As someone who has been a paid-up supporter of the West Pier Trust for ten years, I have to say I don't recall any mention until very recently of the necessity of a large, enabling development on the shore of the kind currently proposed.

We are told if this development is rejected the pier will not be restored.

I imagine there must be many people like me, who, if they had known this ten or more years ago, would have been reluctant to support the trust. Looking back through old newsletters, I do not find any mention of the necessity of such large structures. If they were not foreseen as necessary then, why are they suddenly now?

Save Our Seafront and others are right to challenge these proposals. Not only are the buildings in themselves inappropriately large and, from what one can gather from the artist's impressions, architecturally bland, they would also set a disturbing precedent.

It is only a few years since the Palace Pier put forward plans for a similar "blockhouse" development. This idea was discouraged then but if the West Pier gets permission, those plans will almost certainly be resurrected. Then the seafront would be ruined twice over.

-Graham Chainey, Marine Parade, Brighton