The owners of the West Pier intend to continue with their £30m plans to restore the Victorian landmark after part of it crashed into the sea.

Engineers are expected to begin counting the cost of yesterday's collapse later this week, but both the West Pier Trust, which owns the Grade I listed building, and Brighton and Hove City Council are confident the damage looked worse than it actually was.

Experts will assess the damage to the historic pier after stormy weather left part of the concert hall dangling into the sea on Sunday morning.

Pier general manager Rachael Clark said: "Without a doubt we will continue.

"If anything else it may mean we get things done much faster and hopefully bypass all the delays."

"We are talking to our partners and as soon as we possibly can this week we will sit down and work out the best way forward.

"A significant part of that is going to be engineering because the pier has now become extremely dangerous.

"Our engineers will be going down there. They actually predicted the collapse of the supports and they will be able to confirm that it is the supports that collapsed.

"It is a terrible shame although we have been talking about it as a possibilty for many months now."

The city council, meanwhile, confirmed its desire to see the West Pier restored.

Tony Miller, director of communications, said: "We would like to see it restored and I think one of the things it has shown is the extent to which not only locally but nationally it is recognised as a piece of national heritage.

"We understand from the West Pier Turst that the effects of yesterday caused damage to some of the buildings on the top of the pier but didn't damage the structure of the pier itself.

"It looks very dramatic but we are being told a lot of the stuff that fell off would have to be taken off anyway if it were restored."

Mr Miller said the council was keen to get everyone sitting down to a meeting in the next week to talk about the future of the West Pier.