Destroying the architectural integrity of Brighton's seafront in order to save the West Pier is neither a proper nor fair exchange.

Dr Geoff Lockwood, who leads the West Pier Trust's initiative to this end, has conveniently chosen to overlook the fact that it is the seafront and not the pier which is the city's most valuable asset.

Everything that gives Brighton its world renown, and makes it the place where the modern seaside can be seen to have been invented, came from the efforts in the early 1800s to establish a distinctive zone of sculptured urban landscape between the land and the sea.

The erection of the Chain Pier followed by the West Pier merely helped to consolidate the values and meanings brought into being in giving the town a seafront.

Brighton would still be Brighton without its piers - but not without its seafront, which the proposed buildings to pay for the restoration of the West Pier will damage severely.

-David Sawyers, Foundry Street, Brighton