The Council have my telephone number, when will they have the balls to phone me up? Offers to strike a deal that will end litigation have been made numerous times, as we all know.

Still, I now have a whole day in front of the most senior Chancery Judge in Wales with my Pandora’s box stuffed full of goodies… What a kind invitation CCBC have given me to air their dirty laundry in open Court! – talk about playing into someone’s hand! – does their ineptitude know no bounds?

HLF won’t actually release any restoration cash until after the work is completed, in whatever suitable stages are agreed (unless the rules have recently changed). Being able to actually “cash flow” the project once it is underway is a whole other hurdle to overcome!

HLF will agree schemes “in principle”, that is what their project development grants aim to achieve by helping to fund surveys, options appraisals etc. and actually developing the full bid (which can cost £100k to put together)… and that is what David Jones was referring to when he said that it was NOT necessary for the pier (and hence the liability) to be owned by the Council in order for the funding to be agreed “in principle”.

Some people seem to be of the impression that HLF are just going to write a cheque out for £5m in 3 months time for Shore Thing to put in their bank account to spend as and when they get around to finding someone who knows how to fix a pier.

“Anonymous” – despite what you might like to think, I am not trying to play ping-pong or argue for the sake of winning brownie points; rather I wish that people can be better informed of the actual process and road ahead, instead of the constant false hope that everything is oh so easy and such a “Shore Thing”… It isn’t.

A pier, in particular, is one of the hardest kinds of structures to fund, either commercially or publicly – hence their constant decline over the past century. The British are really the only nation that were eccentric enough to build dozens of piers just for the sake of it – piers like Victoria Pier in Colwyn Bay, which never had a landing stage. How stupid is it to build a sodding great big theatre on 40ft high iron legs that stand in salt water? Especially at a time when dry land was plentiful! – Victorians did it simply because “they could”. I rather like that can-do attitude and downright eccentricity, that’s why I bought the damn thing in the first place!

Steve (1.27), if you’re aware of the HLF application process, why do you keep getting it so wrong. Match funding at Round 1 is not a requirement of an HLF application. As mentioned previously, without an offer in in-principle from other sources then this will create a higher risk but is not a categorical requirement.

At the end of day so many have a keen interest in seeing a transformation of this key heritage asset. If only all the effort in picking holes in a complex situation could be directed in arriving at a solution.

The offers made a year ago (which are still on the table as far as I am concerned) would have put an end to litigation in respect of ownership of the pier and allowed the then-available funding to be accessed quickly, such that restoration would by now have been well underway.

I do, however, have a justifiable objection to the continual efforts of certain members/officers of the Council to “cut me out” of the process and ignore my legal and financial interests in the pier – interests which were not legally affected by the bankruptcy even if the bankruptcy itself was legally valid (which I dispute).

Despite the endless smoke-screen of propaganda put out by the Council and its “anonymous” bloggers, it is slowly dawning on the taxpayers of Conwy where the blame actually lays. We can but hope people vote wisely on the 3rd May. Particularly in the Caerhun ward.

Regardless of the judgment on Monday, further litigation is prepared and will follow. At any time the Council chooses, it can pick up the phone and talk to me and we can agree a ‘cease-fire’.
It really is up to them.
I do hope the new administration will actually listen to the wise words of Mr Jones.

and trust me, I have been dealing with the HLF, EH and TT on another £8m project in England since 2004, and am well aware of the process, and of all the issues surrounding listed buildings.

In the case above, Planning Permission to demolish the building and build a multi-million pound block of flats was granted over a decade ago. It has since been through the hands of three successive hard-core developers, all of whom have failed in attempts to demolish and develop it, each losing a great deal of money in the process. I am pleased to say it still stands proudly and defiantly to this day, a sleeping beauty awaiting sensitive restoration.

Like everyone else, apart from David Jones who has also pointed this important fact out in the media, you conveniently ignore the fact that not a single penny of match-funding is in place, which is conditional for the main HLF grant of £5m (though not necessarily the small project development grant I concede). Please do prove me wrong and make me look silly by posting links to the confirmed funding that is in place for the other £5m? – I’m sure you will relish the opportunity.

I shall await your predicted excuse for not posting a single link to any confirmed funding along the lines of: “I don’t want to turn the blog into pin-pong”…
…or maybe that should be wiff-waff, in the spirit of true-blueness?

Anyway, since you’ve “seen David Jones on the train”, you are obviously far more qualified than anyone else in these matters.
I’ll raise your “I’ve seen David Jones on the train” with my “I’ve been patted on the shoulder by Margaret Thatcher in No.10″ – I’ll bet even Mr Jones doesn’t have that amazing claim to fame? David?.

What concerns me has been amply set out previously in this blog: the recklessness of acquiring the freehold, and with it the enormous financial liability that accompanies ownership of a grade II listed building in a state of appalling disrepair, without guarantees of lottery funding; and the dreadful lack of transparency in the acquisition process.

I have arranged to see the council chief executive and the new leader next month, when I will be urging a new approach to the HLF bid; it is to be hoped that that will be successful, but, I believe that complacency cannot be justified, given the recent refusal.

And do watch next Monday’s Daily Post. Interesting for all followers of the pier saga.

With respect, I would suggest you do some homework on Listed Building Laws; you will discover that the Council cannot simply “decide” to demolish a Grade II Listed Building. Indeed, they cannot even give themselves the required planning permission and listed building consent, as they would be ‘judge and jury in their own court’ this isn’t allowed by law – any such applications would have to be referred to a higher authority, and due to the importance of the building and the objections that would be raised from very influential bodies and required consultees (such at the Theatres Trust, for example) the matter would most likely go up to the Department of the Environment, and quite likely a public inquiry, for a decision. That process would cost the Council hundreds of thousands of pounds for starters, on top of the now estimated £1.5m demolition cost.

As part of the process of applying to get a building de-listed (before you can even begin to apply for a demolition order) you have to PROVE it has no commercial value, and PROVE that no developer wants it. To do that, you are required to place it on the open market and advertise it widely at an independently agreed fair market value for a considerable amount of time (2 years I believe). If at the end of that time period no buyer comes forward at (or even below) the fair market value, which WAG have assessed to be £1, then, and only then, can the process of applying for de-listing start. A building cannot be de-listed just because no-one wants it either, even if it gets past that hurdle, it has to be proven it has no architectural or cultural merit that makes it worth being listed. The de-listing process will receive many objections, and is likely to take a further 1 or 2 years to get past that hurdle (even if it is at all possible).

Once de-listed, that does NOT automatically mean it can be demolished – separate planning consent has to be granted by an authority that is NOT Conwy Council, and also because of the situation of the pier in the environment, separate permission from DEFRA is also required. Again, that whole process considering the objections that will be raised is very unlikely to be less than 2 years to get to the point where planning permission for demolition and DEFRA’s consent could be obtained.

So, in all, you are looking realistically at a period of around 6 years to be able to get permission for demolition in place.

Now, the point the Council are not telling anyone, is that in all that time, BY LAW, they have to maintain the pier to its Grade II listed status, and also have to keep it safe under HSE law… so in other words it cannot be allowed to deteriorate BY LAW to a state in which de-listing or demolition is going to be allowed in any case by the time those authorities get to assess it…. that may seem odd, but the laws are of course designed to protect important buildings and preserve them for eternity.

So, given that an attempt to demolish the pier is going to cost several millions and take at least 6 years, and the local taxpayers will end up footing that whole bill and getting nothing at all at the end of it, isn’t it more sensible to restore the pier so the locals and indeed nation can have the benefit of a preserved historic building, the leisure / business opportunities, and of course the employment / tax benefits as a working attraction?

You also fail to appreciate that 4 years ago, when the pier was being operated by myself (regardless of your opinion on how well I was doing) it wasn’t costing YOU the public a single penny – indeed it was contributing to the local economy in many ways, not least of which providing a living for 19 people and a valuable local community facility for a ever growing variety of events.

I hope that gives you a little more insight into the process that is ahead should the Council wish to demolish the pier…

…on the other hand, they could accept the olive branch I’ve been waving for years and chose to work with me, and we could literally make a start on Monday morning.

Now, why don’t you ask the Council directly WHY they refuse to work with me and see what answer they give you? – we’d all be fascinated to hear their reply.

I also recognise whiff’s of political opportunism to stick it to the Council and much prefer to put a touch of reality out to the punters than hide behind political point scoring.

I value my anonymity because the truth sometimes needs to be said without fear of favour or attack.

And Steve, I’m afraid you’re quiet wrong on a number of points but conscious of not encouraging the blog to descend into a ping pong session, I’ll stick to a very quick point which may assist.

The HLF grant assessment procedure is a risk based approach. You can score high, medium to low. If you score too many in the high risk category then unfortunately you will not be successful. So being a Council has certain benefits, and therefore tends to be seen as a lower risk, but not owning the site will be seen as a higher risk and so on. I suspect on balance, on this occassion too many items were too higher risk for the HLF to commit, especially if it was a particularly competitive round where other applications were seen as a lower risk.

Trust me there’s a gulf of difference between what organisations have to say politically and what the reality is.

Ceteris paribus, the next Pier submission will be successful at the Round 1 stage.