Newhaven affordable housing planned for former police and fire stations

In 2016 Lewes District Council, Sussex Police and East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service moved into a shared office at Saxon House and vacated their Newhaven facilities.

The police station in South Road has been empty ever since, while the fire station site in Newhaven has only had temporary uses.

Both organisations are now willing to sell their sites to LDC so they can be redeveloped to provide new council homes.

Proposals are due to be discussed by cabinet members on Monday (February 10).

Detailed scheme designs are yet to be commenced, but the aspiration is to build 15-25 flats on the former police station site, and deliver seven three-bedroom houses on the former fire station land.

The council says it wants to use a fabric-first approach to sustainable homes with low carbon energy usage and no gas heating, water saving and collection features and using modern methods of construction to bring about accelerated delivery.

Once both sites are acquired the project would move on to the design stage with planning permission sought and then costed tenders would be sought for the works.

According to an officers’ report: “The reason for the recommendations is to maximise the council’s ability to provide affordable housing within the district, partly through the full utilisation of receipts received from council homes sold under the Right to Buy and LDC are currently applying to Homes England for infrastructure funding to support the development of these two sites.”

The report added: “The expected outcome of this report’s recommendations will be that LDC will be able to design, gain planning consent and present a fully costed development plan back to cabinet. There are not currently any fixed timescales for delivery of this outcome, however it is expected that this work will be completed within nine months.”