Former Brighton council offices for sale for flats for £4.5m

An office building vacated by Brighton and Hove City Council is for sale for £4.5 million with planning permission to turn it into 40 flats.

Priory House, at the corner of Bartholomew Square and Little East Street, Brighton, is part of the same building as the Thistle hotel and is linked to Brighton Town Hall.

Baron Estates, of Dyke Road, Brighton, is marketing the six-storey building on a long commercial lease. It has 121 years remaining of the original 149 years until it expires.

It was built in 1987 with green cladding on a reinforced concrete frame and has been empty for just over two years, since October 2011.

The estate agent said: “The building is located in Bartholomew Square off Little East Street, just behind the seafront and forms part of Brighton’s famous Lanes.”

The council granted planning permission for a change of use from offices to homes in December.

The planning permission does not allow the 13 parking spaces that come with the property to be given to future residents. Instead there are planned to be 54 cycle parking spaces.

The six floors have a total area of just over 25,000sq ft (2,300sq m).

The sale is part of a plan or rationalisation programme by the council called Workstyles which is intended to reduce the number of offices and other buildings that it uses.

It reflects the reduced number of staff employed by the council and the increasing use of technology so that fewer people need to be based in offices full time.

Under the same programme the council also intends to sell King’s House, its headquarters building on Hove seafront, to a developer to turn into flats.

A number of the staff there will move to a reconfigured Hove Town Hall.

The part of the programme that included the relocation of almost 290 staff from Priory House was costed at £3.5 million. The rationale given was the need to spend to save.

To read a report about speeding up the Workstyles programme, click here, and to read the original report about the programme, click here.