It has survived fires, bankruptcy and scandal, not to mention 153-years of lashing British weather, but now Hastings’s “peerless pier”, as it was hailed at its grand opening, faces a new twist in its turbulent tale, as it goes on the market.
Ahead of a £150,000 fraud trial, the controversial current owner of the pier, the self-styled Sheikh Abid Gulzar, is planning to “dispose of” the landmark, the council says, sparking a rush to bring the Victorian structure back into public ownership.
Hastings Borough Council confirmed it had received formal notification from Mr Gulzar that he intends to sell the pier, and had notified the group which nominated it as an asset of community value, to see if they are interested in submitting a bid.
The group, Friends of Hastings Pier, has told The Independent it is “optimistic”, it can succeed in bringing the pier back under community control.
“It’s early days at the moment,” Friends of Hastings Pier spokesperson James Chang said this week. “I only got the email from the council on Friday afternoon.”
Conceding that the pier in its current state could “have a liability of several million”, Mr Chang said, nevertheless, “at the moment we’re optimistic, because before, [Mr Gulzar] owned it and that was it.”
He added: “He’s said he wants to pass it on, which is why it should belong to the community. It shouldn’t be for one person to keep on running it until they’re tired of it.”
Mr Gulzar, nicknamed “Goldfinger” due to his love of jewellery and gold, has owned numerous hotels in Sussex and still owns Eastbourne pier. He will face trial by jury in Lewes Crown Court in September 2026 on 10 charges of fraud. He and his business partner Manasdeep Singh are alleged to have defrauded a water company out of sums totalling £150,000. The two defendants have denied all the charges.
Mr Gulzar took ownership of Hastings pier in 2018 in highly controversial circumstances, two years after the pier was overhauled with £12.4m of Lottery funding when the charity then running it collapsed into administration.
The expected bid for the pier by Friends of Hastings Pier will be the second effort the group has made at bringing the landmark under community control, after losing out to Mr Gulzar in 2018, who bought the pier from administrators for a reported £50,000, despite the community group raising more than £477,000 to buy the pier and keep it open to the public for free.
At the time, frustrated locals gathered on the pier to offer to immediately buy it back off him for £65,000 – but he refused the offer.
Sources have told The Independent he is now seeking £3.5m for the pier. According to a recent article in The Times, Mr Gulzar has an estimated net worth of around £5m.
Hastings MP Helena Dollimore told The Independent that simmering resentment about the sale of the pier in 2018 remains a major consideration.
“Our town is still deeply angry about what happened in 2018. I would urge Mr Gulzar to work with the people of Hastings now. The pier belongs to Hastings, and as the local MP I would support efforts to bring it back under community control and protect the pier.”
She acknowledged the work the Friends of Hastings Pier Group has consistently done in terms of highlighting maintenance issues and other concerns about the state of the pier.
“Hastings pier is an integral part of our identity as a town and our heritage. Everyone in Hastings wants to see the pier protected and see it thriving. As well as being a Labour MP, I’m a Co-operative MP, which means I support the principle that communities should have control over things that are important to them,” she said.
“Many people in Hastings are not happy with how the pier has been run in recent years. They don’t feel it’s been reaching its full potential and now we have an opportunity to change that.”
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Built in 1872 and opening on the UK’s first ever bank holiday weekend, the pier not only charmed perambulating Victorians, but survived its first serious fire in 1917 and went on to become a premier UK musical venue, hosting acts in the 1960s including The Rolling Stones, The Hollies, Suzy Quattro and Jimi Hendrix. Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett is said to have played his last gig with the band there, and was reportedly restrained from flinging himself over the railings and into the sea.
Long past its Victorian heyday and its brief role in rock and roll history, Hastings Pier has nevertheless clung on over the decades, its slow cycles of wear and repair often reflecting the fluctuating fortunes of the town on which it is appendaged.
The pier’s nadir came in 2010, when four years after it had closed down in a sorry state, a massive fire tore through the structure, destroying the ballroom and 95 per cent of the rest of the structure. Two men were arrested on suspicion of arson, but were never charged, with the CPS citing a lack of evidence.
A twisted skeleton of charred metalwork sticking out over the sea was all that remained for several years, but behind the scenes, a major push by the community was underway to rebuild.
In 2012, the £12.4m Lottery money was secured and slowly, work to rebuild the pier got underway. It was officially completed in March 2016 when Suggs, the lead singer of Madness, who was born in Hastings, officially finished the restoration by screwing in the final plank of some 50 miles of decking, making up the refurbished pier.
The following year, the pier won the Stirling Prize for best building in the UK and was heralded as “a phoenix risen from the ashes”. But despite the huge success in resurrecting the landmark, the sleek, modernised, minimalist pier faced almost immediate headwinds.
Nicknamed “The Plank”, due to the largely uninterrupted expanse of decking sticking out over the waves, owners have struggled to make it profitable. Two small indoor areas mean there is little shelter when the weather is bad, while significant overheads, or rather, underfoot maintenance costs, due to the constant battering of the sea, means margins are tight.
When Mr Gulzar took the keys in 2018, the first thing he did was shut it down for several months, citing essential maintenance on the structure. Meanwhile locals noticed the arrival of a growing menagerie of golden animals and objects accumulating behind the locked gates. Fibreglass golden lions were followed by a large golden hippopotamus and a golden bull on a marble plinth. A rusted old pier column was painted gold and laid at the entrance to the pier.
When the pier eventually reopened, save for the new bling at the entrance – occasionally including Mr Gulzar’s own gold-painted Mercedes – little more had been done to make the pier into a destination in its own right.
Since then, a succession of events and attractions including gigs, DJ sets, a pop-up bar billed as the UK’s largest beer garden, football screenings, and various attempts to overhaul the restaurant and hatch on the top deck have been and gone with little fanfare.
Reports filed with Companies House show that the liquidation of the company running Hastings pier – of which Mr Gulzar was the sole director – has occurred with more than £300,000 of unpaid debts, including over £74,000 owed to suppliers and £77,000 in employment tribunal awards. While the company has been wound down, Mr Gulzar still retains personal ownership of the pier itself.
According to the Sussex Express, Mr Gulzar said: “I tried my hardest and put all my love and money into the pier and have decided at my age of 81 to let someone else take it on.”
Former “pier master”, and associate of Mr Gulzar, Lord Brett McLean (who is not a Lord, but has self-styled his name in a similar fashion to Sheikh Abid Gulzar), told The Independent, the upcoming fraud trial has nothing to do with Mr Gulzar’s desire to sell Hastings Pier.
Mr McLean, who said he managed the pier for two years after Mr Gulzar purchased it, added: “The reason why he wants to reduce his property portfolio is so he can start enjoying a more leisurely life and at the age of 81 he should reduce some of his hours like other senior citizens who spend their time on social and leisure activities.”
But he suggested Mr Gulzar would not be keen to sell the pier to the Friends of Hastings Pier community group.
Whether the pier represents a viable business opportunity is yet to be proven. It would hardly be the first to descend into “end of the pier show”-style headlines.
John Bownas, business improvement district manager at local organisation Love Hastings, told The Independent he was concerned there could be a gulf between the millions the pier is supposedly valued at, and what it could actually be worth to an organisation once repair and maintenance work is factored in.
"Valuations on things like piers are complex and often very subjective. On the one hand they have huge community value, but on the other they are money pits in terms of ongoing maintenance,” he said.
“Cash values are ultimately what someone is prepared to pay. So, with essential repair works potentially running into millions, my worry is that unless a sale can somehow be forced at a viable price there will be a stalemate between the current owner's expectations and the amount that anyone with a realistic business plan would be willing to offer in terms of realising a return on investment.”
The Independent has contacted representatives of Mr Gulzar for comment.
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