Falmer Stadium

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Falmer Stadium (code name)
Location	Falmer, England
Opened	{{{opened}}}
Owner
Construction cost	GBP40million
Tenants
Brighton & Hove Albion FC
Capacity
22,000 All seated (possibly expandable to 30,000 and capacity will increase for concerts)

Falmer Stadium is the codename of the community football stadium in eastern Brighton, near the village of Falmer and the council estate of Moulsecoomb, East Sussex, England. It is to be funded by Brighton and Hove Albion F.C. The stadium is currently planned to be a 22,000 all-seater stadium, however this capacity could increase.

The stadium site will occupy part of the Falmer campus of the University of Brighton and an adjacent vacant field owned by the city of Brighton and Hove. The university has received planning approval for a substantial rebuilding of the campus; the stadium would replace several outdated campus buildings. Albion intend to make a substantial contribution to the university's building fund in exchange for the campus land. Large_view_from_end.jpg Whilst planning permission was given by the unitary authority for the area, Brighton and Hove City Council, the Lewes District Council has fought stadium plans extensively. Although the stadium itself will lie completely within Brighton and Hove, the vacant field straddles the boundary with Lewes (despite being owned by Brighton and Hove), and a dedicated bus parking facility planned for the stadium will be on the Lewes side.

To complicate matters further, both the vacant field and the entire Falmer campus are included in the South Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Because of this designation, the stadium plans were subject to a separate planning inquiry by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

In order to minimise land uptake and encourage use of public transport, the plan envisions a heavily policed no-parking zone around the stadium on matchdays, whilst including a free local public transport voucher in the price of all match tickets. (This procedure is now used at Albion's current ground at Withdean.) Several existing park-and-ride lots will be employed on matchdays, and the stadium site is adjacent to the Falmer railway station.

Four years after the original plans were put forward by The Seagulls, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, approved the plans on October 28, 2005. The stadium is planned to open in time for the 2008/09 English football season. However, Lewes District Council immediately mounted a new legal challenge to the stadium plan, which has yet to be resolved. In April 2006, Prescott admitted that he had made his "yes" decision based on the misconception that only a small part of the stadium site lay on the Lewes side, and withdrew his approval. Prescott will now conduct a new planning inquiry; the Lewes legal challenge will continue because it gave several other reasons why the stadium should not be built at the proposed site.[1]