A fire damaged a historic building on Hove seafront at the weekend. The fire service and Sussex Police are treating it as arson.
The fire was spotted at Medina House – a Victorian bath house in King’s Esplanade by the corner of Sussex Road – shortly after 5.30pm on Saturday (20 December).
East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service sent crews from Hove and Preston Circus in Brighton along with an incident command unit from Lewes.
The aerial platform ladder from Preston Circus was also sent to tackle the first-floor blaze, which was near the King Alfred Leisure Centre.
They put out the fire quickly and had made the site safe by about 9pm.
The fire service said: “East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service has carried out an investigation and concluded a fire on Hove’s seafront over the weekend was deliberate.”
The building was damaged in a fire in June last year which was also found to have been started deliberately.
The property’s owner, Sirus Taghan, bought the site in the 1990s and has since submitted a number of planning applications to redevelop it.
But planners have rejected most of his schemes as too tall and overbearing.
The latest applications were submitted last month but have not yet been included in the planning register by Brighton and Hove City Council.
A scheme to demolish the existing building and replace it with an eight-storey block containing eight flats with two, three or four bedrooms was rejected a year ago.
And a similar scheme which included flats and a ground-floor and first-floor restaurant was thrown out four years ago.
Fuller reports about the fire and planning issues relating to the site can be found here and here on the website of the campaign group Save Hove.
The saveHOVE article for its website is not yet up. Still on the ‘to do’ list at this exact moment as further info is still coming in. It will go up before Christmas, so please repeat check