Council trash Pier and civic pride

Clarity and civic pride were in short supply as the planning committee of Hastings Borough Council (HBC) decided to approve planning permission for fake-olde plastic lampposts on Hastings Pier on 14 August. They forgot to consider the modern ones also there, and the serious concerns about the repair works, and also the requirements for a Listed Building in a Conservation Area. What was listed and what had won a major Prize were widely misunderstood. No-one mentioned ‘enhance and protect’, or the role of the Pier. Bernard McGinley reports.

Would the HBC planning committee show some self-respect and refuse fake olde plastic lampposts on Hastings Pier? No of course not. There were two relevant retrospective Pier applications: HS/FA/24/00046 for Planning Permission, and previously, HS/LB/24/00047 for Listed Building Consent (approved unanimously in June).

At the latest meeting, the case officer’s presentation early on made a formal correction regarding a carelessly copied and pasted part of the officers’ report, taken from the other application (49:30 of the video recording). Cllr Horn asked why the two cases were considered ‘piecemeal’ and not together, which is the usual practice. The Planning Services Manager (55:45 of the video) said ‘It’s just the nature of planning’ and ‘It can get a little bit messy’.

This is peculiar, as application 00046 was submitted on 23 January 2024 and published on the casefile a week later. Application 00047 was submitted on 23 January 2024 and published a week later. The word for that is ‘simultaneous’. The offered explanation made no sense. There remains no known reason why these conjoined cases were split. Normally such cases go side-by-side.

Confusion

Cllr Rogers (at 1:00:16) made a declaratory and confused intervention:

. . . on the point about the decking: the decking is not listed. The listed part of the Pier is the substructure underneath, so the top, the decking, is NOT listed. That’s not part of the thing: it is the substructure underneath. I mean personally I would prefer – if I’m honest – that these were not made of . . . resin. I was going to say plastic and I knew that was wrong . . . They’re not touching the listed part of the building . . .

Neither the Planning Services Manager nor anyone else corrected these severe errors. In 2019 the listing citation explicitly included the Pier’s deck and modern superstructure:

DESCRIPTION:  Cast iron columns on screw piles, with a lattice girder framework supporting a wooden deck. It has since been widened and has a modern superstructure.

All of a listed building is listed unless explicitly excluded in the listing. There are no exclusions listed.

As with the HBC June Planning Committee meeting, the Planning Services Manager seemed unaware that all of the Pier is listed. (See 1:02 — 1:05 of that June recording.) As for resin, resin is plastic.

Confusion was widespread. The case officer (51:05) explained dismissively:

Since the fire, a modern visitor centre has been built on the Pier, and this new building won a RIBA prize, the Stirling Prize, for architecture in 2017.

Had he known he could have explained that the Prize was not for the central Deck building but for the Pier as a whole, and that the national award is for ‘the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year’. Instead the Council’s habit of belittling the Pier’s RIBA Stirling Prize continued, as though it was one ‘design award’ among many.

Cllr Beaver (1:06:15) stated of the Pier that:

it’s the structure underneath that’s got the prize not the stuff on top.

That was doubly mistaken, both about the listing and about the Stirling Prize. All of the Pier, including its flooring, is Grade 2 listed. Again no officer explained.

Overlooked

A listed building in a Conservation Area deserves better than plastic tat that defies many relevant policies, such as on design, materials, significance and setting. The issues of quality | resilience | sustainability were not addressed. (See also the June meeting on Listed Building Consent, 58:50–1:01.) 

At the August meeting, issues got ignored:

■  the modern-looking lampposts on the Pier (below right) and whether they were or weren’t part of the application

■  the expert concerns about the suitability of the abrasion jacket. (See the casefile comment of 04 June 2024.) 

■  the elusive enforcement case that HBC keeps alleging but isn’t findable.

Instead, the fiction of the Victorian Pier with its ‘historic decking area’ was promoted — a falsehood ‘in keeping’ with the proposed retrospective lampposts.

Approval

The evening overall was dismal, with many untruths and omissions (about material considerations for instance). No-one knew about listing, or considered that the modern Pier has significance and worth too. An obvious inference is that HBC continues to lack civic pride, which is highly unusual in local authorities. Even bleak and benighted places usually muster that. Cllr Beaver proposed approval of the application and Cllr Sinden ‘happily’ seconded. The vote to approve was large.

In refusing the only other case on the agenda (HS/FA/24/00126), paragraph 135 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was reached for, that emphasises the need for quality, respect for local character and a high standard of amenity. For fake-olde Pier lampposts there was none of that.

Structurally, the unacceptability of case HS/FA/24/00126 in August bears an odd resemblance to case HS/FA/24/00125 in June: the first was refused for reasons including light pollution, while the second was deemed unsightly. (Passers by of 4 Priory Houses, St Michaels Place, near the back of the Observer Building, might like to see how offensive the ground-floor ‘slimline heritage aluminium window & door’ actually are.) The cases seem presentational indicators of ‘Council Says No’. More importantly, if these cases are indeed instances of unacceptability, why don’t the same standards of failure apply to bigger and more visible sites, such as Hastings Pier? The treatments smell of double standards — of inconsistency and hypocrisy (as with splitting the two Pier cases). There seems to be an element of victimisation or example-making going on: be seen to refuse or reject something, before approving Pier cases (retrospectively). The criteria for cases 125 and 126 apply also to the Pier. Is this – in biblical terms – straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel? The refusal for 125 stated:

The proposal results in a discordant and incongruous feature that does not have sufficient regard to its context and harmfully affects the character and appearance of the Town Centre Conservation Area and as such is not in accordance with the aims of Policies DN1, EN1, HN1 and HN2 of the Hastings Local Plan [and parts of the NPPF].

What else to make of all this? Will more visitors come to Hastings because of the fake-Victorian plastic lampposts on an un-Victorian Pier? It seems unlikely. (More feasibly, people will stay away in droves. So much for NPPF par 135.) If certain worthies state or suggest they uphold or champion Hastings, or sustain and enhance a Conservation Area, there are grounds not to believe them – even to laugh at them.

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