LYME REGIS: We must protect East Cliff

After spending hours poring over boxes of reports which provide the background to West Dorset District Council’s planning application, Councillor Lorna Jenkin painted a very worrying picture.

She told members of the town’s council’s planning committee that if the stabilsation work is not carried out there was a 52 per cent chance of the seaward half of the parish church and the churchyard falling into the sea.

The risk of the whole of East Cliff and a section of Church Street collapsing is 82 per cent.

Even worse, the bottom half of of the allotments, half the Charmouth Road car park and the Davey Fort football field are 94 per cent likely to slide into the sea.

Said Councillor Jenkin: “That is because the seawall is in its final phase of life and engineers expect it to fail.

“If you progress 30 years, engineers expect a 98 to 99 per cent risk of failure of the whole of Charmouth Road including all the big block of flats all the way up to the big houses on Timber Hill.

“The junction at the end of Anning Road will run into a landslip.”

But there is no cause for panic. District council officials are confident they will receive funding to save the eastern part of Lyme and are currently going through the consultative process before official consideration of the planning application. 

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