Leading officials of the Brighton West Pier Trust will boycott a meeting next week to discuss alternative plans for saving the stricken structure.

Campaign group Save Our Seafront (SoS) opposes plans by the trust and St Modwen for three large shoreline buildings.

Instead, SoS is backing an alternative plan, by builder John Regan and architect Nick Lomax, which would have a smaller enabling development tucked below the King's Road level.

The plans will be explained by Mr Lomax at a meeting by SoS in the Hilton Brighton Metropole on Wednesday, at 7.30pm.

Trust chief executive Geoff Lockwood said: "We will not be attending the meeting. We have consulted with SoS since summer 2001 on our plans without achieving any meeting of minds.

"More important, we have stated publicly time has run out for the consideration of alternative proposals.

"The 'old lady' spoke out loudly on December 29 and January 20. The trust/St Modwen plan is the only one which can now save her and debates about an unfunded alternative from SoS, which would take years to be approved, are an irrelevance.

"If the trust, inconceivably, now wished to switch to alternative proposals, the Heritage Lottery Fund would insist on a new application and a fresh start to negotiations with a totally credible team.

"Deferring a decision to investigate the feasibility of any alternative plans would delay restoration work for at least three years by which time the West Pier might well have been destroyed."

As well as Dr Lockwood, general manager Rachel Clark and chairman Admiral Sir Lindsay Bryson will not attend the meeting.

SoS spokeswoman Sue Paskins said she was dis-appointed.

The alternative was fully funded and speakers would give its financial structure.

"We are doing what we can to put pressure on Brighton and Hove City Council. They think you need a big development to attract people but you don't. The West Pier itself is the big attraction."

Plans for the St Modwen scheme go before the city planning committee on February 26.

Mrs Paskins said even if the St Modwen scheme was approved, work would not be started on the pier until after a legal challenge to National Lottery cash being used had been settled by the European Court.