About three years ago South Bank Estates (the landlords of Brighton Suare) applied to replace the ancient, rusting and dangerous Crittal casement windows and two rotten wooden porches here with uPVC ones. These fittings are original and over 40 years old now. Because the window frames are so old and are becoming structurally unsound, there have been incidents of glass cracking and falling into public areas.

The decision? I’ll let you guess… Remaining in-keeping with the style of the area is clearly more important to our council than basic safety (not to mention the amount of heating needlessly required to keep these flats warm in the winter months).

Recently, one of the porches was replaced (they had no option because water was leaking through into the shop below). It looks great – and is safe. Ours is the other porch, still rotten and unsafe, with a full length diagonal crack across the side window pane. Another planning application has recently been submitted – we’re not holding our breath. We suspect that someone will actually have to be injured or die before a sensible decision is taken.

You can view the planning application on the council website’s planning register page (when the page is working – it’s written in ColdFusion and falls over with monotonous regularity).

We understand the wish to remain in-keeping with the style of the area, but some considerations (safety and energy efficiency) must override these wishes in a sensible planning decision process.