Brighton residents stand up to Starbucks: Starbucks launches illegally anyway

Protests will be taking place this weekend in the quirky seaside town of Brighton to protest against the opening of yet another Starbucks, despite the company being refused planning permission to trade. Starbucks just moved in and started trading anyway!

Anti-homogenisation campaigners say, "When you think of Brighton, what springs to mind: the Pavilion, the Palace Pier, the Lanes? Visitors to our lovely city seek out our famous independent businesses; the locally owned restaurants, cafes and unique boutiques, which make our city such a great place to live and desirable destination to visit.

St James Street in Kemp Town plays an important role in our city with a collection of popular and renowned coffee bars, restaurants, shops and pubs as well as an annual carnival and a genuine ‘village’ feeling with a strong sense of community.

While the area isn’t perfect and has its problems (drug use, homelessness and occasional alcohol-fuelled violence) the solution to those issues lies in the Council and the community working together to resolve them, not in bland gentrification. If you look at the areas of Brighton where we have most alcohol-related issues, you’ll find most of them are close to large supermarkets (London Road) or big chain pubs (West Street).

Some claim that because St James Street already has some chain stores that one more won’t make a difference. Well, Western Road, at one point, was full of locally owned businesses all putting money back into the local community. Slowly, the chain supermarkets, cafes and stores took over, raising rents and making it virtually impossible for anyone other than more chains to open. We mustn’t let that happen on St James Street.

Starbucks have been refused planning permission by the Council. However, they have decided to open and start trading anyway, exploiting the lax enforcement policy of the Council when it comes to large companies with big pockets. Although according to some of the local independent businesses, it does seem to be one rule for Starbucks and another for the rest of us.

The principal legal issue is that yet another coffee shop on St James Street would be against the Local Plan, which explicitly says that the area needs to have a predominance of A1 stores ie retail rather than A3 which are cafes and restaurants.

Nearly five hundred letters of objection to their application were sent to the Planning Department, and a Facebook group called ‘Stop Starbucks Opening on St James Street’ now has over 1,700 members including local residents and business owners, all joined in the effort to prevent Starbucks’ invasion of our neighbourhood.

For those that just have to have a ‘Frappucino’ we already have six branches of the chain in Brighton & Hove. This is not about denying consumers’ choice, but about protecting our high streets and not losing that which makes our lovely city unique. The council have spoken and so have the local community. Starbucks should listen."

Join the Facebook group, tell all your friends or, even better, turn up for the protest on St James' Street, Brighton, BN2 on Saturday at 11am.

Will the protestors' campaign have any effect, if Starbucks have just been able to sweep in unhindered up to now? Will Brighton be a lesser city if chain businesses take over from local companies? Are we all sick of the anti-Starbucks brigade, or are we sick of Starbucks itself?