Is Brighton in East or West Sussex?

If you ask Google Maps, Brighton is in West Sussex, in fact it is the only place indicated to be in that county, and yet according to the Post Office (and most other agencies) Brighton is in East Sussex. Strangely, if you take a look at the UK Ordnance Survey's website, and zoom in on Brighton you will find it somewhere in East Sussex on its page map despite being located nearer to Kent than West Sussex.

Confused yet? It gets better, Mad About Brighton (madaboutbrighton.co.uk). If you enter a postcode for an address within Brighton into the UK Postcode Address Finder , and click 'Show me the map', it will label the town as being part of West Sussex. If you add in surrounding towns such as Hove or Worthing into. Every year we have the debate ‘Is Brighton in East or West Sussex?’, and it was this question I was set on answering. It doesn’t just affect me when speaking to residents of Brighton; it also gives me grief when speaking to people in neighbouring towns as I often need to inform them that I am not from London.

So which is it?  To answer this tricky question we made a table with all the relevant information. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion. The results were a bit surprising for us and thought they were a sort of interesting knowledge to have!. This may cause some confusion as to whether Brighton and Hove is in West or East Sussex, with the answer being it’s actually neither. The city of Brighton and Hove is an amalgamation of the towns of Brighton and Hove which makes up the whole urban area currently referred to as Brighton & Hove.

The difference in administrative term is that both old towns are separate areas within a county, but the city as a unitary authority is not. I'm originally from the USA, and there it was always assumed that East and West were opposite sides of a state. In the UK, I've learned East and West refer to different counties, yet some still refer to Brighton as being in East Sussex. In fact, there is also confusion over whether Brighton is technically in England or due to a loophole on the border, technically part of England and Wales - or vice versa.

The city of Brighton is the most easterly city in both West Sussex and Sussex. But that doesn’t answer our question, where does Brighton officially stand? Is Brighton in East or West Sussex? Well, a query on the matter to the Ordnance Survey revealed some unexpected results. The initial response was:. Is Brighton in East or West Sussex? is a question which has been asked multiple times by people from outside the city. The one really confusing thing about Sussex that seems to put people off, is it is made up of two counties, East and West Sussex.