1 September 2026
Brighton & Hove’s housing shortage is once again at the centre of a planning debate, as proposals for new homes in Hove raise the familiar question facing the city: how many new homes can Brighton build without making its housing crisis even more difficult for local people?
The issue is particularly sensitive in a city where house prices and rents remain beyond the reach of many residents, while available development land is scarce and planning applications frequently face competing demands over density, design, transport and affordability.
The proposed development at Kingsthorpe Road is therefore significant not simply because of the number of homes involved, but because it illustrates the increasingly difficult economics of building in Brighton & Hove.
The council’s planning framework has long sought to secure affordable housing contributions from developments, while balancing the viability of individual schemes. Earlier planning records for the Kingsthorpe Road area demonstrate how issues including density, affordable housing, design and the relationship between new development and neighbouring properties have been central to planning decisions.
That tension has become harder rather than easier.
Developers face rising construction costs, expensive land and higher financing costs. Councillors, meanwhile, face intense pressure to increase the supply of homes — particularly genuinely affordable homes — while residents are increasingly concerned about density, parking, infrastructure and the impact of new buildings on established neighbourhoods.
That is the central contradiction in Brighton’s housing market.
The city desperately needs more homes, but simply approving more expensive private flats does not necessarily solve the affordability problem.
The economics of affordable housing are particularly difficult. A developer may argue that a scheme cannot support a large proportion of discounted homes without becoming financially unviable. Councils, however, have to consider the wider social cost of a city where younger residents, families and lower-paid workers struggle to remain in the communities where they live.
The council’s own planning documents show that affordable housing is embedded within the wider policy framework governing development in Brighton & Hove.
That makes every major residential proposal a test of what the city actually means when it talks about solving the housing crisis.
The argument should not be reduced to development versus no development. Brighton needs development. The more important question is what kind of development it needs.
If new schemes predominantly produce homes that are affordable only to households already relatively well off, the number of properties may increase without materially improving housing security for the people most affected by the crisis.
Conversely, if planning requirements make schemes financially impossible to build, the city risks producing too few homes and pushing prices even higher.
The answer is therefore likely to require more than individual planning decisions. Brighton needs a much larger pipeline of genuinely affordable housing, more imaginative use of public land, greater emphasis on social and council housing, and a planning system capable of demanding value from developers without making development uneconomic.
The Kingsthorpe Road debate matters because it sits directly inside that bigger argument.
Brighton does not have a shortage of planning applications. It has a shortage of homes that ordinary Brighton residents can realistically afford.
That is the standard against which every new residential scheme should ultimately be judged.
