Brighton & Hove's REGENCY Magazine » Public Spending

Royal Alex Site Update

REGENCY — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:27:38 +0000

Taylor Wimpey has now put forward two new planning applications for the former Royal Alexandra children’s hospital building and site on Dyke Road. One involves complete demolition of all the buildings on the site, to be replaced by a new block of 137 flats, 40% of them affordable, and a large (650 sq.m.) new GP surgery to accommodate a vastly expanded Victoria Road practice when it leaves its current premises. This proposal also includes a large new pharmacy on the site, even though there are long-established pharmacies at Seven Dials, less than five minutes’ walk away. The other proposal involves retaining and converting the Royal Alex building, remodelling the front facade, restoring the original roof line and retaining the 1913s balconies. All the other buildings on the site, regrettably including the listable villa on Dyke Road, would be demolished. This would produce 121 flats, and just under 15 per cent affordable housing, and no GP surgery.

“By submitting two parallel planning applications, Taylor Wimpey is creating a lot of unnecessary confusion,” says Mick Hamer, who chairs the Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association. “If you want to save the Alex you should support the conversion option (BH2010/03379) and object to both the demolition planning application (BH2010/03324) and the associated application for consent to demolish the main building (BH2010/03325).”

The GPs at the Victoria Road surgery have for the last few years claimed that there are no suitable alternative sites for a new surgery. It seems a strange assertion to make – over that time GP surgeries elsewhere in Brighton have successfully relocated to converted premises, for instance a former pub at the bottom of Elm Grove, and a former office block at Preston Park. In our area there are a number of vacant premises which could be converted, including 650 square metres on the ground floor of Crown House, Upper North Street; the former Blockbusters in Western Road; and the ground floor of Princes House, Queens Road. So why is the Primary Care Trust so reluctant to consider alternatives to the Royal Alex? As our editor always says, “It’s not what they’re telling you, it’s what they’re not telling you”.

Taylor Wimpey overpaid for the site, in the belief that they would be able to obtain permission to demolish all the buildings on it. According to the Distinct Valuer the site was worth £5 million for housing in 2007. Taylor Wimpey paid £11.5 million, so the National Health Service pocketed a windfall profit of £6.5 million. The Primary Care Trust has been using a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Medical Centre Developments, to find new premises for the Montpelier Surgery. In November 2008 Medical Centre Developments signed a lease for a surgery on the Royal Alex site. It appears that to help finance this deal they raised money by taking out a mortgage on a medical centre in Birkenhead with the General Practice Finance Corporation (part of Aviva). The money that Medical Centre Developments paid for this lease has been in the hands of Taylor Wimpey’s solicitors for the past two years. So effectively the money that had been earmarked to find new premises for the Montpelier Surgery has been tied up for two years in the Royal Alex. If Taylor Wimpey can’t get planning permission for a surgery on the site, this money will have to be returned to Medical Centre Developments, with interest. Many in the area supported the well-funded ‘Save Our Surgery’ campaign, probably unaware that rather than being ‘given’ directly to the Montpelier Surgery, the Royal Alex surgery space would be placed into the hands of a privately-owned PFI company.

In surveys the public have consistently shown that they are overwhelmingly in favour of retaining and converting the main building. When Taylor Wimpey carried out a public consultation in August, about 80 per cent of comments favoured keeping the main building and only about 10 per cent were willing to sacrifice the main building for a surgery. The officers of the Clifton Montpelier Powis Community Alliance, the local residents’ association, have consistently repudiated these results, even banning residents from speaking about anything other than ‘the desirability of a GP surgery on the site’ at their public meetings, however, they now accept that a scaled down surgery proposal without a pharmacy in the conversion proposal ‘could be the way forward’.

So if all the parties involved would now agree to compromise, then we might be in sight of a conclusion to this saga. Taylor Wimpey’s S.E. Director David Brown has met representatives of the Montpelier & Clifton Hill Association and The Brighton Society to discuss the conversion scheme, which both societies support. Taylor Wimpey’s efforts to improve the conversion scheme and the fact that they’re persisting with it shows that they recognise the degree of public support there is for conversion. The MCHA is, albeit reluctantly, prepared to accept the demolition of the listable Dyke Road villa in order to save the main building. The Victoria Road surgery GPs say they do not need a pharmacy on the site, and they might now be prepared to drop their extravagant expansion plans and accept a smaller surgery in a new building on the site. With compromise from these groups now on the table it remains to be seen if the final player, Brighton and Hove City Council, would agree to trade off some of the affordable flats for a surgery. If they would then it would be possible to find space for the surgery in the conversion proposal. This could be a compromise that keeps almost everyone happy.

MPs Expenses

REGENCY — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:07:34 +0000

The parliamentary body which organises MP’s expenses has released details of the claims made by our three MPs. Cheapest of the bunch was Mike Weatherley, Conservative MP for Hove who claimed £2,450 since May. Next was Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, with £5,176.02, and finally Simon Kirby, Conservative, representing Brighton Kemptown, who claimed £10,149.84.

Conservatives Pick Pavilion Candidate

History Centre To Stay Open

REGENCY — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:02:08 +0000

Many were relived to hear that the council’s plan to close the local History Centre has been cancelled. Good to see that the council are taking note of people’s views in the press and through the petition facility on the council’s website.

The Old Market: Financial History

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:09:12 +0000

Repeatedly over the last decade, The Old Market Arts Centre Trustees, unable or unwilling to service or repay a very large historic debt, have looked beyond its profitable trading position for rescue funding.

At the beginning of this year, in a change of tack, Trustees submitted the first of two planning application attempts which sought to build two large glass penthouses on top of the historic Grade II listed Old Market building in Hove. Approval of this plan would have set a dangerous precedent giving carte blanche to anyone to make unusual changes to listed structures just on the basis of ‘needing the money’. The first application was refused and in September the revised application was also refused. Tellingly, planning committee Member, Cllr Paul Steedman, stated that he was not convinced by the claimed financial need.

In the wake of these refusals, a petition seeking grant support from the council is now being introduced before every event by Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman. He explains that the Old Market does not receive any funding from the council, nor from the Arts Council. He readily admits the Trust covers the cost of its operations, but says it is unable to clear its “historic debt”. An electronic petition (lodged on the council’s website) states that the requests for funding “have been met continually by both organisations stating that although they are supportive of the arts and community use of the building, they cannot support a project with such a capital deficit.”

Superficially it appears to be a reasonable request for some financial assistance – but is it all it seems? Prospective signatories are given the impression that neither the Arts Council nor the council have ever donated a penny. Even Delia Forester, ex-Labour councillor and ex-deputy chair of planning, takes as read this supposed lack of public funding in her letter of support for the two glass penthouses.

It is in fact an ungrateful slur on both organisations. In 1999 The National Lottery (through the Arts Council) donated £1 million to the Old Market Trust – at the time, the largest donation to an arts project in the South East. Furthermore the only significant condition was that there would be a clawback should the Old Market be sold within a 10 year timeframe. Those 10 years expired on 11th March 2009 – around the time the Old Market Trustees registered the planning application for the glass penthouses.

In 1998 the Labour administration provided the Old Market Trust with a loan of £275,000, to be repaid in 10 equal instalments. In 2001 that debt was deferred to 2006. Further funding   came in the form of a £585,000 grant from the  Single Regeneration Partnership, administered through Brighton & Hove City Council.

The Labour-run administration, in which Delia Forester was a key player, went even further in 2004. Council finance officers Catherine Vaughan and Peter Sargent presented a report to councillors recommending that the loan should be converted to a grant. Their reasoning was that should the Old Market Trust become insolvent Brighton and Hove City Council would be unlikely to retrieve the £275,000, and as they had already distributed the money to the Trust it would “have no additional financial impact on the council”. The report concluded that “The council therefore has no financial gain from pursuing repayment of the loan”. Spurious logic, but the report was approved, and the unpaid debt wiped out.

These actions helped to significantly reduce the “historic debt” to just over £1 million. In 2007, local businessman, Jonathan Bigg, entered into an agreement with the Old Market Trust to take 250-year leases on areas within the Old Market building with the intention of sub-letting them as office space. For this he paid the Trust £1 million, a sum he maintains Stephen Neiman and the Trustees assured him would clear their debt. Having given the money, he then learned that the Trust intended to build two glass penthouses above the areas he had just leased. When he discovered that their motivation behind the glass penthouse plan was again to clear this debt, he was told that his £1 million had made no impact on the debt and that the Trust remained in exactly the same position as before. He asks – quite reasonably – “where has the money gone?”

With stories floating around about late payments to staff it seems at least one person is sitting pretty in all this and that is the Old Market’s artistic director, Ms. Caroline Brown. In 2005 Ms. Brown took home £32,500, and in the following year £35,000. In 2007, supposedly at a time of intense financial pressure due to the Old Market debts, her salary rose sharply to £60,535, coupled with expense claims of £17,500. In fact Ms. Brown’s salary makes up a large chunk of total outgoings on salaries. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Ms. Caroline Brown is actually Mrs. Caroline Neiman, the wife of Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman.

It seems a shame that the Old Market could close its doors soon – it is undoubtedly a superb and successful venue marred by the seemingly poor financial decisions of its trustees. We invite readers to form their own conclusions.

The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:02:40 +0000

Just after World War II the bulldozer and developers threat to Brunswick Square and Terrace architecture led to the formation of The Regency Society. Over the years it grew to be the premier Conservation voice in Brighton and Hove, the respectable Club to be seen to be joining & the trusted repository of bequeathed collections, such as the James Gray photographic archive.
Hierarchically, it has reigned over all the others. The Hove Civic Society and The Brighton Society each had their respected status, but even they have been subservient in terms of status to the very Grand and very respected Regency Society. The pecking order then takes in all the other groups like the Kemp Town Society, The Kingscliffe Society and the myriad local area resident & amenity groups and overtly campaigning ones such as my own saveHOVE and the Marina area’s more recently formed Save Brighton.

But the Regency Society was the leader of the pack, attracting serious expertise to its ruling Committee. In recent years this has come to mean attracting expertise with unattractive agendas. Predatory developers, architects and politicians, looking to serve their own interests by standing for and being elected to positions on the ruling Committee, have increased the danger of a diluted or abandoned conservation remit.

How could the members of the Regency Society have allowed people like that to gain major positions of power on their Committee, neutralising the credibility of The Regency Society as a conservation voice! By next AGM it will just be an asset-rich club, protecting and advancing the careers of architects, politicians and developers.

For most Regency Society members (other groups work in a similar fashion), membership has been all about the tea and biscuits, the wine and chamber music in the Royal Pavilion at AGM, the garden party, the lectures, the coach trips and the £60 dinners. There is little interest or involvement with boring old planning.

For the committed conservationist, however, membership has been about protecting heritage, Grades 1 and 2 Listed buildings, the Regency era Brunswick Townscape (mostly listed buildings) and the cultural story of this nation along the thread of time. Architecture is certainly High Art to the Starchitects of our time and for me, these areas of listed buildings merit the term “Artscape”.
“My turn! My turn!” the Horribles shrill, bug-eyed, teeth bared, fame and wealth on their minds. They want these buildings “euthanized” and see ambitions thwarted by their taking up space THEY could be using. “Get off the stage! My turn! My turn!” And the cultural markers that tell the visitor what country they are in, what town, city or village they are in are just so-much “brown field site” to them.

In recent years leading members of the various conservation-agenda groups have “intermarried” so to speak. They have propped up each other’s dwindling memberships by joining each other’s groups. They have aged and died. They have not been replaced with new members possessed of their deep respect, wish to learn and understandings of history and heritage, their educational strengths and grit in defending the riches of heritage this country so proudly shows off to the tourism trade. The dwindling numbers of them desperately prop up each other’s conservation remits and become haunted by the dilution and marginalisation of conservation. Social memberships and the brazen infiltration by predators for whom conservation is optional has bred deep despair. And a lot of empty hand-wringing.

At the time of the Old Market’s February planning application to put 2 glass box penthouses on the roof of the Grade 2 Listed Old Market, the convenor of the Regency Society’s planning group was former Labour councillor, Delia Forester, a woman who used her position on the planning committee on March 23rd, 2007 to provide fulsome support for the Frank Gehry colossus on Hove seafront. She led the majority Labour Party vote which gave it planning permission.

How did someone like that become convenor of the planning group at the Regency Society? A weak constitution helped allow it. The supine, tea & biscuits credulous membership voted her (and others) onto the ruling committee and thence to the planning group, the credibility of the Regency Society being of no concern to them.
How was it right that the Chair of the Regency Society was also an Old Market Trustee? How is it right that the Treasurer of the Regency Society, Stephen Neiman, is also the Old Market Trustee raising this glass boxes planning application? Should he not have resigned from the Regency Society to do that? Entanglements and loyalties so deep that you can barely see the join have meant that the move by the Old Market Trust to put big glass boxes on its Grade 2 Listed roof compromised the Regency Society’s conservation remit. Or did it?

Ahead of the 2009 Regency Society AGM, and using her Brighton University email account instead of Regency Society letterhead , Delia Forester, convenor of the Regency Society planning group, Labour politician & architect, registered fulsome planning consultation support on behalf of the Regency Society. Nervous breakdowns, angst and hysteria ensued when this became known. Loyalty to Stephen Neiman, however, led to old stagers staying their hands and not objecting as they would otherwise have done and then getting in a state about it. Remit vs. Loyalty to a close & valued colleague and mate.

Why did she (with others in commanding positions in The Regency Society) do all this? Why not start their own group? Why destroy the Regency Society’s remit and credibility? How was it even possible to do so? Putting on a military hat, I would say that taking out the leader is the best way to topple the rest. And so it came to pass.
Over at the Hove Civic Society, conflicts of loyalty, angst, rage and shattered alliances tested their commitment to conservation to its limit. One of its two members on the Council’s Conservation Advisory Group resigned over this one application. The Hove Civic prevaricated, vascillated, hung back but finally moved to a position of objection – but with blood on the floor.

This story was repeated all over the shop.

At the Regency Society AGM, regime change led to the new Chairman withdrawing Forester’s Regency Society response to the Old Market application for the two glass penthouses, declaring to the Council that because the Society was divided, there would be no response. No response to an application affecting a listed Regency building in a massively listed Regency townscape. The infiltrators had done their job and taken out the conservation movement’s leader group.

Embarrassed and mortified, torn between hurting Old Market Trustee and applicant, Stephen Neiman, or hurting the listed building, the amenity groups were like chickens trapped in the coop with a fox. Only the 11th hour intervention of the London-based Georgian Group sobered everyone up.

The Old Market is saved from glass boxes for the moment. But now the time for reckoning has come. And it is clear that the Regency Society membership will not make the effort to defend the conservation remit by learning anything other than who will be playing what at the next AGM chamber concert. It is clear too that, unlike the Brighton Society, which allows anyone to be a member, but bars politicians, developers and architects from Committee membership, the Regency Society has failed to write a Constitution which protects itself from destruction of its remit & respectable purpose.

Sussex Police Issue ‘Hoax’ Scam Warnings

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:51:44 +0000

Sussex Police are issuing warnings regarding a parcel delivery scam involving a company called Parcel Delivery Services (that name must have taken a while to come up with). Apparently the scam runs like this: PDS pop a note through your door saying that they tried to deliver a package to you with a number to ring to arrange re-delivery. But – shock, horror – there is no package and you are billed at £15 per minute on the phone line. Now firstly it is not possible to run a £15 per minute phone line and secondly the company’s £1.50 per minute lines were cut off and they were prosecuted and fined five years ago, as PhonepayPlus, the phone-paid services regulator, have been at pains to point out ever since.

This gaffe from PC Plod of Lewes Police comes after last year’s advice from a Brighton PCSO (printed in a less reputable community magazine) warning that hackers could take control of the SIM card in your mobile phone and make calls at your expense by getting you to type in a series of numbers into your phone – an outright hoax which started in America involving AT&T, and which has been circling the planet for the past 15 years. Nice to know that blind faith has overtaken evidence-based enquiry in our county’s police force. Oh, and children aren’t being kidnapped in ASDA car parks by Eastern European couples either – another old favourite.

NHS Whistleblower Wins Award

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:49:05 +0000

Margaret Haywood, who was struck off the Nursing Register after she secretly filmed at the Royal Sussex County Hospital and revealed the appalling practices and treatment of the elderly, has been given an award. Ms. Haywood, whose removal from the register was quashed and replaced with a one year caution, accepted the Patients’ Choice Award at the Nursing Standard Nurse of the Year Awards. Good for her – we need more whistleblowers around and about the city (any council employees – feel free to call!)

Council Tax Set To Be Lowest In Sussex

REGENCY — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:24:47 +0000

Council Tax rises across Sussex are set to be the lowest ever, with rises only up to 3%. Conservative-led Brighton and Hove City Council are aiming for 2.5% in their budget. Councillor Jan Young, the cabinet member for finance said “Last year was the lowest ever rise and we hope to beat that this year. Residents are already paying through the nose with everything else so if we can help reduce the burden then we will.”

Brighton & Hove’s  New Broom?

REGENCY — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:35:07 +0000

This month marks the arrival of John Barradell, the new chief executive officer of Brighton and Hove. Mr Barradell was previously the deputy chief executive of Westminster City Council, which boasts the second lowest council tax in the entire country, and has an annual turnover of £1 billion. Whilst at Westminster he led organisational restructuring programmes designed to cut bureaucracy and focus on essential front-line services, and sought to restore the public’s confidence in both the police service and the council. He also worked in formulating the council’s response to the 7/7 attacks on the capital, as well as ensuring public safety after the mysterious poisoning of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Barradell’s appointment was unanimously supported by a cross-party committee of councillors. With this impressive background you may think that Mr Barradell has some very definite views about how our city should move in the future. It seems not: he was very firm about his belief that he was there to implement the decisions of the city’s elected representatives, not to pursue his own agenda. One thing that has emerged from the meeting from council leader Mary Mears was the desire to improve the Queen’s Road section of the city being, as it is, a “gateway” into our city from the train station. “At present when you walk out of the station you really don’t see the best of Brighton and Hove”, Mr Barradell observed.

The need for family homes was also discussed, as at present the numerous conversions of family sized properties into multiple flats are driving many families out of the city to places such as Newhaven and Peacehaven.
Mr Barradell does seem to have been somewhat thrown in at the deep end, right into the middle of union arguments over pay cuts for CityClean workers and a government inquiry into a major development on the Marina, housing issues, and general problems associated with the credit crunch, but his background and demeanour indicate he is a man who should weather these problems with relative ease.

Letters: Public Sector Workers

REGENCY — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:04:21 +0000

Molly of Arundel Terrace wonders about the calibre of people running CityClean (Letters, Issue 12). I can tell you this much, headed by the ghastly Gillian Marston, with their perks and pensions sewn up a treat, these people are not in touch with the real world. Certainly wouldn’t have got through the door of the major private companies where I used to work at senior level.

If the persistent rumour that jobs in the public sector are at risk, all I can say is “bring it on”.

I wrote a personal letter to Gillian Marston on 30th March this year after asking for help and advice from Ian Denyer, the senior highways enforcement officer, when I met him at a recent Neighbourhood Action Group. Needless to say I never even had the courtesy of a reply, which I now understand is par for the course in her case.
Quite frankly I find the incompetence and arrogance of some of the members of this council completely unbelievable since I returned to Brighton 26 years ago, and a direct insult to the “official” figure of 2.4 million who are now without work in this country.

In conclusion we can only hope that those public servants who are unashamedly on the gravy train may soon join their ranks.

Gilly Armstrong
 York Road