The new damage to the West Pier is a distressing sight and it is understandable some readers have been looking for someone to take the blame - but unfair.

The main problem has always been money rather than a failure of duty on anyone's part.

By the time this council was formed in 1997, the pier had been closed and derelict for more than 20 years. The pier has always been in private hands.

It has never been owned by either Brighton Borough Council or Brighton and Hove City Council, underinsured by the council or "sold by the council for a penny", as one reader claimed.

Piers are staggeringly expensive to maintain. For much of its history, the West Pier did not earn enough to fund its own upkeep, leading to its closure in 1975. Without public funding or private profits, the pier declined. No council could possibly afford to bail it out. The task is far more complex and far larger than the Clevedon Pier restoration (The Argus, January 3).

The breakthrough was Lottery funding, secured very quickly after the Lottery was established.

This brought in one of the biggest grants for a heritage project in the UK.

But rules require matching funding and that cannot simply be wished into existence. It requires complex financial packages which take time to assemble and be approved.

The suggestion that the council had been "wringing its hands" over the restoration is nonsense. Readers are aware that a legal challenge from the Palace Pier over Lottery funding has caused delays nobody can influence.

-Coun Ken Bodfish, Leader, Brighton and Hove City Council