Tenants move into nine new council flats on Hollingbury's old library site

The first tenants will move into nine new council flats at Carden Hill in Hollingbury later this month. The block stands on the site of the old Hollingbury Library, and the flats are let at social rent to people on the city’s housing register.

There are one- and two-bedroom flats in a building of three and four storeys. Each has an air source heat pump for heating and hot water, energy-efficient glazing and its own outdoor space. Residents also share a roof garden, which the 2025 plans showed with room for raised beds to grow fruit and vegetables. There is cycle storage, and buses stop right outside.

Councillor Gill Williams, the cabinet member for housing, said: “This is a lovely building and I was struck by the quality of the build. Each flat has an air source heat pump for underfloor heating and they’re really nicely finished.” She thanked the contractor, Trinity Homes.

The building has had a few lives. The brewer Whitbread built it as a pub, The County Oak, which opened in 1950. The pub moved to a neighbouring site in 1961, and the building became Hollingbury Library in 1962. The library moved out in 2017. The empty building was contaminated with asbestos and beyond restoring, so the council knocked it down.

Planners approved the scheme in March 2024, after residents were consulted on the designs in August 2023. Building started in January 2025. The council’s project page had given September 2026 as the expected finish, so the flats are a couple of months behind that.

Just before work began, Brighton and Hove News⁶ reported that the Carden Hill flats and three council houses planned for nearby Rotherfield Crescent were expected to cost at least £4 million between them.

The flats are the latest finished scheme in New Homes for Neighbourhoods, the Labour-run council’s programme for building council housing on land it already owns. More than 250 homes had been built through it since 2013, the council said in January 2025. Other schemes under way include 222 council homes and a community hub in Moulsecoomb, and two developments in Portslade are about to begin.

Homes like these are let through Homemove, the city’s choice-based lettings system. To bid, you first need to join the housing register and get a decision letter saying your application has been successful.