Exciting flats style should be praised

I wanted to make two points:

Jane is personally committed to celebrating the appeal of the architecture of Littlehampton.

She is always concerned about enhancing its beauty as a traditional English seaside town and takes great pains to work on buildings that she believes add to the town's character, rather than merely developing for profit '“ as has been happening with too much frequency and speed lately.

For the new project, she plans to employ an architect with a world-class reputation, who is also committed to creating a building that is in keeping with the local area, and its heritage, on the river bank, as well as being admired for its style '“ not just another block of anonymous, boring, ubiquitous flats.

I think we should beg her to put her energy into developing this run-down commercial building, not discourage her '“ she really cares about the town and she is always transparent in her dealings.

As organiser of the recent architectural seminar held at the Windmill Theatre, Littlehampton, last month, which was looking at the role of design in the regeneration of seaside towns, I heard the very eminent speakers make their pleas to local authorities to support good architecture.

Wayne Hemingway in particular made a plea for the individuality of seaside towns to be preserved in the face of "creeping blandness".

One of the reasons we managed to attract 100 delegates to the seminar was because they wanted to look at the East Beach Caf, to see the difference that a good and adventurous designer can make to the seaside.

They went back to their own seaside towns inspired and encouraged, not just by Thomas Heatherwick, but by all the other architects who presented their own examples of creating seaside buildings, that stand out from the average and are adding to regeneration of their towns.

And, after seeing the caf and the award-winning riverside development, many of those delegates returned home with a new opinion of Littlehampton '“ no longer a sleepy, run-down resort, but a town with a vision and a future.

Susan Holder

South Terrace

Littlehampton