Summary of community Submission

Why Brighton College’s latest expansion plans must be REJECTED 

Summary from the local community

As members of the local community in Kemptown and Queen’s Park wards, we have examined carefully this planning application in terms of compliance with planning policies, material planning considerations and the public interest.   

The findings are detailed in a 15-page document titled: Why Brighton College’s latest expansion plans must be REJECTED.  This is a summary of that paper.

The application in a nutshell

Planning Application BH2025/00264 is an application from a large private school (Brighton College) for the following changes to land use in East Brighton:

• Demolition of buildings at its current Prep school at 2 Walpole Road

• Construction of new boarding houses at 2 Walpole Road for at least 150 boarding pupils (actual number unspecified).

• Construction of a large (1477 sqm) teaching block at St Mary’s Hall on Eastern Road, close to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

It aims to increase the capacity of the school to accommodate more boarding pupils, enhance the already “exceptional facilities” for Brighton College’s pupils and enable further expansion of Brighton College’s pupil population in the Kemptown and Queen’s Park wards of the City.

Compliance with planning policies

Most of the relevant national and local planning policies are contained in 4 documents: the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), City Plan Part 1 (2016) and City Plan Part 2 (2022) and City Plan 2041 which completed one stage of public consultation on 20 January 2025. 

These documents contain many planning policies.  Planning applications should be compliant with all national and local planning policies.

The applicant has ignored most of the other planning policies in these documents except one which supports expansion of school places in our city, dating from a time when there was a shortage of school places. There are now too many school places in Brighton and Hove and our Council is trying to reduce the number. 

This application may be compliant with a single loosely-worded sentence in CPP2 (2022) but it is not compliant with the NPPF (2024) which supports provision of sufficient school places in a locality but not an over-supply. There is no support for this policy in City Plan 2041 which completed its first stage of public approval on 20 January 2025.  It is not compliant with other planning policies in these documents such as the development of balanced communities, community cohesion and reducing inequality.

And it is not compatible with decisions by our Council to achieve a reduction in the number of school places in Brighton and Hove which has led to the closure of primary schools in our city and reduction in school places across Brighton and Hove.

Material planning considerations

The material planning considerations published by the Royal Town Planning Institute provide numerous grounds for refusing this application, including deficiencies in the pre-application planning consultation, incompatibility with previous planning decisions and planning appeal decisions, noise disturbance and damage to amenity, heritage issues and loss of green space in our city.

The public interest

So-called ‘material planning considerations’ are material to planning applications because they affect public interest.  The public interest requires that the public benefits should outweigh the harm to the local community and to Brighton and Hove more widely. 

The application claims that a range of public benefits would flow from its proposed developments. But careful inspection of the alleged public benefits reveals that each one is overstated, accompanied by countervailing public harms, or illusory or, at best, unsubstantiated.  

By contrast, in none of the many documents that comprise this application does the applicant reveal any of the public harms that would flow from approval of this planning application.  These public harms are real and substantial, including:

1. Adverse effect on the availability and cost of housing in Brighton and Hove

2. Adverse effect on the viability of other schools in Brighton and Hove

3. It would undermine the residential character of the area

4. Adverse effects of possible use of the proposed buildings during vacations 

5. Adverse impact on the living conditions and quality of life of nearby residents

6. It would create an unbalanced community

7. Adverse impact on community cohesion

8. More noise

9. Loss of green space in our city

10. More highway problems, including road congestion, parking, vehicular access and highway safety

11. It would increase inequality in our city

It would also have an adverse impact on the credibility of the Council, Planning Committee and Planning Department if the Planning Committee grants permission to this planning application as it would increase the number of school places in the city at the same time as our Council is trying to cope with the ‘nightmare situation’ (Sankey, Argus, 19 Dec. 2023) of too many school places by closing schools and reducing school places in the rest of the schools in Brighton and Hove where most children are educated.

If the ‘bottom line’ for any planning application is that the public benefits should outweigh the public harms, then this planning application (BH2025/00264) should be rejected.

This summary has focused on three issues: 

• the principle of development, 

• material planning considerations (from the RTPI) 

• and the public interest.  

There are, of course, other relevant issues in deciding this case.  For example, all six of the local councillors for Kemptown, Queen’s Park and Whitehawk, the three wards most directly affected by this application, are opposed to the application and our MP has also expressed his concern. These are our elected representatives, and their opposition signifies that the developments proposed in this application are contrary to the will of the people who comprise the local communities in the Kemptown and Queen’s Park wards.  

This is a weak application that is flawed in many ways.  We trust the Council to reject it.