Worthing council wants a restaurant or cafe in the locally listed West Buildings Shelter. Round one bids close at 5pm on Sunday 20 September.
Worthing Borough Council is inviting investors to take on a locally listed shelter on the seafront and turn it into somewhere to eat or drink. The first deadline is 5pm on Sunday 20 September.
The site is the West Buildings Shelter, a locally listed structure about 500 metres west of Worthing Pier. The council announced the search on 7 August. What it is actually asking for sits in a nine-page pack on the council’s own property page, not in the press release. The pack is far more specific about what will and will not be allowed.
We have read it, along with the site’s planning history on the borough’s register. Both are set out below.
What the council is asking for
The council says it wants a “high-quality food and beverage operator” above all else, though leisure and other commercial uses will be considered. Its expression of interest pack says it would welcome either of two approaches:
- repair and restore the existing shelter, with the option to extend the building up to the current roof line
- remove the existing structure and put up a new building inside the current footprint and roofline, sensitive in design and scale, retaining or reflecting the original architectural features where possible
Councillor Caroline Baxter, the leader of Worthing Borough Council, said the shelter was “an important landmark on our promenade with great potential to offer more to our residents and visitors”, and that the council had “seen this work well in other coastal towns”.
Outdoor seating is on the table in both cases. The pack allows seating east and west along the promenade in line with the current building, and temporary decking to the south, onto the beach shingle.
The building on offer is small. The pack gives the total site, shelter plus canopied area, as about 186 sq m (2,000 sq ft), with an internal enclosed area of about 56 sq m (600 sq ft). The letting agent’s own listing puts the floor area at 619 sq ft.
The constraints are unusually tight
The pack’s list of constraints is longer than its description of the opportunity. The site is boxed in on every side:
- Nothing can be built north of the existing footprint. A critical Southern Water mains sewer runs beneath the promenade, and the pipe requires a 5 metre no-build zone measured from its centre.
- Nothing permanent can go south of the footprint, because of the beach, the sea defences and the risk of flooding, overtopping and erosion. Removable structures may be considered.
- Two storeys is the ceiling, including any mezzanine or rooftop structure.
- The shelter is locally listed and sits in the Marine Parade and Hinterland Conservation Area. It is named in the Worthing Local Interest Study of 2003 as a Building of Local Interest, and it forms part of the setting of listed buildings on Marine Parade.
- The site currently has one power socket. The council estimates a full services installation at about £50,000, and the investor pays it.
The winning bidder also carries the council’s legal costs, the cost of any statutory public open space notice, the sewer easement negotiations and any title indemnity insurance. Planning permission, a heritage impact assessment and building control approval all have to be secured separately.
A restaurant here was approved once, and refused once
The council’s press release says only that plans for a restaurant “were previously presented to the council’s planning committee by a previous developer, but they didn’t progress”. The borough’s planning register is more precise, and it records two committee decisions that went opposite ways.
| Reference | Proposal | Decision | Issued |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWDM/1303/19 | Demolish the shelter, build a two-storey A3 restaurant with ground floor outdoor seating and a covered first floor terrace | Permitted | 24 October 2019 |
| AWDM/0653/23 | Demolish the shelter, build two Use Class E(b) restaurants over two floors | Refusal | 21 September 2023 |
So permission for a two-storey restaurant on this exact spot was granted in October 2019 and never built. A second scheme was refused in September 2023. Both were decided by committee rather than by officers. Anyone bidding now is bidding on a site where the planning argument has already been had twice.
In the meantime the outside of the shelter is used by Colonnade House, the council’s studio and gallery space run with the Adur and Worthing Trust, to show work by local artists.
The timetable
Round one is described in the pack as “fairly light touch”, designed to gauge how much demand there is and to produce a shortlist. Round two asks for a detailed proposal. After that comes a short exclusivity agreement, then an agreement for lease conditional on planning consent, then a building lease.
Round one submissions go by email to Duncan Marsh or Ben Collins at the agent SHW, listed in the pack on 01903 229200. The council’s page warns that late or incomplete submissions will be automatically rejected.
One caveat sits in the pack in plain terms. The council “reserves the right not to select the preferred bidder or progress with any bidder”. Opening the site to expressions of interest commits it to nothing.
Brooklands Park closes first
The shelter is not the only Worthing site on the market, and the other deadline is sooner.
The council is also inviting bids for 2,960 sq m (0.29 hectares) in the south-west corner of Brooklands Park, and that round closes at 5pm on Tuesday 8 September. It wants a low-density, leisure-led use tied to health, wellbeing and outdoor recreation.
That site has its own problems, set out in its own pack:
- Brooklands Park is designated Local Green Space, so proposals are judged against national green belt policy
- it is a former landfill site and is treated as potentially contaminated, needing intrusive ground studies before any building work
- there are no services on site at all, and the investor pays for all installation
- a Southern Water pipe runs diagonally through the west of the site, again with a 5 metre no-build zone
- the adjacent MiPermit car park holds 71 cars including five disabled bays, with a 2 metre height restriction
Both packs describe these as the first phase of a series of investment opportunities the council intends to bring forward across 2026 and 2027. They also confirm the council is working with Historic England on a long-term future for the Lido, which it took back in August.
What it means for you
If you run a food business, a cafe or a leisure operation and have ever looked at that shelter, this is the formal route in, and it closes on 20 September. Round one asks for:
- your company or organisation details, including a company or CIC registration number and a list of directors or trustees
- your proposed use, with outline dimensions of anything you would build
- your operating model, seasonal or year-round
- your track record in similar leisure or recreation uses
- evidence of financial capability, and the level of capital you would invest
- the lease length you want and your proposed timescale for the works
- an acknowledgement that your design will reflect the heritage of the shelter and the wider seafront
Sketch drawings are welcome but not required.
The council asks bidders to seek pre-application planning advice first, at planning@adur-worthing.gov.uk. Detailed advice may carry a charge.
For everyone else, the practical point is that nothing changes on the promenade this year. On the council’s own timetable a preferred investor is not named until the week beginning 4 January, and any agreement then depends on planning permission. Given the site’s record, that is not a formality.
If you want to follow what happens next, both sites will surface as planning applications in due course. We track new applications across the borough on our Worthing planning applications page, and current closures and seafront access are on our Worthing roadworks and travel page.
Sources
- Worthing Borough Council, Organisations invited to reimagine Worthing seafront landmark, 7 August 2026
- Adur and Worthing Councils, Properties and land available to buy or let, including the closing dates for both expressions of interest
- Worthing Borough Council, West Buildings Shelter expression of interest pack (PDF)
- Worthing Borough Council, Land at Brooklands Park expression of interest pack (PDF)
- Adur and Worthing planning register, applications AWDM/1303/19 and AWDM/0653/23
- SHW, Seafront Shelter, West Buildings, Marine Parade, Worthing
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