| Hastings pier fire: devastating blaze may not mean the end Buildings destroyed but campaigners hope iron structure remains sound enough to allow new pier to rise from ashesCampaigners have vowed to continue their fight to restore the Victorian pier in Hastings after a suspected arson attack yesterday left its buildings almost totally destroyed.East Sussex police arrested two men aged 18 and 19 on suspicion of causing the blaze, which started at around 1am. At the height of the fire 50 firefighters and two RNLI lifeboat crews battled to save the Grade II-listed pier, which has been closed since 2006. Dozens of amateur videos showed the pier engulfed in flames several metres high.Footage from one of the firefighters' ladders, which was filmed from 2.20am, showed the blaze spreading from the back of the pier. The fire was eventually brought under control at around 8am, by which time 95% of the pier's buildings were reduced to smouldering ruins. No one was injured. East Sussex fire and rescue service warned residents to keep doors and windows closed as thick plumes of smoke hovered over the town.Conservationists hope that much of the building's ironwork has survived. Just hours before the fire, the Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust had invited architects to submit designs to redevelop the attraction. It was hoping to secure community ownership of the pier, after persuading Hastings council to use compulsory purchase powers to buy the attraction from its offshore owners.Anthony Wills, from the National Piers Society, said: "All is not lost for Hastings. It will take more than two kids with a box of matches to destroy Hastings pier. It has lasted since 1872 and it has been through plenty of crises before."Wills said the £50m rebuilding of the Grand pier at Weston-super-Mare, following a similar fire in 2008, provided hope to campaigners in Hastings.Andy Brown, south-east regional director of English Heritage, agreed that a new pier could rise from the ashes: "There's a long history of piers catching fire and buildings being replaced. Sadly this is normal."The engineering importance of piers survives these fires. The saga of the West pier at Brighton was on the same lines. Despite all the damage it was only when a big storm knocked down the bulk of original structure that we finally threw in the towel."Hastings pier was designed by Eugenius Birch, master builder of many Victorian piers. It has survived previous fires, partial demolition during the second world war, fighting between mods and rockers, and concerts by the Rolling Stones, Who, and Jimi Hendrix.Even before the fire, the National Piers Society, which was founded by poet Sir John Betjeman, placed Hastings at the top of its list of endangered piers.Wills said: "It's a very distinguished pier. It was the first seaside pleasure pier with a pavilion built on it. It's one of the finest because it's so wide. It will need a lot of money to put it right, but it's still there. I'm pretty sure that the ironwork and the piles and a lot of the bracing is still very sound. Sometimes putting fresh buildings on is actually cheaper than restoring old buildings."Brown added: "The seaside is being reinvented and piers are being reinvented with it. The way these piers are being reborn to make them fit for modern use, is very much part of what's happening on the seaside."He said English Heritage would do what it could to help rebuild Hastings pier, but it was for the council to decide on the future of the attraction. Jeremy Birch, leader of Hastings council said: "The council will now be looking at a new structural survey so that we can be absolutely clear on the degree of damage to the substructure. Then we can see what the future holds for this iconic building on our seafront."PiersFirefightersCrimeHastingsMatthew Weaverguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Up to 45 passport jobs 'secured' Up to 45 of 300 planned job losses at the passport office in Newport are to be saved, says the Welsh secretary. bbc.co.uk |
Children should not pick wild food unsupervised, says quango Children should not gather blackberries and other wild food unsupervised, according to the Food Standards Agency. telegraph.co.uk |
Axe on charities 'risks wrecking big society' • Charity Commission head warns of greater costs in long run• £5bn loss in grant funding 'difficult' to plugThe government's spending cuts could cost charities billions of pounds and prevent its vision of the "big society" becoming a reality, the head of the Charity Commission warned today.Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the Charity Commission for England and Wales, said charities that received millions of pounds in grants from central and local government could be the first to go.She told the BBC's Politics Show: "I think there is a great temptation for local authorities to cut charities first – and that would be the worst thing that they could possibly do."If you cut [them] you are cutting our ability to help each other, you're cutting what structures are enabling us. That's what 'big society' is all about. So you are pulling the rug from under that."I do think there's a real danger that … in the long run you're going to be incurring greater costs. For instance, children's services … in two and a half months' time those kids are going to land up at the door of the police, the probation service, social services or sometimes community mental health services. So you cut one area, but it shows up as a problem in another area."David Cameron has presented the 'big society' policy, in which community and voluntary groups work together to run post offices, libraries and other services, as his "great passion".The prime minister has promised a massive redistribution of power from "the elite in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street".But concerns within the government about the funding of charities and its impact on the 'big society' prompted the chancellor to announce a £100m fund to kick-start schemesin the comprehensive spending review last week.Leather said: "The transitional fund, I think, is a really important recognition by government that the cliff-face faced by charities is a problem. So it is hugely welcome. Recent estimates, however, of the amount of money that charities stand to lose is between £3bn and £5bn – so that is an order of magnitude different and difficult for charities."Local authorities provide about £6.6bn annually to the third sector, and central government gives about £5.3bn to deliver programmes and services.Councils are having to make some of the toughest cuts, given the 26% reduction in the budget of the Department for Communities and Local Government. And the cuts are frontloaded, so councils are under pressure to find efficiencies quickly.Many councils have already begun severing contracts, ranging from drug rehabilitation programmes to children's clubs. Greenwich council has already said that its grants to voluntary bodies will be halved next year, and Croydon council has reduced its grants by 66%.The New Philanthropy Capital, a third-sector thinktank, has estimated that the cuts could cost charities between £3.2bn and £5.1bn. The thinktank concluded, in a report this month, that that shortfall created "too big a gap for trusts and foundations or funding from the public and philanthropists to fill".Phillip Blond, director of another thinktank, ResPublica, and an influential thinker among Cameron's Conservatives, said: "Short-term concerns are recognised. There's already a £100m transitional fund to spend this year in the Cabinet Office, and that's primarily intended for those charities roughly with incomes between £50,000 and £10m, that rely on the state for more than 30% of their funding … In essence, if the situation goes mission critical and those charities find they can't survive then they will write to the Cabinet Office and they will get the money. So I think that government realises that we're in transition."A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said: "The reforms underpinning the spending review represent a significant increase in the opportunities and funding available to the voluntary and community sector in the medium and longer term. However, to help [such] organisations prepare for these opportunities, the spending review makes provision for a £100m transition fund to support [the]organisations in the short term."EndsSpending review 2010CharitiesVoluntary sectorVolunteeringLocal governmentGovernment dataguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Fire strike set for Bonfire Night London firefighters are to walk out on one of their busiest periods as a row over new contracts escalates, their union says. bbc.co.uk |