New initiatives unveiled to help tackle housing crisis in Brighton & Hove

Extra care homes for older people, the involvement of local housing co-ops and a design competition for architects feature in plans to build 100 new council homes in Brighton and Hove. Some of the homes will be built to the super-insulated Passivhaus design.

The new homes will be the Phase 1 of longer-term plans to build 500 new council homes on an archipelago of small sites scattered on council estates across the city.

Work starts soon on the first 45 homes in Phase 1 – a scheme of extra-care flats for older people on the site of outdated bedsits in Albion Street, and the Guinness Partnership has been awarded the contract to build 27 new council homes on four small sites:

Flint Close (Portslade)
Foredown Road (Portslade)
Harmsworth Crescent, Hangleton
Kensington Street Brighton

When completed the homes will be owned and managed by the council.

The design competition will focus on small and difficult sites that will yield 7 new homes, some of them to Passivhaus standards. It is planned to hand some of these homes on to local housing co-ops to manage.

At Manor Place, Whitehawk, 17 new homes will be built, most of them on the site of a former housing office. 4 more homes are planned in the back garden of a large villa recently converted in 16 flat by Brighton and Hove Seaside Community Homes.

‘Every scrap of available land must be used if we are to meet the housing needs of the city,’ said Councillor Bill Randall, Chair of the Housing Committee. ‘We are taking the opportunity to pilot the partnership with co-ops and the Passivhaus design in Phase 1, with a view to both initiatives playing a greater role in the next phase, which will include the redevelopment of the housing office site in Selsfield Drive. We also hope to involve self-builders in future phases as part of our endeavour to explore every avenue to provide homes affordable to people living on low incomes.’