Brighton College Quad

Brighton College has been accused of playing the planning system by an anonymous accuser who appears to be a teacher at the school, Brighton and Hove News has reported.

The school is proposing wants to build a new teaching block and turn a prep school building into a boarding house.

The school submitted a proposal to the council and received around 300 comments about the application.

One of the comments alleged that staff at the school were asked by the headmaster to send in positive comments and to obfuscate who they are.

A commenter, whose details were redacted wrote: “As a teacher at Brighton College I must warn everyone to take these positive comments with a pinch of salt.

“All teaching staff were requested to write positive comments in support of this application.

“We were explicitly told by the headmaster [to] start your comment with ‘As a local resident…’ or ‘As someone who works in Kemptown…’ and given an explicit list of positive comments to write so all comments with that as the introduction can be easily identified to be due to staff coercion.

“What I don’t think has been made clear to the public is that, for the next two years, prep school pupils would be moving to the main college campus while the new prep school is constructed.

“All of these will be day pupils which will massively increase traffic levels by the college due to parent daily drop-offs and pick-ups.

“As staff turnover is so high at the college, with many staff leaving after one or two years, it is unlikely that many of these comments would be seen to be from ‘permanent residents’.”

Brighton College has been asked by Independent School Management to comment.

The College is a fee-charging, co-educational, boarding and day public school for boys and girls aged three to 18 in Brighton and Hove.