Rise, fall, rise again - 10 years of Brighton i360

Brighton i360, when it opened to the public on 4 August 2016, held the Guinness World Record for the planet's most slender building.

The observation tower split opinion from the moment it opened.

Just as it has since lost its world record status - to a skyscraper in New York - so too it appears to have lost the faith of the Brighton public. A series of financial struggles led its operator into administration in 2024, and later for the attraction to close.

That belief is something the tower's new owners are fighting to win back after an up-and-down first decade.

Its original owners borrowed millions of pounds of of public money to bring i360 to life. The tower was designed by Julia Barfield and David Marks - the husband and wife team behind the iconic London Eye.

The attraction got off to a slow start with technical hitches leaving visitors trapped in the pod, but eventually these were smoothed over.

Prince Philip attended the tower's ribbon-cutting in October 2016.

Only visitor numbers never quite reached the heights expected. It was not long before the tower's owners were asking to restructure the debt and missing their loan repayments.

A report by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), published in March found original visitor projections "could not be achieved".

Business plans for construction of the i360 in Brighton "suffered from optimism bias from the outset", according to the report.

CIPFA said actual visitor numbers for i360's opening year were about a third of forecasts.

British Airways ended its sponsorship of i360 in 2022. After entering administration, the viewing platform stopped operating in December 2024.

Brighton & Hove City Council would eventually have to write off £51m of debt to get the pod moving again under new ownership.

The CIPFA report's findings are disputed by the Green councillors who ran the local authority at the time the project's funding was agreed.

Oliver Sykes, currently the party's finance spokesperson on the council, said decisions at the time were taken after "a great deal of consultancy advice on what the best way forward was".

He said both Labour and Green councillors "together shared responsibility" for management of the debt after the project went ahead.

"I think there's a great deal that we could have done differently as a council to keep a closer eye on the developing debt," he told the BBC.

The councillor accepted visitor numbers "weren't quite as high as desired" but pointed to railway strikes and the Covid-19 pandemic as external shocks that "put paid to the i360 as a business model".

The council's Labour administration declined to be interviewed.

Despite the written-off funds, the project has still left the city with "a massive piece of regeneration" on the seafront, according to Sykes.

"The council probably isn't celebrating [the anniversary] because there's still a debt to be paid," he said, "but the city I think can celebrate".

He added: "We have a thriving business, it's bringing in tourists to the city."

Hospitality group Nightcap agreed to take on the 115-year lease for i360 in 2025, rescuing the attraction.

The city council's debt write-off, which included paying money owed to central government from its own coffers, helped facilitate the sale.

The company is run by Sarah Willingham, a former Dragons Den judge, who previously said it cost her firm £400,000 to get the pod working again and £150,000 to buy the lease.

In Nightcap's most recent trading update, it said more than £1m had been invested in upgrading the site since it's relaunch.

After 18 months, the ex-Dragon said the project was "even more than I hoped it was going to be".

The Brighton resident said the firm had "invested a lot in it" and wanted to "just keep seeing that grow".

"Visitor numbers are down this year," she told the BBC, but claimed this was a city-wide trend.

"It's not an easy business to run at all, the job is to make some money in the summer and then not lose it all over the winter," Willingham said.

Despite this, the entrepreneur said the i360 could be a community hub for Brighton and a draw for tourists.

She said: "Nobody should come to Brighton without going up in the i360 in my opinion, it is something that we should be really proud of."

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