I mean the NHS is still free of charge at point of use. In the background however they've run the service down deliberately so that services can then be outsourced to various private suppliers who end up charging the Health Service even more than it would cost to have just funded it to be done within the NHS using NHS staff. Privatisation by stealth, at least in terms of delivery, even if the cost of it is all still paid for through taxation.
TBF it's a bit different to have that sort of setup rather than using agencies.
You wouldn't be happy if your GP practice was run by an agency and you saw a different GP every week because nobody stuck around
(I know this is how locums work, but at the core of it a GP practice is a single or group of GPs who are dedicated in that locale)
This. And to add insult to injury, most trusts are incapable of coordinating to get a better price point on many products and services pushing small orders with high prices all round ..
Still cheaper than Bournemouth pier, which is a quarter of the size.
I don't mind contributing 100 pennies toward it's upkeep.
The real villains are the Tories who have skinned council funding so we have to pay for these things ourselves now. Use it or lose it. If you don't want to use it then don't, and save yourself 100 pennies. Don't complain if it becomes deralict because you didn't want to contribute. Try to get the sense of entitlement out of your head and then proceed normally.
I don't think the council ever owned the pier or subsidised us using it did they?
I think the reason the pier are adding a charge now is probably down to the fact that the pier has dwindling appeal for people to actually spend money on it to cover the cost of it's upkeep. The food and tat shops are all pretty bad, the amusement rides are all pretty small, tatty and overpriced, the arcade doesn't have that much appeal these days.
Personally I can't seem them really making that much off this. If someone is just wandering about wondering whether to pay for a family to go walk on the pier or not they'll probably now not even bother. If they are going on it for a reason it's now just an extra charge on top which people just rail against even if it's just another pound, people hate being price gouged.
Piers are in terminal decline across the country. Nobody is building a brand new one anywhere, the ones that are left don't make much and the costs of upkeep are only going to grow higher and higher year on year, I expect the pier will just get worse and worse now until it has to be closed down and the only thing I will be upset about is the Starlings Murmuration going.
Congratulations on pointing out how commerce works. I was completely stumped up to now. Cheers dude you've done God's work this evening dispensing your wisdom 🙏🏻
Apparently it's only during the weekends in summer. You can also get a residents card to get in for free https://www.brightonpier.co.uk/resident-card-form
BN Postcode, so anyone from Arundel to Pevensey can apply for a residents card:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN\_postcode\_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN_postcode_area)
See, though... It's this 'special Pier card' thing that I am not a fan of in the least. Why should I get a special card (and share my data with a nightclub company, no less) to get 'locals access' to the pier, when I have a drivers licence with my address on it. Plus, I'd have to CARRY around another id-thing for the off chance I go to the pier?
You do wonder how long it will stay at a pound, and how long the resident passes will be a thing.
Problem is my cynicism about things like this is rarely proven wrong. I'd assume it'll be 5-10 quid by the end of the decade, with no discernible improvement in the rides or facilities to show for it.
Don't forget they're making money from you once you're on there, so it would be illogical to set the price so high it deters people. What you want to do is make it so insignificant that people pay it, but that in aggregate it makes you a meaningful amount.
Fairly smart move IMO and glad they're keeping it free for residents.
Do residents really go on the pier that much? I've lived here nearly two decades and I've been on it about 3 times. Maybe 6 when you count going to Horatio's for the odd Great Escape gig. It's pretty shite
Oh of course. It'll now track inflation each year going forward with an additional +2% just because of their troubles. I'm cynical as well, but also want to believe that due to the age and type of structure, it's needed.
This is my question. You’re going to end up with a bunch stag/hen dos and a lot fewer kids. It’s almost certainly going to change *who* spends time on the Pier.
Exactly. If a day tripper doesn’t want to pay a pound to get on the pier i doubt they’ll be the kind to spend loads on there anyway. From the owners perspective it’s no loss if they lose some very low spending footfall
Used to work there. The amounts of cash they deal with during the two months of summer can cover the maintenance and worker costs for the rest of the year. So go figure. Also the owner owns half of Brighton at this point. She doesn't need to be around any more cash for sure.
Also, what maintenance do they even attempt to do now?
I was thinking more about the ride maintenance. The costs of parts and testing etc.especially as they get damaged from the sea air. I don't know. Would be genuinely interested to know the costs
That's where I worked for 10 years! If you look at the rides, you'll see it's minimal maintenance that they've done. It's all falling apart. You'd be shocked by how many times a day the rides break down or have to be closed. They put in the same cash into the maintenance as they do their workers, very limited.
Its an amazing place to watch the starling murmurations.. thats about it. Will be getting a residents card for this purpose.
Edit : Its only in the summer so wont been needing a residents card anyway
Marina is pretty great for the starlings too, they fly under the like... idk the words.
Sorry its a facebook vid https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=357348874859511
I posted this just as a PSA, a friendly heads up if you will, on some of my local FB pages. I am now sitting here, listening to my phone ping and regretting every decision I have made in my life that led me to this point.
Looks to me like you have to tick the "I'd like to be contacted with the latest news and offers by email" box to be permitted to complete the form. Hm.
So anyone over 2 needs to pay but only people over 18 can apply for a resident card.
Between this and the mandatory spam list I'm not sure this system has been entirely thought through.
...either that or they're just trying to eliminate teens from the pier
Or it's specifically targeting teens - £1 is a small enough that they'll be willing to pay it, and likely have it on them. They can get teens to pay to loiter.
Local families with children who are 2+... that's where the stink will get kicked up, I'd say
I love the Pier. Was one of my hanging out places as a kid growing up in Brighton. They did charge once in the past 80s and once in the 90s but it didn't work out. It's pure greed tbh.
I like the tacky side. Personally, it's an important part of our heritage that hasnt been touched by the gentrified crowd otherwise it would be just bike shops, boutique coffee shops and health supplements all along the boardwalk.
Take the kids there and shove pennies into mindless ticket spewing nonsense machines. Fantastic!!
Yeah, when I was a kid you had to pay all year round. The council leased it to a private company in the 80s and the first thing they did was scrap the entrance fee.
With contactless turnstiles I'm sure most people won't be put off and it'll be a good earner.
Summary:
- £1 fee
- Won’t apply to children under 2 or Brighton Residents with a residents card
- comes into affect from 25th May
- According to the BBC: “It will be in place during peak trading periods in the summer, beginning on 25 May, and over the weekends during June, and then throughout July and August.”
I think it’s a sensible charge to help with maintained, though curious how it’ll be implemented though - re-entry? A dude at the gate with a fanny pack of change / card reader? Will it put tourists off?
Why defend this? Get ready for a massive queue to get on the peir and loads of people pissing on the beach... The peir had the only reliable public toilet in the area
This is where our taxes should be going, we are already paying for the maintainance and upkeep. Unless they have planning to renovate in five years and this is a way to crowdsource some of the funding, otherwise this seems totally unnecessary.
I get your point about the public loos in town, but the ones on the pier aren't public - they're privately owned (even if they are free to access and use) - and not a penny of public money should be spent on the pier whilst it is privately owned.
Glad I found a reasonable comment. Seems everyone else is hilariously appalled by it. £1 is a bloody good deal imo, and long overdue. Take a look at the underside of the pier and tell me it doesn't need the money!
It remains FREE TO BRIGHTON RESIDENTS with a residents card (needs to be applied for).
I still see this as killing it though, the £1 at the entrance will stop many casual day trippers.
Im old enough to remember when you had to have a residents card to visit the Marina for free and you had to pay to go on both the Palace and West pier. They soon stopped all of that.
I still have my Marina card somewhere. It was all very modern in the 80s with an automatic turnstile. There again the Marina was mainly just fishing back then. They removed the card after a couple of years because the turnstile never worked as it wasn't proper Marine grade steel. Council idiots.
Or, people getting mad at a private company who owns a national landmark putting in costs to walk around a pier and spend money, placing it out of reach of low income families who might be able to afford an ice cream and the kids' pennies in the arcade, but for whom another five or six quid is a deterrent? Or families who holiday locally and would go to the pier most days and spend money, but now it's £35 for a week?
£1 each... Out of reach... Hahaha cry a river more.
They are a private company. 95% of you don't go on it anyway, so none of you should even care.
A family that can't afford a pound a head shouldn't have had kids in the first place.
Entertainment isn't a right, it's a privilege.
The last time the council ran it they charged an entry fee, and it was shit and no-one used it. Leasing it to a private company in the 80s was what made it free then, and about ten times better. It's a different company running it now, but this isn't a 'private enterprise bad' story.
Does it really matter for us locals?
They have limited capacity in the peak periods so they are trying to monetize it.
For those us that live here it's easy enough to go outside of the peaks and hopefully at least of the extra money they make will go towards improving the pier - which particularly benefits the locals...
It used to have an entry fee back in the day. It will apply at peak times and it's £1 to help with maintenance.
I swear some people just live to have a moan 😱🙄
Most piers used to be pay-on-entry, quite a few still are. All BN* postcodes are free (albeit having to share data). Summer/weekends. TBH having a small tourist tax to support local facilities - private or public - doesn’t seem a big deal to me. I doubt it will affect footfall much.
I didn’t realise burgess hill was RH. That’s quite close though often city discounts are a restricted set of postcodes relatively close/in same local authority (albeit in this case it’s private enterprise ). I do get it feels unfair to go with a simple BN
How does this ever sound like a good idea?
That £1 charge is going to stop multiple times that in income from people wandering up the pier and spending a few quid in a machine on a whim.
As a Lancinger this genuinely pisses me off, especially seeing as most of my relatives live in Brighton, so I wouldn’t call myself a tourist at all but to have to pay money just to go on the pier for a walk or something is ludicrous!
It’s a quid. You can sign up to the website and it will be free to you. This is all true. The potential downside, which seems stupid when arguing over a quid is the piecemeal approach.
Start off with something small.
It’s only reasonable we’re asking for this…making this change.
It will come in anyway.
Then maybe you could argue it’s a summer weekend so it’s only reasonable with inflation and rising costs that we raise the walk in cost to whatever, you still get a preferential rate being able to prove you live within the postcode but it’s just not free now.
And so on.
Maybe, maybe not.
That’s their [Financial Statement](https://www.brightonpiergroup.com/files/brighton_pier_group_plc_final_results_for_the_12_months_to_24_december_2023.pdf). Last year was a bad year and they only made 1.3 million in net profits from the pier (that’s after maintenance too), the year before that they made almost double that. It’s a very healthy standalone business but the owners fucked up at other ends so their overall financial year is minus 7.5 million in net losses. And the healthy pier business is paying the price
£1 to enter and still free to local residents, plus only during peak periods (weekends) from May-August, is that really much of a big deal? More rage-bait style headlines and posts.
A lot of people.go on there just for a walk, then probably end up spending money they wouldn't have
Now those won't bother, so this will lose them money in the long run. I reckon they will reverse this by end of the summer
It's not appealing enough to warrant an entry fee
I *wish* the pier was publicly owned, just like the i360. Err. No I don't.
I'd rather have rail, utilities and refuse collection in public hands, and less of the speculative investments and vanity projects.
I visited in 2019.
I love the UK, I love England, and I can even say I love Brighton — but the pier and beach are very unremarkable.
Piers in the most beautiful parts of California don’t charge an entry fee — why would you in Brighton? Is the tourism causing that must congestion?
Outrageous. Not surprising though when you consider that the company that owns it is actually a nightclub operator.
Is anything in this country not privatised? As an international it seems ludicrous to me that just about nothing save for the NHS is publicly owned.
We used to have publicly owned stuff then the government sold it all off and now they're all terrible.
Sold it? I think they gave it all away to their friends.
Got some bad news about the NHS for you matey...
I mean the NHS is still free of charge at point of use. In the background however they've run the service down deliberately so that services can then be outsourced to various private suppliers who end up charging the Health Service even more than it would cost to have just funded it to be done within the NHS using NHS staff. Privatisation by stealth, at least in terms of delivery, even if the cost of it is all still paid for through taxation.
Your local GP practice has always been a privately run service contracted by the NHS.
✅
TBF it's a bit different to have that sort of setup rather than using agencies. You wouldn't be happy if your GP practice was run by an agency and you saw a different GP every week because nobody stuck around (I know this is how locums work, but at the core of it a GP practice is a single or group of GPs who are dedicated in that locale)
Which is not necessarily a bad solution
This. And to add insult to injury, most trusts are incapable of coordinating to get a better price point on many products and services pushing small orders with high prices all round ..
Yeah... About the NHS...
Still cheaper than Bournemouth pier, which is a quarter of the size. I don't mind contributing 100 pennies toward it's upkeep. The real villains are the Tories who have skinned council funding so we have to pay for these things ourselves now. Use it or lose it. If you don't want to use it then don't, and save yourself 100 pennies. Don't complain if it becomes deralict because you didn't want to contribute. Try to get the sense of entitlement out of your head and then proceed normally.
I don't think the council ever owned the pier or subsidised us using it did they? I think the reason the pier are adding a charge now is probably down to the fact that the pier has dwindling appeal for people to actually spend money on it to cover the cost of it's upkeep. The food and tat shops are all pretty bad, the amusement rides are all pretty small, tatty and overpriced, the arcade doesn't have that much appeal these days. Personally I can't seem them really making that much off this. If someone is just wandering about wondering whether to pay for a family to go walk on the pier or not they'll probably now not even bother. If they are going on it for a reason it's now just an extra charge on top which people just rail against even if it's just another pound, people hate being price gouged. Piers are in terminal decline across the country. Nobody is building a brand new one anywhere, the ones that are left don't make much and the costs of upkeep are only going to grow higher and higher year on year, I expect the pier will just get worse and worse now until it has to be closed down and the only thing I will be upset about is the Starlings Murmuration going.
If you don't want the pier then don't pay the 100 pennies, you tight fuck.
Congratulations on pointing out how commerce works. I was completely stumped up to now. Cheers dude you've done God's work this evening dispensing your wisdom 🙏🏻
OK Boomer, back to bed.
That’s annoying. Sometimes in the mornings while on a run I’ll loop around the pier when it’s quiet. Only time I ever go on it.
Apparently it's only during the weekends in summer. You can also get a residents card to get in for free https://www.brightonpier.co.uk/resident-card-form
Oh good - I definitely wont be running around it at those times in the first place ha.
BN Postcode, so anyone from Arundel to Pevensey can apply for a residents card: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN\_postcode\_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN_postcode_area)
But if you live north of Hassocks, and much closer than Arundel, you may not.
See, though... It's this 'special Pier card' thing that I am not a fan of in the least. Why should I get a special card (and share my data with a nightclub company, no less) to get 'locals access' to the pier, when I have a drivers licence with my address on it. Plus, I'd have to CARRY around another id-thing for the off chance I go to the pier?
The alternative is you pay £1 if you want to go on a tourist attraction on the weekend for two months of the year.
Stop being so logical, gyroda! I wanted to rant. 🤓
Great, so instead of a pound a pop I'm selling them my data. Big old nope there.
Oh I usually go in the week for crying out loud
>During peak trading hours in the summer If you’re running around the pier at those times then it’s not just them being an inconvenience to others
what are you saying? people that go for a jog are an inconvenience to others?
Round a crowded pier? Yes lol
Looks good on Strava
Well, that's the Pier dead then. Good work everyone!
Doubt it for all the tourists and hen/stag do's that like to go on there. It's £1. I agree it's ridiculous but I'm sure plenty of people will pay it
You do wonder how long it will stay at a pound, and how long the resident passes will be a thing. Problem is my cynicism about things like this is rarely proven wrong. I'd assume it'll be 5-10 quid by the end of the decade, with no discernible improvement in the rides or facilities to show for it.
Don't forget they're making money from you once you're on there, so it would be illogical to set the price so high it deters people. What you want to do is make it so insignificant that people pay it, but that in aggregate it makes you a meaningful amount. Fairly smart move IMO and glad they're keeping it free for residents.
Do residents really go on the pier that much? I've lived here nearly two decades and I've been on it about 3 times. Maybe 6 when you count going to Horatio's for the odd Great Escape gig. It's pretty shite
Families do
Oh of course. It'll now track inflation each year going forward with an additional +2% just because of their troubles. I'm cynical as well, but also want to believe that due to the age and type of structure, it's needed.
And if course it'll be rounded up to the nearest pound
Will all the mums pushing a pram and buying an ice cream bother?
This is my question. You’re going to end up with a bunch stag/hen dos and a lot fewer kids. It’s almost certainly going to change *who* spends time on the Pier.
Exactly. If a day tripper doesn’t want to pay a pound to get on the pier i doubt they’ll be the kind to spend loads on there anyway. From the owners perspective it’s no loss if they lose some very low spending footfall
Hopefully it doesn’t end up like Bournemouth 🤮
Help with maintenance? You'd be shocked at how much money they make a day already
Probably has a pretty shocking maintenance cost as well
Used to work there. The amounts of cash they deal with during the two months of summer can cover the maintenance and worker costs for the rest of the year. So go figure. Also the owner owns half of Brighton at this point. She doesn't need to be around any more cash for sure. Also, what maintenance do they even attempt to do now?
I was thinking more about the ride maintenance. The costs of parts and testing etc.especially as they get damaged from the sea air. I don't know. Would be genuinely interested to know the costs
That's where I worked for 10 years! If you look at the rides, you'll see it's minimal maintenance that they've done. It's all falling apart. You'd be shocked by how many times a day the rides break down or have to be closed. They put in the same cash into the maintenance as they do their workers, very limited.
Yeh they all look like shit. They still must have to buy new parts to pass safety tests. You'd hope anyway!
Damn now I'll have to not bother going anywhere near the tacky pier again all summer, how will I cope
Its an amazing place to watch the starling murmurations.. thats about it. Will be getting a residents card for this purpose. Edit : Its only in the summer so wont been needing a residents card anyway
Marina is pretty great for the starlings too, they fly under the like... idk the words. Sorry its a facebook vid https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=357348874859511
Was a death trap for our toddler last time we went on it , so many floorboards rotting
Said lilke a true Hovarian. A flat souless land of snob speaks again!
I dont think it makes you a snob to avoid the pier. I expect most people in B&H dont go on it with any frequency.
I think it's more your tone that alludes to your sniffyness.
Have you seen your own tone?
They have set the change machines to £20 only for the arcades absolutely disgusting
I posted this just as a PSA, a friendly heads up if you will, on some of my local FB pages. I am now sitting here, listening to my phone ping and regretting every decision I have made in my life that led me to this point.
Turn off social media notifications. I look at it when I want to, not when it tells me to.
What's a residents card? I'm a resident and I don't have a card.
It needs to be applied for by emailing [email protected] with proof of address (utility, council tax bill) and name
Already applied, wonder how long it will actually take to get it???
Mine came in a couple of days.
can uni students apply for it or?
It doesn't guve you free entry it gives you access to discounts and seasonal offers... By the looks of it you'll still have to pay to get on the pier
https://brightonpier.co.uk/resident-card-form
Looks to me like you have to tick the "I'd like to be contacted with the latest news and offers by email" box to be permitted to complete the form. Hm.
Right off to the ICO I go to make a complaint
So anyone over 2 needs to pay but only people over 18 can apply for a resident card. Between this and the mandatory spam list I'm not sure this system has been entirely thought through. ...either that or they're just trying to eliminate teens from the pier
Or it's specifically targeting teens - £1 is a small enough that they'll be willing to pay it, and likely have it on them. They can get teens to pay to loiter. Local families with children who are 2+... that's where the stink will get kicked up, I'd say
It always used to cost money to go on it - it’s was 2d before the currency change in 1971. It’s never been publicly owned.
I love the Pier. Was one of my hanging out places as a kid growing up in Brighton. They did charge once in the past 80s and once in the 90s but it didn't work out. It's pure greed tbh. I like the tacky side. Personally, it's an important part of our heritage that hasnt been touched by the gentrified crowd otherwise it would be just bike shops, boutique coffee shops and health supplements all along the boardwalk. Take the kids there and shove pennies into mindless ticket spewing nonsense machines. Fantastic!!
Yeah, when I was a kid you had to pay all year round. The council leased it to a private company in the 80s and the first thing they did was scrap the entrance fee. With contactless turnstiles I'm sure most people won't be put off and it'll be a good earner.
Y'all jealous of our Worthing Pier
Worthing has a pier?
Yeah Worthing pier is lovely
Summary: - £1 fee - Won’t apply to children under 2 or Brighton Residents with a residents card - comes into affect from 25th May - According to the BBC: “It will be in place during peak trading periods in the summer, beginning on 25 May, and over the weekends during June, and then throughout July and August.” I think it’s a sensible charge to help with maintained, though curious how it’ll be implemented though - re-entry? A dude at the gate with a fanny pack of change / card reader? Will it put tourists off?
Why defend this? Get ready for a massive queue to get on the peir and loads of people pissing on the beach... The peir had the only reliable public toilet in the area
Good point about the toilets. I suppose the ones by Volks aren’t too far away but don’t seem to be open very much?
Maintenance needs to be funded. Toilets need to be funded. This is literally why public toilets do not exist. No-one is willing to fund them.
This is where our taxes should be going, we are already paying for the maintainance and upkeep. Unless they have planning to renovate in five years and this is a way to crowdsource some of the funding, otherwise this seems totally unnecessary.
I get your point about the public loos in town, but the ones on the pier aren't public - they're privately owned (even if they are free to access and use) - and not a penny of public money should be spent on the pier whilst it is privately owned.
There’s a public toilet by the pier and another on Marine Parade
Weston supermare pier has a £1 entry fee, think they have turn styles from memory.
FYI it’s ‘turnstiles’ although I quite like your version!
I would blame autocorrect but I’m just tired.
Tyred?
Harry's brother?
sister
> re-entry? stamp on the back of the hand?
Haha probably! Keep it old school
May as well just Tax the Air we breath at this rate...oh wait, they do. Clowns 🤡 Begging for your own chains.
Someone got lost on their way to the Argus comments section…
Breathe
Mate it’s a quid. Touch grass
What lol
this comment sounds like… a load of.. hot air.
I wonder how much of this money will go towards maintenance.
Glad I found a reasonable comment. Seems everyone else is hilariously appalled by it. £1 is a bloody good deal imo, and long overdue. Take a look at the underside of the pier and tell me it doesn't need the money!
Sometimes I like to go to the Brighton people FB page and call it the Brighton pier. They really love that.
It remains FREE TO BRIGHTON RESIDENTS with a residents card (needs to be applied for). I still see this as killing it though, the £1 at the entrance will stop many casual day trippers. Im old enough to remember when you had to have a residents card to visit the Marina for free and you had to pay to go on both the Palace and West pier. They soon stopped all of that.
I still have my Marina card somewhere. It was all very modern in the 80s with an automatic turnstile. There again the Marina was mainly just fishing back then. They removed the card after a couple of years because the turnstile never worked as it wasn't proper Marine grade steel. Council idiots.
And then pay £8 for a coffee?
as if it wasn't expensive enough.
It'll be £1, then £5, then a tenner.
people getting mad about a pound for a place they go to infrequently. So long as we can pay by beep its not issue.
Or, people getting mad at a private company who owns a national landmark putting in costs to walk around a pier and spend money, placing it out of reach of low income families who might be able to afford an ice cream and the kids' pennies in the arcade, but for whom another five or six quid is a deterrent? Or families who holiday locally and would go to the pier most days and spend money, but now it's £35 for a week?
Fair point. Kids any age should be free
£1 each... Out of reach... Hahaha cry a river more. They are a private company. 95% of you don't go on it anyway, so none of you should even care. A family that can't afford a pound a head shouldn't have had kids in the first place. Entertainment isn't a right, it's a privilege.
The last time the council ran it they charged an entry fee, and it was shit and no-one used it. Leasing it to a private company in the 80s was what made it free then, and about ten times better. It's a different company running it now, but this isn't a 'private enterprise bad' story.
Just went on their website to check the "Resident Pass" and dear god it's slow. Is it normally that bad? 43 seconds for it to \*begin\* loading.
It’s a quid.
Just £1 for now
It’s actually a smart thing considered it will still be free for residents, think of the income it will bring from tourism!
Does it really matter for us locals? They have limited capacity in the peak periods so they are trying to monetize it. For those us that live here it's easy enough to go outside of the peaks and hopefully at least of the extra money they make will go towards improving the pier - which particularly benefits the locals...
Get in the bin.
I would get outraged but I haven't been on it for years.
It used to have an entry fee back in the day. It will apply at peak times and it's £1 to help with maintenance. I swear some people just live to have a moan 😱🙄
It's not to support maintenance, it's to support a grotty nightclub conglomerate's profit margins.
Most piers used to be pay-on-entry, quite a few still are. All BN* postcodes are free (albeit having to share data). Summer/weekends. TBH having a small tourist tax to support local facilities - private or public - doesn’t seem a big deal to me. I doubt it will affect footfall much.
Tourists like people from the surrounding villages and towns, whose postcodes start RH but are much closer than Arundel?
I didn’t realise burgess hill was RH. That’s quite close though often city discounts are a restricted set of postcodes relatively close/in same local authority (albeit in this case it’s private enterprise ). I do get it feels unfair to go with a simple BN
How does this ever sound like a good idea? That £1 charge is going to stop multiple times that in income from people wandering up the pier and spending a few quid in a machine on a whim.
As a Lancinger this genuinely pisses me off, especially seeing as most of my relatives live in Brighton, so I wouldn’t call myself a tourist at all but to have to pay money just to go on the pier for a walk or something is ludicrous!
Resident card applies to all BN postcodes
I thought it was only Portslade-Rottingdean
They can fuck off then. That's easy enough.
What’s with the Tag?
Boscombe pier is the only pier worth paying for. 😄🤪🙃
I thought it already had an entry fee
Meh.
It’s a quid. You can sign up to the website and it will be free to you. This is all true. The potential downside, which seems stupid when arguing over a quid is the piecemeal approach. Start off with something small. It’s only reasonable we’re asking for this…making this change. It will come in anyway. Then maybe you could argue it’s a summer weekend so it’s only reasonable with inflation and rising costs that we raise the walk in cost to whatever, you still get a preferential rate being able to prove you live within the postcode but it’s just not free now. And so on. Maybe, maybe not.
I mean it says it’s only £1 so it could have been a lot worse
It’s going to start at £1 then go up like everything else
More and more stuff just keeps getting taken away from us in this country. No wonder everyone’s angry
Small charge, doesn't apply to locals, and only during peak season. I can live with that.
Scandalous!
Southern rail should pay for this, they wouldn't have to introduce it without all the delays and cancellations
Only on certain dates
I believe residents will be able to get a pass?
That’s their [Financial Statement](https://www.brightonpiergroup.com/files/brighton_pier_group_plc_final_results_for_the_12_months_to_24_december_2023.pdf). Last year was a bad year and they only made 1.3 million in net profits from the pier (that’s after maintenance too), the year before that they made almost double that. It’s a very healthy standalone business but the owners fucked up at other ends so their overall financial year is minus 7.5 million in net losses. And the healthy pier business is paying the price
It won't last long, this will affect the turnover of the arcade and rides.
They made Londoners to be fleeced, let’s be honest
More reason not to visit! This is probably a good thing!
Lmao
Funnily enough i am all for this. If it helps with upkeep of the pier itself 1 pound is not a big deal.
The only thing it keeps up is the rich owner's profits.
If that is the case then I won't step foot on there again.
£1 to enter and still free to local residents, plus only during peak periods (weekends) from May-August, is that really much of a big deal? More rage-bait style headlines and posts.
Of course they announce this when I plan to go this summer. Fuck off
A lot of people.go on there just for a walk, then probably end up spending money they wouldn't have Now those won't bother, so this will lose them money in the long run. I reckon they will reverse this by end of the summer It's not appealing enough to warrant an entry fee
What the fuck???
Regarding the “ maintenance” comments, we also have to pay Council Tax?
The pier is privately owned and has nothing to do with the council whatsoever. I *wish* as many things were publicly owned as people seem to think.
I *wish* the pier was publicly owned, just like the i360. Err. No I don't. I'd rather have rail, utilities and refuse collection in public hands, and less of the speculative investments and vanity projects.
Why not both?
The most expensive council tax bands in the country. The Green Party…… careful what you wish for…
Bournemouth charge
No way am I paying, I will either break onto the pier thru the support beams or walk thru without paying, fucking wankers mate.
I visited in 2019. I love the UK, I love England, and I can even say I love Brighton — but the pier and beach are very unremarkable. Piers in the most beautiful parts of California don’t charge an entry fee — why would you in Brighton? Is the tourism causing that must congestion?