Friends of Pier Set Up Potential Bid
KENT BARKER
A seasonal mist seems to have settled over the future of Hastings Pier following the news that its owner Sheikh Abid Gulzar wants to ‘dispose’ of it (Pier For Sale Again in HIP 288).
The gates are locked and nobody’s home
Registered as an Asset of Community Value with Hastings Borough Council (HBC), there is now a six-month moratorium before Mr Gulzar can legally sell it. This was triggered by the community group, the Friends of Hastings Pier (FoHP), who formally expressed an interest in acquiring it.
Nonetheless, how much money Mr Gulzar will be asking for it, and whether or how the Friends might raise any sum remains opaque.
Their earlier bid in 2018 was rejected by the administrators of the then owners, the Hastings Pier Charity, who sold it then for £60,000 (that’s the price stated on the Land Registry title document, not £50,000 as reported elsewhere). Mr Gulzar has not responded to HIP’s request for further information, but the national Independent newspaper reported that ‘sources’ had said he was now seeking £3.5 million.
FoHP say they are “excited” by the opportunity to acquire it, and that they would now see if they could “broker a deal’”. But their spokesperson James Chang was reluctant to be drawn on just what this might involve. “Everyone is always focussed on the money, but it’s kind of a negotiation really”, he told HIP. “We would want an independent condition survey of the structure and an independent valuation, so we have an idea of a fair price. But that will be subject to the condition. If you were buying a house for, say, £250,000 but you discovered it would need £250,000 spent on it, that would be part of the negotiation.”
Certainly the condition of the structure has been the subject of considerable controversy. Two years ago HIP reported that concerns had been raised by FoHP with HBC and the then Hastings MP Sally-Ann Hart after identifying a “badly corroded column on the west side corner together with other instances where loose bracing has broken through the outer concrete protection … impinging on column cores”. In response to a retrospective planning application last year, HBC’s Conservation Officer confirmed that a new structural lattice beam and a new structural concrete jacket for column 219 were in place and “acceptable from a conservation viewpoint”. However it is not clear whether Mr Gulzar has undertaken other regular maintenance or has commissioned an up-to-date survey of the pier’s overall condition. In 2022, former Pier Engineer Peter Wheeler was adjudged to have been unfairly dismissed by Mr Gulzar’s Lions Hastings Pier company after what the engineer said was the owner’s refusal to pay for safety inspections or new materials to maintain the structural integrity. Mr Wheeler told The Architect’s Journal that the pier “requires £70,000 every year to sustain the structural repairs alone”, and he alleged that the current owner had only spent a fraction of that since taking it over in 2018.
Current Hastings MP Helena Dollimore said: “Our town is still deeply angry about what happened in 2018 and I urge Mr Gulzar to change his approach and work with – not against – the people of Hastings.” She issued a further statement last weekend, saying that she has organised a meeting with local Councillors and community organisations to discuss how she and they could work together to protect the pier. “We are all united in our goal of ensuring that the pier is a valuable community asset for generations to come. The first step in that mission is for the current owner of the pier to conduct and publish an independent survey detailing the current condition of the pier, and we urge him to do so.”
Registration as a Community Asset does not guarantee that the structure has to be sold either to the Friends of Hastings Pier or even to the highest bidder. As the HBC website makes clear: “The triggering of the Initial Moratorium Period does not restrict in any way who the owner of the asset can sell his or her property to, or at what price, and it does not confer a right of first refusal to community interest groups, but allows a local community group to prepare and submit a bid for the property.”
It is likely that is what FoHP will do over the next six months, but Mr Gulzar’s former associate and ‘Piermaster’ Lord Brett McLean has sounded a note of caution. He “suggested” to the Independent that Mr Gulzar would “not be keen” to sell the pier to the Friends.
Pier Timeline
1872 Pier first opened to Public
1917 Original Pavilion destroyed by fire
1960s Rebuilt pavilion hosts concerts by Rolling Stones, Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd
2010 Fire severely damages structure
2016 Pier reopens following major restoration with grants from Heritage Lottery fund and others
2017 Designated pier of the Year and wins Sterling prize for architecture
2017 Hastings Pier Charity goes into administration
2018 Administrators sell pier to Abid Gulzar for £60,000 despite bid from FoHP
2025 Gulzar announces his interion to sell
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