How wonderful to see Brighton's Grade I-listed West Pier set alight and glowing.

Hopefully, this dilapidated 137-year-old rusting wreck can now be entirely removed and, with the £30 million available to restore it, a new pier built using the latest technology and materials.

Many residents are attracted to conserving and restoring this pier and other decrepit buildings in our city when, clearly, some have probably come to the end of their useful life.

These people forget that all buildings can be newly built to the exact specification of these once-fine buildings, usually at far less cost and certainly to a much better standard.

It also gives opportunity to consider a complimentary new structure - or must we always live in the past?

-Charles and Shelagh Holcombe, Dorset Gardens, Brighton