First the West Pier Saga and now “Billy Bunter’s Postal Order” – is Brighton and Hove a place for prevarication and to be stuck in your car?

After a 30-year battle to save the West Pier, which never came to fruition, all hopes of restoration were finally lost in 2004 after the failing structure was ravaged by “freak storms” and two rather suspicious fires. After that, Heritage Lottery Fund withdrew its promise to fund a restoration. The grand old structure had turned into a heap of scrap metal, providing an unfortunate and rather ugly social statement on the dangers of prevarication prevailing over action. It strikes me that a city with worsening traffic congestion issues ought to throw its resources into tackling that situation first; i.e. before prodding developers to install a large public attraction in an area that already suffers from too many vehicles and insufficient parking places. As anyone who has tried to drive into town on a sunny Saturday afternoon, via Marine Parade and the roundabout bordering the Pier and Grand Parade will know, progressing along that stretch of seafront is no mean feat. You’re best advised to catch a bus or walk. Try to find somewhere free to park, if you can, and then ride. “I do like to be beside the seaside” can easily turn into “I hate to be stuck beside the seaside”.

Drawing thousands of people to the Black Rock area with no solid plans on how to transport and disperse them efficiently is hardly going to help that situation! Ooh let’s have an ice rink, major crowd-pulling events, more flats, more cars – get your skates on! You’ll never get out of there with four wheels and an engine!

At the nearby Marina complex, in 2006, the ASDA supermarket introduced a pay and display parking scheme because it was receiving overspill traffic from Kemp Town, the seafront and other marina attractions. The ticket scheme ended in 2011 – presumably because ASDA was losing shoppers as a result of the additional palaver of buying a parking ticket as well as procuring bread, milk and a garment from George.

As with other parts of Brighton and Hove, the Kemp Town area, north of Black Rock, has a well-established parking problem that moves outwards in an ever-increasing circle. The area near Lidl that previously offered free parking is now full of pay and display machines. Many motorists try to cram their cars on the rather muddy lane called Boundary Road that runs to the seafront, near Arundel Street and the gasometer. The fact that visitors to Royal Sussex County Hospital consume pay and display bays with a voracious appetite, making it difficult for everyone else in the area to park, has never been properly tackled. So, a major attraction just down the road is hardly going to help the long-suffering residents, innit!

However, there’s probably no need to worry. Things may just remain as they are. As with the “redevelopment” of the West Pier, the process of prevarication will go on endlessly and nothing new will ever be built at Black Rock anyway!

Perhaps Brighton and Hove Council should redeploy some of the funds currently used for its team of traffic wardens to hire an efficient developer who can sort out its proposed rapid transport link, which also hasn’t materialised into a firm plan yet. That might win some support! “Park and Ride” would be a big improvement on “Visit Brighton – a place to receive parking tickets and be stuck in your car.”

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