Plans for 42 new council homes in Victoria Road, Portslade and four in Frederick Street in the North Laine have been given the go ahead.
The Victoria Road development will be a mix of one, two and three-bedroom flats on the site of a former housing office and neighbouring bowls club behind Portslade Town Hall.
Plans for the homes were approved by the planning committee on 22 April and an update was agreed at the housing committee on 29 April. Building work is due to start early next year.
Local residents were involved in consultation on the design of the scheme, which includes four wheelchair accessible properties and a communal garden.
Other features will include a ground source heat pump and solar panels, to reduce carbon emissions, and planted ‘living’ walls which will be watered with recycled rainwater.
Improvements will also be made to the area around Portslade Town Hall.
A new bowling green will also be provided in nearby Victoria Recreation Ground for Portslade Bowls Club, along with a new sports pavilion for the bowls club and local football clubs.
Work on the sports facilities, which were agreed at the end of last year, is expected to get underway later this year, once we are through the current period in which it is challenging to start a new construction project due to COVID-19.
The flats are part of the council’s New Homes for Neighbourhoods building programme which has seen 211 new council homes built across the city since 2015.
In addition, proposals for four council flats in Frederick Street, in the North Laine were also approved recently. The homes will be two-bedroom and studio flats and built on a small site previously used for parking. Work is due to start later this year.
Councillor Gill Williams, Chair of the Housing Committee, said: “Tackling the city’s housing crisis and providing more homes is a top priority. Every one of these flats will make a real difference to the people who move into them.
“We’re making good use of council-owned sites, like these, to build extra homes wherever we can.
“We’re also committed to cutting carbon emissions, as part of action on climate change, and the Portslade development will be the first new-build council housing scheme in the city to have heat pumped from underground.”
Councillor David Gibson, the opposition lead for housing, said: “Last year, we added 77 council homes, more than twice the number lost under the right to buy.
“This is thanks to our ambitious joint plan with the Labour administration to build hundreds of new council homes by 2023 and this year we are aiming to add more than five times those lost under the right to buy.
“The Victoria Road scheme provides a welcome boost towards these targets.
“As well as aiming for a step change of additional council provision, we are looking for a step change in the sustainability of the new homes as we pursue another joint goal - of a carbon neutral city by 2030.
“These homes will achieve the highest eco standards yet. By making new buildings really sustainable at the outset, we will save costs later on for both tenants and the council, so all new council schemes will aim for the highest standards of sustainability affordable.”
Twelve council flats in Buckley Close, Hangleton, are nearing completion and 30 more flats are currently being built in Selsfield Drive, Brighton.
A range of other developments have been completed and more are in the pipeline under our New Homes for Neighbourhoods building programme.
You can seem more details of the Victoria Road proposals in the planning committee report (item 119A) and housing committee report (item 76).
