Pier trust's bid to keep dream alive

Search for new funding after year of setbacks

Andy Tate - The Argus Friday, 19 November, 2004

CARETAKERS of the West Pier have refused to give up their dream of seeing the grand old lady restored to her former glory.

The West Pier Trust has applied to Brighton and Hove City planners for a renewal of a planning permission they were granted three years ago.

The original permission, which is due to expire in January, is for phase one restoration works to the pier's deck and substructure.

These would have to be carried out before any buildings were rebuilt on top of the pier, and before steps were taken to develop new buildings on either side of the main structure.

The trust said it will be much more straightforward to renew its existing planning permission rather than put together a fresh application.

General manager Rachel Clark said: "We thought it would be a good idea to renew it because we still hope to achieve the restoration.

"It would be annoying to let it lapse and have to start from scratch."

It has been a bad year for those working to bring the West Pier back to life.

In January, the National Lottery fund withdrew its support for the pier's restoration.

English Heritage revisited the issue and for several months the trust believed it was going to argue the case for restoring the pier to its 1866 appearance.

But at the end of June, a bad storm caused the pier's concert hall, already badly damaged by fires in 2003, to collapse into the sea. At the end of July, English Heritage announced it was withdrawing its support for the restoration.

Ms Clark said the trust was still considering all the options available to it.

She said: "We have had a succession of disappointing bits of news this year but no one wanted to give up or abandon the pier.

"We are hoping to have talks with English Heritage and the council before too long. We are a single object organisation but all these others have many things on their plate.

"Although it has been a terribly disappointing year, we still have hope."

Ms Clark said there were several alternative ways of restoring the pier, adding: "Ideally, we would have a full restoration with public funding but we are exploring other ways of making it happen with private finance."