The new Battle of Hastings: struggle to save historic pier

It has survived fires, bankruptcy and scandal, not to mention 153 years of lashing British weather, but now Hastings “peerless pier”, as it was hailed at its grand opening, faces a new twist in its turbulent tale: it is being put up for sale.

- HARRY COCKBURN

Ahead of a £150,000 fraud trial, the controversial current owner of the pier, the self-styled Sheikh Abid Gulzar, is planning to “dispose of” the landmark, the council says, sparking a rush to bring the Victorian structure back into public ownership.

Hastings Borough Council confirmed it had received formal notification from Mr Gulzar that he intends to sell the pier, and had notified the Friends of Hastings Pier, which nominated it as an asset of community value, to see if it was interested in submitting a bid.

The group has told The Independent it is “optimistic” it can succeed in bringing the pier back under community control.

“It’s early days at the moment,” Friends spokesperson James Chang said this week. “I only got the email from the council on Friday afternoon.”

Conceding that the pier in its current state could “have a liability of several million”, Mr Chang said that, nevertheless, “at the moment we’re optimistic.

Mr Gulzar has owned a number of hotels in Sussex and also owns Eastbourne Pier. He is scheduled to face trial by jury at Lewes Crown Court in September 2026 on 10 charges of fraud. He and his business partner Manasdeep Singh are alleged to have defrauded a water company out of £150,000. The two men deny all charges.

Mr Gulzar took ownership of Hastings pier in 2018 in highly controversial circumstances, two years after the pier was overhauled with £12.4m of Lottery funding, after the charity running it went into administration.