The West Pier at Brighton got all but destroyed in a storm. At least there's no-one to blame this time - unlike the twice it "burned down". No-one ever explained how an iron building standing in seawater with no electricity and no access at all can catch fire.
It's not really either the council or the owner's fault. Central government is much more to blame. Money to restore it is available, but the current rules for spending public money in England (invented by Thatcher, kept up by the current lot) make it almost impossible for local government to initiate any project. They have to do it all in co-operation with a private developer.
But the private developers want to rebuild the West Pier as part of a commercial redevelopment of the beach area, with shops and restaurants on the land. They aren't interested in just rebuilding the pier as a sort of replica and handing it over to a charitable trust, or a museum or whatever (& why should they be? - they want to make a profit - and anyway there has to be money from somewhere to pay for the maintenance of the pier).
So although there has been some money available to rebuild the pier for years - the 14 million would be enough to make it safe for use, though not to add any new development or pay for maintenance it, they want another 10 to 15 million for that - nothing can be done.
The most likely outcome looks like being the shops and so on - which I personally don't mind at all, the plans look quite good to me (unlike the shitty proposals for the station car park site) but there is large local opposition to new building on the beach side of the coast road, mainly from local residents worried about the view. The stupid court case didn't help either. (See This is Brighton)
The West Pier saga is simple compared with that of the Jubilee Street redevelopment - which has been delayed for over 25 years now - or the redundant Station car park, which is held up for years because the owners of the land insist on building a large supermarket and loads of car parking space, but nearly everyone else wants small houses and small shops as a sort of continuation of the North Laines, and the Council want fewer car parking spaces (ideally none at all in my view - the entire site is within 400 metres of the station - let people with cars live in Higher Bevendean) and a new bus route.
The fault is 100% that of central government who insist on all new building being done by private developers; and the developers who are basically only interested in supermarkets and semidetached houses.
The Council is more or less powerless to start building anything, even on land they (i.e. we) own. All they can do is refuse permission for plans they don't like, & even then they have to justify it on very limited grounds & the developers can appeal to central government. The council can't say "we don't want a supermarket we want something else", though they can say "this supermarket is ugly and out of keeping with the area". So NIMBYs can often prevent new building, but democratically elected local government can almost never promote new building.
The kind of publicly-led development that as characteristic of English towns in the past - Birmingham in the 19th century, Brighton in the early 20th, Croydon after the War, Swindon in the 1960s and 1970s - is now all but illegal (not that anyone in their right mind would want Brighton to end up looking like Croydon or Swindon). Local government in Britain has less ability to do anything than in almost any other developed country - certainly much less than in the United States. English councils have very small discretionary budgets, almost all the money they have is committed to statutory schemes. Redevelopment money comes from central government via various competitive programs which have to be partnerships with business.
Although their budgets are huge, their hands - which are our hands because we elected them - are tied.