Sterling idea

The Argus - Letters Monday, 20 May, 2002

AS an architect, I am appalled at the proposals by St Modwen to develop the shore end of the West Pier. The design responds very little to Brighton and Hove's unique townscape qualities. It has no feel for the playful, light and innovative work of Eugenius Birch which it is supposedly set to rescue. It will only enable the death of the revitalised seafront which has been one of the real achievements of Brighton and Hove City Council during the past decade.

As a resident of Regency ward, I am shocked by the way the decades of the campaign to restore the West Pier have so silently crept towards this intrusive commercial proposal and that the West Pier Trust can really believe this is any solution to restore a historic vista.

As a member of the local business community, I cannot understand how the enabling development is expected to work in reality. Brighton and Hove will be left with a white elephant which will have enabled a major commercial development right across the view of our prime asset, the seafront. This is too high a price for a conservation exercise.

As an ex-councillor for Brunswick ward, I know this enabling development was approved in principle in a committee some years ago. It was voted through because the chairman directed that it was not the then leisure and tourism committee's business to worry about how obtrusive it would be - that was a planning committee responsibility. On that now ancient decision rests the reported council support for this disastrous application. I hope the present planning committee will proceed to do its job and turn it down.

I fear we lost the original Regency pier to irreversible decay more than a decade ago. Some real imagination and thought for the future could give us a landmark modern pier on the foundations of the old and with a real purpose: Tide, wind and solar generation of electricity to light the seafront and public buildings of the city.

So, council, buy it back for the £1 you once sold it for and turn it into an asset again.

Frances J D Hunt
Clifton Road, Brighton