Hove Civic Society

May 2017 newsletter

Chairman’s letter

Dear Members,

In my last letter I explained that a small group of your committee was going to look at how a local society like ours could work effectively to mitigate some of the impacts of public sector cuts. We are particularly worried about the continued cuts to environmental and neighbour- hood services.

It is not only Brighton and Hove City that is affected. The Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) states that spending on local services such as bin collections, parks, roads and libraries has fallen by £3.1bn between 2010/11 and 2015/16. It seems there is a disproportionate reduction of such services – spending on neighbourhood services fell by 13% while spending on social services in contrast increased during that period by £2.2bn.

The report makes a clear connection with local prosperity and states ‘there is an urgent need for local councils and government to recognise that neighbour- hood services are a driver for local prosperity’. We saw complaints by the tourist industry about the state of the local environment during last winter, which of course is of great concern to us all as visitor attraction is one of the key economic drivers of the city. Our concern is that such complaints will not get fewer, not least as we haven’t seen the last of the cuts yet with this year’s £25m cuts to be followed by £15m next year and £11m the year after.

Our Forum on the 27th April made this our subject of the year. Under the title: Improving our Townscape – for a better environment for Hove, we explored what we as a society could do. We had an excellent array of ideas presented to us by Nick Lomax and James Farrell and you will find a brief summary of the event later in the newsletter, as well as a summary of the ideas we have come up with. We’d welcome your comments, ideas and participation on this journey.

Matters have been fairly quiet on the development front during the last couple of months. We have continued to support the proposed development by Matsim in Conway Street (Hove Gardens) and hope that it will go to planning committee soon with a positive recommendation.

The consultation response on this development has been astounding in that it has also attracted significant support from the Hove Station Neighbourhood Forum, Regency Society and the Conservation Advisory Group, with only 10 objections, against the 4000 objections to Anston House, which received planning permission late last year.

The new proposal for the Sackville Hotel site is a great improvement to the previous tower proposals and we are happy to support this. The Toads Hole Valley draft brief is out for consultation and you will find a summary of our comments later on in the newsletter.

As far as Hove Plinth is concerned, for which funding is now secured, we have had a borehole survey carried out during the Spring. The results suggest that there are no obstacles to building the plinth. We are now embarking on the fundraising for the first sculpture and Jonathan Wright, the artist, will facilitate a number of workshops to help us decide on the eight items to put on the sculpture. I am delighted that we have got this far and look forward to the inauguration of the sculpture. More later on in the newsletter.

Finally an update on our planned programme of Street Trees in Portland Road. We will be planting 14 disease resistant elms in total and are currently engaged in talking to local traders with a view that they adopt the trees to give them the necessary TLC during their first years. This has worked successfully with all our street tree planting in residential streets and I believe such commitment is critical if we are going to help improve our local environment.

With best wishes

Helmut Lusser

Brighton & Hove traffic-free during the Brighton Marathon, photo credit Niklas Lusser

Membership subscriptions

This is a call-out to the few remaining members who have not yet paid their 2017 subscription.

Please could you ensure that payment is made within the next fortnight. Fees remain the same as last year with £12 for a single membership and £20 for a couple.

Please visit our website which gives details of where to send your cheque or find details of the HCS account for bank transfers. Follow this link: http://www.hovecivicsociety.org/get-involved

Please note it is still very important to fill in the accompanying form at the time of paying so that we have up to date details for you including your most recent email address for correspondence.

Helen Phillips Membership Secretary

Subscriptions please!

£12 single

£20 per couple

Improving our Townscape – towards a better environment for Hove

The 2017 Forum was well attended and several members raised important issues about maintaining our public realm, especially in these times of reducing resources and increasing demands. There was a panel of three experts and a respondent from the local authority. Members of the HCS committee who work regularly on environmental issues maintained the focus on what we have already achieved and what we suggest for moving forwards.

As the leading architect of Hove Gardens, the first preferred development proposal in the Hove Station area, Nick Lomax presented the principles underlying the construction of new buildings and the public areas between and around them, all illustrated with slides of the area now and the vision for living and working in the Conway Street area in future.

Nick spoke of local consultations and Council requirements, and of the compromises to be made about the use of space and resources. For example, the need for ‘affordable housing’ or enlarged public spaces; for small improvements that also follow established regulations, such as children’s play areas, roof-top trees and pedestrian-only areas. Vision can be undermined by other considerations. Nick has worked on inspiring de- velopments across the City and he showed us images of developments that have been restricted: the facades and shapes of some proposed new developments, the continuing traffic along Francis Street by the Open Market, and the lack of trees in Jubilee Square.

LCE architects: Rooftop Plan Hove Gardens

The benefits of integrating vegetation with development was explained and quantified by James Farrell, who co-founded the charity, “Building Green”. His slides began with Brighton’s Madeira terraces, as they were built to include abundant vegetation from as early as 1888, and how recent environmental policy can insist on high levels of cultivating green walls, roofs and gardens within urban development areas.

James’ illustrations included the truly inspiring new buildings and open spaces in the Victoria Station area of London to several of a growing number of green roofs and walls in Brighton and Hove. Innovation can be both led by individuals and directed by public policy. The advantages are increasing diversity of wildlife, improved insulation of buildings, reduction in air pollution, avoidance of surface water and flooding, and increased feelings of wellbeing amongst those who live and work in these environments.

Hove Town Hall in 2050? Copyright Emilio Ambasz

Helmut Lusser, HCS Chairman, drew together our aims and achievements so far, as well as the directions we are working on. He echoed the feelings of many of our mem- bers concerning the need to halt any degradation of our buildings, streets and other public spaces within Hove. His illustrations included our vision, approved in principle by the Council, for improvements along Church Road – Hove Boulevard, and in the area of Hove Town Hall.

He spoke of our well established ways of working with local residents to restore or introduce street tree planting across Hove, and about our Hove Sculpture initiative which is becoming a reality, welcomed by the public, the business community and the local authority. However, Helmut spent time on the new ideas being developed within the Society for reversing some of the blights on our streetscape.

These include lobbying in favour of a fair share of resources for Hove, a new visitor contribution to help maintain the areas they enjoy, car free days or even a ban on chewing gum. We also plan to continue our strategic involvement in partnership with the local authority, businesses and creative industries to share our enthusiasm and work towards shared goals for our public realm.

Nick Hibbert (BHCC) responded to questions from the point of view of the Council’s aims for use of limited revenue resources and competing challenges. He reminded us that capital funding, although scarce, has been sought and awarded to Brighton and Hove. He was positive about continuing to work in partnership with Hove Civic Society and welcomes our involvement.

Clare Tikly Spot the missing trees

LCE Architects: Jubilee Library

HCS Discussion Forum April 2017

HCS Forum 2017: Suggestions by our committee

What can we do to help maintain and improve the environment in Hove?

Lobbying:

1. Lobby for a fair share of resources going into environmental and traffic schemes for the city – the proposed improvements for Church Road, now in the local transport plan, are a good example;

2. Keep an eye on our infrastructure (street furniture, sea- front installations), lobby for maintenance and work with other organisations to secure resources;

3. Challenge the Council to raise funds where possible – we believe the time has come to find ways of introducing a visitor contribution to help deal with the wear and tear on the city fabric that results from millions of visitors.

4. Some minor issues have a cumulative major detrimental impact on the environment. A thorny issue is chewing gum, which makes even our newest street look bad. This needs to be sorted both at manufacturer level and locally – can we become a chewing gum free city?

5. Car engines are very inefficient for the first few miles they drive until the engine warms up. As many of the car based trips in the city are short distance, leaving the car at home for short distances is bound to have a disproportionately large beneficial impact on local air pollution. We believe we all need to reduce the amount of short distance trips we do by car and believe that introducing regular car free days in the city will make us all get used to the idea. We could connect this to city bikes and car share.

Major projects in cooperation with others:

6. We have many attractive areas, but we need to ‘polish the pearls’. In these days of resource constraints we believe we need to work out how communities can help themselves with some pump priming. We are proposing that we experiment in one of the conservation areas with our members and other local residents to see how we can introduce an area wide improvement. We would like to experiment with temporary turf and planters to explore how such areas can be best improved to most peoples’ satisfaction.

7. Following the Town Hall refurbishment to become the city’s prime civic centre we believe that the surroundings including the flanking part of Church Road need a des- perate facelift not least to demonstrate that this is the place from where good environmental policy and practice for the city emanates. We will argue for this as part of the Church Road improvements – we believe it should become our boulevard.

8. As the city grows we need to have long term perspectives on the resulting land use, infrastructure and communications needs. We have argued for and support the city council’s ideas about heat networks, we have supported the Rampion offshore windfarm and we now believe that the city council needs to seriously assess the transport needs for the city for the next 50 years. Cities like Brescia and Bilbao, which are of the same size as Brighton have introduced metros. We believe we will need to start to think in the same way.

Things we can do ourselves with funding support

9. Trees are essential for a healthy city. Our trees in Hove are loved, but elderly, and many of them will need to be replaced in the not too distant future. We believe that

caring for our street tree heritage is as important as caring for our old buildings and have therefore run our Restoring our Victorian Street Tree heritage campaign for several years. We want to develop this and work with other organisations to make sure we do as much as we can to maintain and increase our numbers of street trees in partnership with local residents and businesses.

10. On-street refuse and recycling bins have made life a misery for our seagull population as intended! Unfortunately the visual and physical impact of many of these bin sites has also been detrimental not least in our conservation areas. We would like to explore whether there are ways of improving the setting of these bin sites without impeding the efficiency of collection and intend to call on the creative sector in the city to help us come up with some imaginative ideas.

11. This list would not be complete without a reference to the Hove Plinth and its sculptures, which is the society’s key contribution to a more exciting townscape, making high quality sculpture accessible to all of us working and living in the city.

Planning update from Bob Ryder

At a strategic level, the Society has made formal comments on the Council’s draft planning guidance for development of the Toad’s Hole Valley site. This very large site has been designated for major housing development in the City Plan and should make a vital contribution towards relieving the shortfall of new housing in the city. We have made the following main points:

* A masterplan should be produced and agreed with the Council as a first step, before planning applications are drawn up. The site must not be allowed to develop without a clear overall structure to the plan. The phasing of development must be planned and managed in a coherent way.

* The separation of the top end of the site (the Court Farm site) is unfortunate. As the existing planning permissions for that site have not been implemented yet, there would be real public benefit in pressing the owners for a solution in which the Court Farm development is made consistent with the emerging masterplan.

* Given the strategic importance of the site for the provision of new housing in the city, there is scope to be more ambitious in the number of sustainable homes to be built. The slope of the site is awkward, but imagina- tive design could maximise the use of the valley bottom for taller buildings with heights “stepping down” as the slope rises. It should be possible to design high-quality infrastructure and other community facilities to support a higher density of occupation on the site.

* Creating successful transport links and access is rightly identified as a big challenge, but developers could do with more help about possible approaches to meeting that challenge. In particular, the pressure on existing local roads is such that public opinion will be strongly critical of a scheme that does not have a convincing answer to that challenge.

* The new neighbourhood must feel connected with the existing neighbourhoods in the area. The site is strongly bounded along all three sides of its triangle.

It could easily end up feeling isolated from other communities. The guidance should give more positive steers about ensuring integration and connections with the existing neighbourhoods on its boundaries (Goldstone Valley, West Blatchington and Hangleton).

We also continue to monitor individual planning applications, in order to make representations to the Council on the more significant cases - whether to support, or oppose, or to recommend improvements to the proposed schemes.

A significant recent case, still under planning consider- ation, is a revised application to develop the site of the former Sackville Hotel on Kingsway.

The revised scheme is a higher-quality design than the original proposal and with a style and a scale which should be much more acceptable to local opinion. We have written to the Council in support of this application in principle.

Blue plaque news

Blue plaque - Capt. Zeff

Embassy Court is a high profile block on Brighton sea- front, and a number of quite famous people have lived/ are rumoured to have lived there. You would therefore think that it would have a blue plaque by now, but no.

It was therefore a pleasure to attend the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to Capt. Edward Zeff, MBE, Croix de Guerre, on the 30th March.

The January issue of our Newsletter tells his remarkable story, volunteering as a radio operator for the Special Operations Executive in France. As he was a British Jew, it was especially dangerous for him. He escaped capture in Lyons but was betrayed and arrested as he tried to cross into Spain. Badly tortured in Paris, he held firm and was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Somehow he survived the war and returned to Brighton to live in Embassy Court.

The colourful ceremony included standard bearers from the Royal British Legion, and the Jewish equivalent, a trumpeter from the Salvation Army playing the Last Post and Reveille, and speeches from a number of representatives.

I am in awe of Capt. Zeff’s courage, and his Blue Plaque is thoroughly deserved.

Elaine Evans

Enjoy fantastic festival art in Hove

Brighton & Hove Festival is here again and with it the opportunity to see exciting and inspiring exhibitions in local open houses, studios and gardens. What better way to spend a May weekend than a stroll along the 15 venues of Hove Arts trail sampling the work of over 80 local artists exhibiting painting, sculpture, jewellery, ceramics, prints, drawing, mixed media, photography, glass and textiles, not to mention scrumptious refreshments. It’s a feast for all senses!

Hove Arts stands out as having some of the best venues in the city: In 2015 Dion Salvador Lloyd (4) was chosen by the public as the Best Open House, and in 2016 Flamingo House (7) was a runner up for the same award.

Open houses come in all shapes and sizes. Along the promenade you will find Hove’s smallest venue in a beach hut - Shed on the Beach (13) and further up the delightful miniature garden of City Retreat (8). At the other end of the spectrum is The Claremont (12), which fills a whole hotel with art, and Cameron Contemporary Art (11) offering its full gallery space up to the festival.

The YMCA Downslink Group (9) shows work by local artists and newly emerging talent, with something to suit all tastes and pockets, and all profits raised go directly towards supporting young people into education and employment opportunities.

Studios are great for learning something about how art is produced. You can look behind the scenes at Inkspot Press (2) a functioning studio/workshop for silkscreen, letterpress and etching, and learn about hot wax painting at The Encaustic Workshop (15).

Don’t miss the huge variety of ceramics at 9A Hove Place (14), local artist Tessa Wolfe Murray’s much loved pottery (3), wacky teapots at the Biscuit Studio (6) and intriguing ceramic sculpture at Studio 59 (5).

And it doesn’t stop at visual art: extra events at the lively and well established Wolf at the Door (1) include book signings by Antony Penrose, Neil Jenkins and Ian Williams.

There is something for everyone at Hove Arts! Check out the venues pages on www.hovearts.com for more details, look out for the pink pavement banners and plan some inspiring days exploring the talents of Hove.

Artists Open Houses takes place during the Brighton festival weekends, starting on the 6th/7th May and continuing throughout May (Sat/Sun 13/14, 20/21, and 27/28 and Bank Holiday 29 May). Houses are open 11am-6pm.

Karin Janzon

See next page for the map of Hove Arts Trail.

●BOOK

Hove Arts Trail

Aldrington

Station

1

2 Hove U

Station

HOVE MUSEUM

& ART GALLERY

4

5

ALL SAINTS CHURCH

6

3

SUSSEX

COUNTY

CRICKET

HOVE TOWN HALL

Albert Mews

Wilbury 7 Grove

9 8 10

Palmeira Square

NAMRIK MEWS

14

11 12 NOOK

13

Hove

Brunswick Square

e

15

Arts Council England pledges £16 000 towards first Hove Plinth sculpture

We have just received the fantastic news that Arts Council England will contribute £16k towards the cost of the first sculpture for Hove Plinth, provided that we can raise the additional funds needed.

We started a new crowdfunder campaign on the 4th May and at the time of going to press we already had £26k pledged towards our target of £40k. We are now working hard to get the remaining £14k together so that we can take up this great opportunity.

Any contributions, however large or small, are welcome at this stage. If we succeed with this then we can start building the plinth and commission the sculpture Constellation straight away!

More information and link for donations at: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/constellation.

Meanwhile we have been making some preparations on site. On 16th March seafront promenaders could see lots of activity on the King’s Esplanade as the firm Geo-Environmental bored into the tarmac to check that there were no cavities, shifting sands or old pipes underneath the surface where the plinth is planned to go. Four 4 metre probes were drilled and samples collected and dispatched for further analysis. So far so good - nothing obvious of concern was detected, nor alas, did we strike any gold. We are awaiting the detailed report.

Exploratory boring into the tarmac by Geo- Environmental at the site of Hove Plinth.

Jonathan Wright, the artist behind the inaugural sculpture Constellation is starting to plan for a series of workshops in the summer to collect suggestions for the final sets of Hove icons to be placed on the sculpture.

What makes Hove, Hove? is the question Jonathan will be asking and participants will be invited to propose and make a case for objects and images that represent the past, present or future of Hove. Jonathan plans to hold some of the workshops at the Hove Museum and will in- vite a cross section of Hove people and groups to join in.

If you would like to take part, please email: karin@hovecivicsociety.org.

Jonathan Wright’s Constellation

Hove Stories: Faces in the Crowd

Hove Stories: Faces in the Crowd

Two major public events happen in Grand Avenue every year: the marathon and the Remembrance Day parade. They attract big audiences; and over the past few years I’ve been taking photos not just of the participants but also people in the crowd. Here, the first three are of the marathon, the second three of Remembrance Day. Sometimes a particular face just stands out!

Celia Britton

The front page of our newsletter is made up of images that show some of the late Victorian heritage in Hove.

David Kemp, of DK Architects has created the page. Framed versions are available for sale in different sizes.

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