161, what have you done?

Strolling along the wide Hove esplanade is always a pleasure. This morning, there was a roaring wild sea on the one side, with many a pebbles having been thrown up on the walkway, scattered, and of course the uniformly aligned and very colourful beach huts on the other. It’s hard not to notice that despite a rainbow selection of colours on the doors, there’s little in the way of pattern. All doors are either a single colour or have vertical stripes of varied or less varied colours. 

However, I found one exception this morning - beach hut 161. My immediate thought was - what have you done? Yes, it has stripes, but there’s another pattern going on too. Is that a selection of coloured pebbles scattered across the stripes, trying to organise themselves into vertical lines, trying hard to comply with the rules?

Brighton & Hove Council, of course, has a regulation on the look of beach huts. Pre-2021, they all had to be exactly the same colour, but the rules were changed so that now the roof and upper sides must be painted in a specific turquoise colour, while the Plinth and lower sides must be painted in a specific red colour. Doors, however, can be painted in any single solid colour or vertically striped in multiple colours. Good luck 161, in your endeavours to fit in and yet not fit in.

Meanwhile, it you are thinking of getting your hands on a Hove beach hut, you would probably need to pay upwards of £20,000, that’s if you can find any for sale. Moreover, there’s an annual license fee currently standing at around £500, and a transfer fee which has recently increased to 10% of the sale price or four times the annual licence fee, whichever is higher. Renting could be an option but that would cost you £1,731.89 annually!