It is now, without question, the most pathetic sight in all the thousands of miles of British coastline.

The rotted and battered remains of the once splendid West Pier are a monument to local and national ineptitude and flagrant lack of care for Britain's heritage.

With the various parties involved in this fiasco wriggling away from any responsibility and blaming someone else, it is the worst kind of parochial bickering that has persistently bedevilled restoration attempts.

In more than thirty years since the decayed south end of the pier was closed, the Brighton Centre has been built. The Royal Pavilion has been devastated by storm and gloriously restored. The Dome, Corn Exchange and Museum have been rebuilt. Next month, the redesigned Hove Museum and Art Gallery opens its doors. The Churchill Square shopping centre had a make-over. The Royal Albion hotel burnt down and has been rebuilt.

The Essoldo has been demolished to make way for new shops. Even the dear old Clock Tower has had a splendid facelift.

While all that was going on, the West Pier continued to rot. Well-meaning people wrung their hands in despair. The more Machiavellian - including at one stage, the old Brighton Council - plotted its demolition.

This is the West Pier that the then Prime Minister John Major singled out as a fine example of a Grade I-listed building that could probably only be saved by a lottery grant.

Ah, the lottery! Of course, it never actually funds anything entirely. It only provides what is called "matching funding". It gives a percentage of the money needed, conditional on those behind the particular project raising the rest. This was a ploy devised to stop money being wasted on schemes that had little public support.

In the case of the West Pier, the Heritage Lottery Fund's £14m is less than half the total required for the restoration.

But the West Pier is not just a local scheme. It is a national heritage asset. The Heritage fund should be allowed to finance the entire project and create an endowment to ensure its permanent survival.

Such an amount is peanuts to the various lottery funds that have accumulated a multi-billion pound fortune. Some of it is earmarked but not handed over, as in the case of the West Pier's £14m. Scandalously, the rest just sits in banks earning interest.

With such an arrangement, there would be no need for a commercial partner for the West Pier Trust, no need for an overtly commercial development, no threat to the seafront environment.

There would be no perceived threat to the neighbouring Palace Pier and no need for a legal challenge on the ethics of using public money for a commercialised West Pier restoration.

When it all finally slips into the sea, you can be sure there will be no shortage of millions to pay for a long inquiry into what went wrong.