Today is my daughter’s 20th birthday. A decade ago she spent her 10th birthday in the shadow of the still-smouldering Hastings Pier fire. I had been up all night, watching from the White Rock Hotel while our beloved pier was eaten up by omnipotent flames.
Those were dark, difficult days for the town. I’m proud of the optimism and ambition that we showed against such challenging odds. I’m delighted that Hastings has the best condition pier in Britain. Community effort and funder support brought it back from the very brink of destruction. Bringing it to life takes dynamic operators like Music First who have done a brilliant job of showing what the pier can be.
Operators will come and go over the years – that’s natural. The important thing (in my view) is that maintenance of the pier remains the responsibility of the freeholder and it has to be done all the time. Most buildings sit on solid ground where maintenance is mainly about keeping it safe and looking good up top. The pier sits on metal legs in seawater and it needs constant attention down below even though that doesn’t make any money. Previous owners signally failed in that regard – taking short term cash off the top and blatantly ignoring the long term needs.
The pier is currently owned by Sheikh Abid Gulzar in the name of Lions Hastings Pier Ltd.
There are three ways that freehold might change hands:
1. the current owner could choose to put it up for sale. That would trigger the Asset of Community Value (ACV) process and there would be six months for a community bid to be made, although he would have no obligation to sell the pier to such a bidder.
2. he could sell it as a ‘going concern’ and ACV would not apply. In theory, that’s okay as long as the new owner understands the maintenance requirements.
3. he could take on investment which might have a charge against the pier and then bankrupt his company. The investors would become the freehold owners. (If they didn’t want the pier, it would be placed into ‘bona vacantia’ and held by the Treasury on behalf of the Crown. No legal obligations whatsoever apply in that case.)
In any of these cases, community interest needs to be sustained. We all need to support the pier to ensure it is financially viable. But that’s not enough on its own. We fixed this pier not for the next few summers but for the next 100 years. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Mr Gulzar will not be the owner for the whole of the coming century. Local people need to be ready and stay ready. Either to make a realistic bid or to ensure a new owner understands and is held accountable for ongoing maintenance and repairs. How can that be done? I pleaded, in vain, with the administrators to include a clause in the sale ensuring that any owner would have to report to the Borough Engineer once a year on maintenance and repairs. In the absence of genuine transparency, social media rumours will fly.
We are rightly very proud and protective of our pier but, as we found out after that terrible fire 10 years ago, it does more good to prepare for the future than either argue about the past or spread unsubstantiated stories in the present. I don’t usually talk about the pier these days and I won’t personally be getting involved again, but I really hope people will be ready when the pier needs you…
Spinning Plates 