Disaster for UK seaside town as huge attraction faces closure over £51m debt

Brighton's i360 has gone into medication implicit its £51 cardinal debts. (Image: Getty)

A large attraction successful 1 of the UK's favourite seaside municipality faces closure owed to the staggering magnitude of debt it has accrued since its 2016 opening.

The i360 successful Brighton has filed for medication implicit its £51 cardinal successful debt, plunging it into a highly uncertain future.

Brighton and Hove City Council revealed Brighton i360 Ltd racked up the eye-watering sum, which the company's chair, Julia Barfield puts down to a atrocious summertime and the cost-of-living crisis.

She said: "We are moving intimately with the prospective administrators astatine Interpath to guarantee the continued cognition of the concern during this play and to research each potential avenues for restructuring."

The 162m precocious viewing platform volition stay unfastened portion it enters the fiscal process and reviews options including for administrators to effort to find a purchaser to rescue the tourer attraction.

Charlie Carter, from Interpath, who is starring the income process, said: "The Brighton i360 has go an iconic visitant attraction, welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, but unluckily is present astatine existent hazard of closure unless a purchaser tin beryllium found."

The British Airways i360 opened successful 2016. (Image: Getty)

Administrators request to reviews their options, which see determining whether determination is inactive a financially viable and capable request for the i360 to support it unfastened portion they effort to find a buyer.

The assembly lent Brighton i360 Ltd £36.2 cardinal from the government's Public Works Loan Board successful 2014 to money the tower. The assembly explained that the £51 cardinal indebtedness is made up of the assembly indebtedness astatine a commerically agreed interest rate and a £4 cardinal Coast to Capital loan.

In December 2023, assembly person Bella Sankey revealed the institution had lone paid £250,000 of the expected £1.49 cardinal towards paying disconnected their indebtedness that year.

By January of this year, it had repaid £5.8 million, but this was inactive importantly down schedule, arsenic they should person repaid astir £18 cardinal by September 2023. The past outgo to the assembly was made successful June 2023.

Sankey blasted the improvement arsenic a "day of shame" for the Green Party, which led the authorization astatine the time, and a "sad day" for the city.

She said: "Their calamitous determination to indebtedness a immense sum of nationalist wealth to this failed concern task has near the residents of Brighton and Hove £51 cardinal retired of pocket.

"Our assembly indispensable present repay their folly amounting to implicit £2 cardinal each twelvemonth for the foreseeable aboriginal - wealth that could've been spent connected nurseries, play areas, nationalist toilets, preventing homelessness, roadworthy repairs, transitioning to nett zero and dozens of different captious section services."

Deputy assembly person Jacob Taylor said: "This leaves a ample unpaid magnitude to the metropolis council, which volition person an interaction connected the wide budget.

"I deliberation it is important that the assembly and the metropolis reflects connected the decisions that person led america to this constituent – and learn lessons for the future."

The assembly said: "The existent nonaccomplishment to the assembly relates to the underlying indebtedness indebtedness and involvement repayable to authorities which stands astatine c. £32m."