Key Bognor Regis seafront site is in need of improvement

Phil Hitchins, a district councillor for Aldwick West, said the only public space on the seafront let down Bognor Regis.

Cllr Hitchins said he walked along the seafront on market day last Thursday.

“When you walk along the promenade, you can’t see beyond the market into the town. The market takes up the area next to the crossing.

“The promenade was full. I suspect many of those people came from Butlin’s and they would not know the town was behind the market.

“The market should be pushed back away from the crossing to allow people to see the heart of the town,” he told Arun District Council’s regeneration, leisure and tourism working group last Thursday.

Cllr Roger Nash (Pevensey) said: “I totally agree with Cllr Hitchins. We should be acting sooner rather than later on the Place St Maur.

“We don’t want to be waiting for a development which may or may not take place and, if it does, it will take three or four years.

“We need to make the Place more attractive and to enable events to go on there as well.”

“We need to do something on the Place which raises more awareness of the town so that people can walk along the seafront and know what’s going on.”

But he said the market had been a feature of the Place for a long time.

“People like going across the crossing into the market and that has been the case for years and years and years.

“That’s part of the experience of coming to Bognor and still is, especially for people coming to the town for the first time.”

The market has begun to be run up to three days a week by Bray Associates on a two-year deal from the council.