The planning system, coastal regeneration

Brighton: Regeneration of a major resort

In the 1970s, Brighton Council was one of the first to respond to the threat to British resorts from cheap overseas package holidays to the Mediterranean by successfully diversifying its tourism economy through the opening of Brighton Conference Centre in 1974. At the same time, the council supported the growth of Brighton’s office sector as a base for the financial services industry.

When I arrived in Brighton to take up my new post as a Senior Planning Officer in 1988, the town was booming with a terrific buzz, and sky-high property prices. That boom quickly turned to bust in the late 1980s and early 90s, and by 1992 the city’s unemployment had risen to 15 per cent with rates as high as 30 per cent in some parts of the inner city and outlying council estates. With a large private rented sector, central Brighton became a focus for people living on breadline benefits and with the recession particularly hitting the financial services and retail sectors Brighton quickly resembled a ghost town of empty shops and offices. The closeness of London made it easy for journalists to travel to Brighton and print articles featuring the resort in all its ‘faded glory’.

By 1992, I was working in the newly formed Economic Development Unit. Meetings with local business leaders revealed that the city’s major hotels were advising their guests to avoid Brighton seafront as a dangerous place occupied by drunks, beggars and drug users. Clearly, with the seafront being Brighton’s ‘shop window’, something had to be done. Following meetings with the then South East of England Tourist Board, a small pool of funding was identified to support a Strategic Development Initiative (SDI) to regenerate the seafront.

Consultants were commissioned to take a fresh look at the seafront. Their report found little support for investment in the resort from major multiple players, and recommended that little could be done to regenerate the seafront without first restoring the West Pier – which had been closed since 1976. Unfortunately the council did not own the West Pier, nor did they have the £30 million needed to restore it. Undeterred, the council set up a corporate team with officers from departments across the council led by the Director of Arts and Leisure. This team managed to find a more modest but not insignificant sum of £1 million from a budget that would otherwise have been used simply to maintain the seafront in its then soulless state.

This money was not itself sufficient to regenerate the whole of the seafront, so the project was split up into phases. The first phase took place between the main pier and the main road leading from Brighton station. This stretch, which was fronted by deep arches, had the most opportunity to attract private sector investment. A young in-house landscape architect was recruited to the team who drew up innovative designs for the landscaping of the lower promenade area. This new landscaping was implemented while at the same time marketing the arches for private sector investment. The fact that the council had shown its faith in the seafront by implementing new landscaping proposals meant that local private investors and entrepreneurs placed their own faith in the seafront. A number of exciting enterprises began to prosper on the seafront.

The first phase of the regeneration coincided with a national crackdown on ‘raves’, so people were seeking new legal locations in which to cater for dance music. The seafront represented an ideal location and was given a market edge with the granting of entertainment licences until 5 o’clock in the morning. This meant a great deal of the investment was in nightclubs, extending Brighton’s ‘club scene’ along the seafront. It was also time for the ‘chameleon bar’ concept, and operators were encouraged to develop the arches as bar–restaurants by day, nightclubs by night. This meant that the seafront was just as vibrant by day as it became at night.

Later phases of the SDI successfully sourced funding from the Single Regeneration Budget as Brighton had demonstrated a track record in both project and matched funding delivery during the first phase. These later phases addressed different resort markets, including an artists’ quarter, sports such as basketball and beach volleyball, and more family-orientated areas with children’s play.

Some £14 million of funding was sourced for the regeneration of the West Pier from the Heritage Lottery Fund. However, protracted negotiations with matched funding developers failed to deliver a scheme acceptable to English Heritage before the pier burnt down, and subsequently partly fell down, and the funding was withdrawn. A new proposal for an elevated viewing platform called the i360 by Marks Byfield (the architects behind the London Eye) has now been approved, but this has been delayed by funding difficulties in the current recession. The important point, however, is that the regeneration of the seafront was not allowed to become dependent on restoration of the West Pier which was, and still is, largely outside the control of the council.

Of course, regeneration of Brighton’s seafront did not happen in splendid isolation. It was part of an overall corporate and city-wide regeneration strategy. People visit Brighton as much for its historic core and independent shopping areas as they do for its vibrant seafront. A Town Centre Strategy and Action Plan was drawn up which resulted in the appointment of one of the country’s first Town Centre Managers, replacement of Churchill Square (the city’s ailing 1960s concrete shopping centre) with a new £90 million covered shopping centre, and reinvestment in the independent shopping quarters of the Lanes and the North Laines{AQ: correct spelling?}.

Culture was a key theme in the regeneration of the city, with SRB funding used for redevelopment of the Dome arts complex, and funding towards several other fringe theatre and arts centres. An award-winning new library was developed through an innovative PFI scheme. A ‘Percent for Art’ programme is applied to all new developments across the city and many examples have been showcased on the seafront.

Tourism, culture and the arts provide a buzzing city life attractive to young innovative entrepreneurs in the media sector. Therefore, with further enabling from the council, Brighton town centre also became a location for new media professionals and businesses. Small amounts of public sector funding were used to support the development of a first, and then a second, Brighton Media Centre, while the private sector followed suit in dividing redundant industrial and office spaces into flexible high-tech office suites for budding media and IT professionals.

Brighton was already a major centre for education, with two universities, technical and sixth-form colleges, and a large number of language schools. The council worked proactively with the education sector through the ‘Academic Corridor’ initiative, resulting in one of the first Innovation Centres outside of Cambridge and in the growth of the city’s education businesses. There are some 30,000 students in the city, who add to its vibrancy, supporting pubs, nightclubs, theatres and independent shopping districts, and provide a pool of graduate employment for local businesses. Compared to most university cities, many more students from Brighton’s universities seek to stay in the city after graduation.

The regeneration of Brighton provides important lessons for other resorts. While part of the effort was concentrated on key features of the resort, especially the seafront, this was just a part of a city-wide and cross-sectoral programme. All resorts, big and small, need to try to avoid reliance on one (tourism) business sector alone. However, they can use tourism – and the vibrancy it can bring to a place – to attract other business sectors. The other key lesson was that regeneration was a corporate responsibility. Regeneration was not confined to one small team within a larger department; rather it was led by the Chief Executive and Corporate Management Team with the support of the Leader of the Council with key projects targeted, and achieved through corporate teams working across the council and involving different groups of business leaders from across the city.

So here we are now, during a recession that is reportedly deeper and worse than that of the early 1990s. Yet, I look out of my window and Brighton is still thriving. Sure, businesses are still finding it hard, and there are a few shop vacancies. However, without exception these vacancies have been caused by the closure of national multiple chains, whereas the independent sector has remained more resilient. In this recession, Brighton has been less reliant on the decisions of major national and international companies with most business decisions being undertaken by local entrepreneurs based here in the city. The resort looks well set for a prosperous future.