Beach management review delay

Work to collect data that will help to design a Beach Management Plan (BMP) for Sidmouth will take longer than expected, the project team announced this week.

The aims of the East Devon District Council-sponsored project are to ensure that Sidmouth's sea defences are performing as expected and to consider what may need to be done to reduce the rate of erosion at East Beach.

The working group managing the project now calculates that the information gathering exercise will take up to three months longer than was originally thought. The group has therefore postponed the next meeting of the steering group that had been scheduled for May. This will now take place in September.

One of the reasons for the slippage is that the team are aware of the existence of vital historical beach management data held by an external consultant. It could be some time before this material can be provided and analysed.

Councillor Andrew Moulding, who chairs the BMP steering group, said: “In the course of the data review for this project we have identified other reports related to the Beach Management Plan which we need to review in order to maintain the quality of the project and ensure the end result is the right one. This data review has delayed the overall project by around three months, which means the next Steering Group meeting to look at the baseline information for the plan will be delayed until September, with project completion now estimated to happen around April 2015.

“It’s unfortunate that there will be a slight delay in this project. But we need to ensure that we are being thorough in examining all the historial data. If that means a delay in order to enrich the final stock of information then it will be worth the wait”.

The missing historical data is vital in helping the current team understand the design standards of the most recent coastal protection schemes. This in turn will help them to decide on any new beach management processes or physical structures.