Stats are always interesting, more for what they omit than for what they include. Fester's comments about renting are interesting and informative but he's also made a point many times in the past which bears repeating: people who visit holiday resorts for recreation do so in the certain knowledge that whatever funds they choose to allocate for the visit will be removed from them during the visit, usually in return for food and entertainment.
That's the purpose of any holiday destination, after all: to separate the visitor from their money in the most enjoyable and pleasant ways possible. But the total amount of money people bring with them has been in decline for some time, I suspect, so any new projects have to take that into account. For that reason alone, I strongly believe that private investors are the wrong people to run any pier. Companies have as their sole aim the financial return. Trusts, On the other hand , see maintenance and improvement as their duty, and I've seen few examples where the two aims coincide successfully, although there are some. CB's only hope is for a long-term trust to be established, with the hope that it can get the right people on board who are comfortable dealing with a multi-million pound investment for many years to come.