BUSINESS owners in Kings Cross have reacted with disbelief to a move by Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull to stop further development of the sex industry.

The Sydney City Council voted on Monday night to discourage any new sex businesses in Australia’s most famous red-light district.

Kings Cross Chamber of Commerce and Tourism president Malcolm Duncan said it was unbelievable his members had not been consulted.

Local businesses needed help to go through major economic changes in the area, not someone “telling us what is going to happen and patting us on the head”, he said.

One measure being adopted by the council is an “anti-clustering” policy, forcing new brothels, strip clubs and adult shops to be separated by at least 75m.

A number of strip clubs and sex shops are concentrated along Darlinghurst Road, the main thoroughfare through the heart of Kings Cross.

Mr Duncan said the area was already going through a major downturn after the closure of 16 hotels.

A number of shops are boarded up and the Pink Pussycat, one of Australia’s oldest strip clubs, is closed.

“All the strip joints are already going bust,” he said. “They are closing in droves. The purveyors of dildos and blow-up dolls are going the same way.

“There is no tourism up here anymore because the hotels have closed.

“It was all happening anyway.”

He said the idea of the 75m rule was “just crazy stuff”. Brothels needed to be concentrated in a red-light district. “You (otherwise) end up with a planning hotchpotch, which entirely depends on who has the money to go to the Land and Environment Court, and we all know what that’s like.”

Sex shop owner Rio Hauser-Speelman said the council’s strategy would double the value of his business.

“(But) it is like they have plugged a leak that doesn’t exist,” he said.

“It is not like the sex industry is expanding. It has reached saturation point. I don’t see what the huge hoo-hah is all about. The sex industry is not destroying the area, but the drug industry doesn’t help.”

Ms Turnbull denied she was attempting to sanitise Kings Cross or deprive Sydney of a red-light district.

“This is an attempt to bring back diversity and a variety of businesses,” she said. “There is no proper mix of uses. We don’t want to take the character out of Kings Cross.

“We want to give it back to the people who live there.”