THESE are dark days for Hastings Pier only two years after a much-praised multi-million pound restoration.

It is currently closed to the public although it has been confirmed it will open again on Monday. There is fierce fighting over its future with most blame being heaped on the owner, Sheikh Abid Gulzar, who also owns Eastbourne Pier.

Gulzar is no saint as he might admit but I would say others are far more responsible for the parlous plight of the pier. And they will have to work together to have any hope of saving this sad old lady from the sea.

Hastings is one of many piers built by Eugenius Birch, whose masterpiece was the West Pier in Brighton. Opened in 1872, Hastings was not one of his best and after promising periods in the late Victorian age, the 1930s and the 1960s, it started to collapse. It closed in 2006 after being bought by absentee owners and was badly damaged by a serious fire in 2010.

The pier had been full of clutter which had detracted from its architecture. The fire gave Hastings a chance to start again. Thanks mainly to the Heritage Lottery Fund, more than £13 million was spent on restoration and the people of Hastings did their bit too. Through a mass community effort, they raised some restoration money themselves and formed a charity company to run the pier.

In 2017, Hastings Pier’s architects were awarded the prestigious Stirling Prize amid much adulation. But I remarked at the time that it was a bad case of the emperor’s new clothes. All the architects had achieved was a vast expanse of decking and almost nothing had been placed on it. As usual, Hastings failed when it came to the crunch. The pier charity went into administration and no one came forward in time to rescue it. Much to everyone’s surprise, the administrators quickly accepted a bid of just £60,000 from Gulzar.

Although there had been question marks in Eastbourne over the pier, another Birch creation, Gulzar kept it going. Some complained there was too much gold paint on the pier and others queried Gulzar’s business dealings. But he breezily brushed away barbs and joked that Eastbourne was Sheikh’s Pier.

It was a different story in Hastings where he was widely criticised for closing the pier for the winter after a small fire. But bearing in mind what had happened in 2013, let alone a major blaze in 1917, he seemed justified in taking this step. And Gulzar’s critics can scarcely have been surprised when he did not take kindly to their attacks. After all it is far easier to slag off a businessman who runs a pier than to run it yourself – and Gulzar has two.

The role of the Heritage Lottery Fund is open to question. Did it too easily spend large sums of public money? Ironically the Heritage Lottery Fund was accused of exactly the reverse in Brighton where it suddenly withdrew a large sum from the West Pier restoration just when the project was ready.

Hastings Council took a back seat during the pier saga when perhaps it should have been more active. But it has a history of political infighting rather than acting for the greater good of the town.

Awarding the Stirling Prize to a load of decking was like giving an arts prize to a blank canvas. The people of Hastings made heroic efforts to save and rescue their pier but ultimately the sums involved were far too big.

Plus the administrators were too hasty to sell the pier at a knockdown price ready for the summer season when they could have looked for a more substantial bid.

Other contenders who might have been interested simply did not move quickly enough. The whole sorry saga shows once again that restoring crumbling old piers is often a mugs’ game. It also harshly demonstrates that much of the commercial world sees Hastings as a place where companies would rather not risk their cash.

Hastings is far more historic and handsome than most other seaside towns which are down in the dumps.Yet somehow it is sinking with them.

It has been that way for many years. Back in the 1980s I wrote a bleak piece about Hastings following the collapse of a couple of ventures. The council chief executive invited me to go there again which I did. He showed me sites of great promise including one for a huge marina. But time went on and I never heard again about the marina – or for that matter, the chief executive. I think Gulzar knows he may have taken on too big a commitment with Hastings Pier and that some of the sparky ideas of pier lovers simply will not be viable. That may be why he has been so unusually subdued. I hope with help he can perform a miracle.

l We’ll open on Monday, see page 18