SALTBURN’S award-winning pier has scooped another top accolade.

It is the National Piers Society’s 2009 Pier of the Year.

The pier has regularly featured in the top four from votes cast by the society’s 600 members. This year it has pipped Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight and Bangor in North Wales to the title.

Coun Sheelagh Clarke, Redcar and Cleveland Council’s Cabinet member for culture, leisure and tourism, said: “This award recognises the hard work and commitment of many people who were involved in the restoration of the pier and what true partnership working can achieve.”

The Friends of Saltburn Pier chairman, Tony Lynn, will make an emotional journey to Penarth, South Wales, to collect the award, which was first presented in 1997, at the society’s annual meeting on Saturday, June 13.

He said: “It’s just reward for all the people over many, many years who have fought to preserve the pier. We go back a long way – and every time it’s been in danger, the town has fought for it.”

The founder member and chairman of the group, Norman Bainbridge, who died in December, 2005, worked with the council to secure a grant of £995,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and succeeded in getting the pier’s status upgraded to a grade II-listed building.

Mr Lynn and Mr Bainbridge were given the honour of switching on the lighting feature that illuminates the pier, the cliff lift and the lower promenade.

Mr Lynn added: “The lighting feature is the icing on the cake – it’s so well admired.”