Seaside piers made the news this week, with that at Cromer, Norfolk, rated number one by The Sunday Times newspaper in a review of the seven best in the UK.
The 152m long pier in Cromer, built in 1901, comes out on top, with Llandudno in North Wales second, Blackpool’s South Pier third, Brighton’s Palace Pier fourth, followed by Saltburn in North Yorkshire, Southend-on-Sea and Southwold, Suffolk, in that order.
Also in the news, but for different reasons, is Southport’s Pier, controversially closed by Sefton Council for safety reasons. The row going on in the resort this week saw local MP Damian Moore weighing in with the assertion that the council had let the local businesses down by closing it, reports BBC Radio Merseyside and the Liverpool Echo
The council’s riposte is to point out that essential repairs to the structure will cost £13m, way above their original estimate. Pier arcade owner Colin Jamieson, who also has the Pier Pavilion and a café on the pier, says that the closure has "marooned" his business.
An emergency cabinet meeting of the council this week failed to come to decisions.
And another pier in the news is that at Clacton. Human error has been blamed for injuries to a staff member on the Looping Star ride and slight injuries to a passenger. The cause emerges from an initial investigation into the incident and is revealed in The Clacton Pier News Blog.
Pier director Billy Ball said that the incident was not caused by any malfunction of the ride.
