under and exclude older residents entirely (2).

The pump track and skate park are bottom of the funding contribution hierarchy in the proposals. Ms Linton-Crook’s report (3.25 Project Funding) explains that the financial pressures are already enforcing adaptations to the plans to reduce cost, and the council needs to find a further £3.49m instead of the original £1.1m that was approved just six months ago. It can reasonably be assumed that these costs will continue to rise and also that the site will need to be maintained in the future: The tennis courts, lagoon paddling pool and beachfront toilets are all currently closed for various reasons and there is nothing in the plans that offers assurances that this project will be managed any differently.

May we humbly offer up a saving: retain the open space, retain the existing skate park in its current location, retain the temporary BMX track at Black Rock and heed the requests from the roller-skating community for a larger roller rink, elsewhere in the borough.

We are concerned that the consultation so far has neglected the digitally excluded and question the methodology used and have provided further details of our concerns in the notes. (3) We ask that, at the least, residents be considered as genuine stakeholders and, as such, the council embarks on a full and proper consultation, including writing directly to all residents who overlook the site, if this progresses to a full planning application.

Notes

1. In the census data for 2021, released on 28 June 2022, it was noted that the population of Brighton & Hove had grown by 1.4% over the ten years since the census was previously taken. 14.1% of 277,200 residents were aged 65 years and over and 14% were under 15. The census summary confirmed that there were more people than ever in the older age groups, with 18.6% of the population 65 or older (an increase from 16.4% in 2011) and indeed the census goes as far as to say “The trend for populations ageing has continued”. The data used in the FMG report is presented disingenuously: If the columns on the population profile shown in Table 2 on page 11 of the report were combined they would show that the number of residents within ten minutes of the site aged 60+ is 1,167 (compared to 1,019 aged between the (very unusual) age bracket of 0-24).

2. The FMG report says that the people who will be positively impacted are ‘young people’ and that this ‘responds to consultation’ (which, as explained, did not include our neighbours)… ‘and the needs of young people’. Table 6 (Page 18-20 of the FMG report) specifically identifies residents aged 16-45 as those who can use the pump track, roller rink and skate park; it sets out the proposed facility mix and mentions older adults just once among its list of the population likely to be positively impacted - and that is through the retention of the bowls club and croquet lawn.

3. We have not been directly consulted with at any point and residents are not listed as stakeholders in the FMG report. Many of our neighbours are digitally excluded – i.e. they are not online – and have been reliant on other neighbours to share information with them. We attended the event at the King Alfred Leisure Centre where the council shared their revised plans and was invited to take questionnaires away for neighbours to complete – unfortunately, there was no address on the questionnaires to return them to. As it turned out, the council’s online questionnaire didn’t limit the number of responses we could submit so we ended up responding on behalf of some of my neighbours, and in so doing, we inadvertently highlighted how easy it would be for me, or anyone else, to submit multiple consultation responses (and how easy it would be to demonstrate demand or submit multiple rejections) thus rendering the survey pretty redundant, certainly insofar as it could be considered a reliable^{^[1]} indicator of, well, anything at all.

4. Ms Linton-Crook’s report uses quantitative data from this survey to ‘demonstrate’ demand – and misleadingly places ‘green spaces’ in tenth place on the graph, we assume because it was listed tenth in the options provided (which is a leading way of framing the question). With 52.9% of responses it actually places third.

Joanne Heuston

Kathy & Stephen Ellis

Jeff Lindford & Myra Ross

Jennifer Williams

Ray Smith

Kerrie Guthrie, Laurie Smith, Craig Mayhew

Shirley Siu Po Hunsworth & Nicholas D Hunsworth

(ii) Brighton Skate Space – Kris Ward

The Brighton Skate Roller Skating Community are asking that the council provides a flat, smooth-surfaced outside rink for roller skating use. This will need to incorporate safety measures to protect both skaters and the public.

We ask that this rink will be placed at our proposed location on Brighton Seafront, next to the basketball court. A space which is currently unused.

A skating rink in this location will attract and inspire others to take up the sport, just as all other sporting facilities set out along the seafront has done.

Location for this new rink is important.

Demand for our sport grew considerably during lock down. Roller-skating is a natural socially-distancing sport, hence the growth of the activity during lockdown. This growth has shown no sign of slowing.

It is worth noting that Brighton has a roller-skating history dating back to the 1860’s. There was even a roller-skating rink built on top of the Aquarium in 1876.

The Brighton roller-skating community currently has over 3500 members.

Kris Ward

Asha Kirkby

Grace Sibley

Stuart Grace

Stuart Holt

Jane Truman

Jess Eyles

Nick Brown

Matthew Brown

Alex Chazell

Michelle Kins

Nikki Loy