Bognor pier owners under fire over profits

Town councillor Simon Fyfe said the latest accounts from Bognor Pier Liesure Ltd showed its operations on the seafront structure made plenty of money.

The company's abbreviated financial statement for the year to last October 31, which he obtained from Companies House, revealed the latest profit was 1.07m plus a 50,000 share capital.

This was an increase of some 18 per cent on the 863,924 of the year to the end of October 2006 in addition to 50 share capital.

The balance sheet has been signed by the company's two directors, John Ayers junior and John Ayers.

The notes to the accounts state: "The company was under the control of Mr J Ayers jnr and Mr J Ayers throughout the current and previous year."

Cllr Fyfe said: "As a privately-owned building, when is the Ayers family going to stand up and put some serious money into the restoration? I believe the only time that Mr Ayers will put serious money into the pier is when his livelihood is threatened when the supports underneath the casino and the nightclub need work."

He acknowledged that Mr Ayers had put a large amount of money into the pier since he bought the grade two listed 143-year-old building in 1996.

But he said the recent loss of some 60ft from the seaward end, to cause the departure of the Birdman contest, showed much more investment was needed.

"It is going to take upwards of 1.5m/2m to put back what has been swept away from the pier," stated Cllr Fyfe at this month's Bognor Regis Town Council meeting. He said the profitability of the pier company meant a loan could easily be secured to achieve that work.

His informal chat with a bank manager had revealed a 2m loan over ten years would involve 23,230 monthly repayments.

"That will not make much of a dent in the pier company's profits," he asserted. "We should be frogmarching Mr Ayers to his bank manager and making him get a loan out."

Cllr Fyfe claimed he knew of two people who would be willing to buy the pier and 'put it back to what it should be' if Mr Ayers was unwilling to do that.

Cllr Paul Wells, who is trying to arrange a meeting between Mr Ayers jnr, Arun District Council and town MP Nick Gibb, said: "There is concern that, over time, we are losing bit by bit of our pier.

"It will not be long before we don't have any pier left, apart from the bit that makes money. As a town, we have got to get off our backsides and do something about this."

He ruled out any money from the town council being put into the pier while it was privately owned. That could change if a trust was set up to transfer the ownership of the structure.

"At the end of the day, the pier is there and is clearly an icon on the seafront, or what is left of it is," he added.

Outside the meeting, Mr Ayers junior said the pier constantly cost money to maintain. "There are a lot of running costs. What we spend here is ongoing. No-one else knows how much it costs," he stated.

He believed the Birdman could have stayed in Bognor in spite of the shortened pier. But he declined to comment in detail on the financial figures.

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