Councillor Calls For Permanent Ice Rink In Brighton & Hove

A councillor is pushing for an ice rink to go on a scrappy-looking site on Hove seafront which currently serves as the roof for a disused and derelict bowling alley.

Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh hopes to attract support for the plan, which could generate cash for the council, at a meeting next week.

The rink would be built and run by a private company in a five-year deal that has echoes of the Royal Pavilion ice rink at Christmas and the temporary Brighton Wheel.

She plans to ask colleagues at a full meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council to “do everything they can” to bring a privately operated ice rink to the area.

And the site that she has in mind sits between the King Alfred Leisure Centre and the “Kingsway to the Sea” stretch of Hove seafront where a £13 million revamp is planned.

Councillor Fishleigh is asking for support in a motion just weeks after she quizzed the Green council leader Phélim Mac Cafferty about the idea at another town hall meeting.

She said that in Bristol, a new rink run by Planet Ice attracted 700 people a day, but the operator had “not being given any encouragement” to come to Brighton and Hove.

Councillor Fishleigh said:

“No one is asking the council to build an ice rink so there is no need for officers who aren’t experts in the business models of ice rinks to come up with excuses about why residents can’t have one.

“The nearest ice rinks are in Guildford, Streatham and Gosport. Why are officers treating an ice rink as a local sporting facility like a swimming pool or tennis courts rather than a tourism attraction and destination venue that has a much wider target audience and catchment area?”

Councillor Mac Cafferty had concerns about the financial viability of an ice rink, adding that it would cost at least £10 million and have a “high energy footprint”.

He said that this was “at odds with the council’s priorities around the climate agenda” although there were no figures for how many people travel how far by what means of transport to ice rinks elsewhere.

Councillor Mac Cafferty said:

“If you don’t have a funder for an ice rink, you face similar challenges you would and have with a swimming pool.

“There’s a viability gap because an ice rink won’t pay for itself. Then you need to talk about how you bridge that viability gap.

“As with the King Alfred, this is why you’ve always had really extensive housing elements that allow you to pay or subsidise for the element of the swimming pool with things that will have a greater residual value.”

Councillor Fishleigh quoted the council’s Sports Investment Plan which said that an ice rink required 30 per cent of the population to be under 24 to be viable.

This was the case, she said. The first results of the census last year indicated that under 24s accounted for just over 30 per cent of the population in Brighton and Hove.

Independent councillor Peter Atkinson is expected to support Councillor Fishleigh at next week’s council meeting. He said that he used to go to the old ice rink in West Street, Brighton.

Councillor Atkinson said:

“I remember the days of Brighton Tigers and the ice rink at the bottom of West Street.

“It was an incredibly popular venue for all ages – fun and great exercise. I really hope we can bring an ice rink back to Brighton and Hove.”

The West Street rink, home of the Brighton Tigers ice hockey team, closed in 1965, and its replacement on the corner of King’s Road closed in 1972.

Another rink, in Queen Square, closed in 2003. In 2009, under the Conservatives, the council agreed to sell the Queen Square site on a 150-year lease. It is now a hotel.

Campaigners have battled for a new ice rink in Brighton and Hove for years, with some joining Planet Ice to meet Green councillor Martin Osborne and a senior council official, Donna Chisholm, in April to discuss the potential of a year-round rink.

Last July, ice rink campaigner Emma Andrews asked the council’s Tourism, Equalities, Communities and Culture Committee to consider a temporary rink on an unused area west of the King Alfred.

But, she said, council officers disagreed with the term “unused area” because the site was the “roof” of the vacant and ageing former bowling alley.