£8,000 repair work will give temporary fix to Gosport seawall

The Eastern Solent Coastal Partnership carried out the work at Seafield.

It comes after bad weather at the beginning of the year, and more recently Storm Katie, damaged the seawall.

The temporary repairs, costing around £8,000, took a week to complete and were carried out by the ESCP with Gosport Borough Council.

The ESCP is an organisation working with Gosport council as well as Portsmouth City Council and Fareham and Havant borough councils.

It designs and implements coastal defences stretching from Hill Head to Hayling Island.

Stevyn Ricketts, head of Streetscene at Gosport, is the client manager for Gosport for the ESCP.

He said: ‘This section of seawall had reached the end of its life.

‘The storms at the turn of the year and most recently Storm Katie have not helped with the conditions of the wall.

‘Although that area is part of a wider project by the Eastern Solent Coastal Partnership, we felt temporary repairs were needed.

‘We wanted to start them earlier in the year but there were surveys on birds we had to complete which set us back.

‘Natural England needed information to prove the work wasn’t going to disrupt the nature in that area.’

Work on the four sections of seawall started last Wednesday and were expected to be completed at some point today.

Mr Ricketts added: ‘Luckily, there were no dangers in terms of people passing the seawall until it is fixed.

‘The only issue we had was with lighting cables for one particular area.’

Long-term plans to protect the seawall from erosion in the Seafield and Alverstoke areas of the town are expected to start next year.

The £1.3m will look at reducing flooding risks too.

Mr Ricketts said: ‘The next step is to look at the long-term project which we have secured funding for.

‘The next stage we are entering now will look at how the defences look and things like that.

‘That should take around another 12 months and then, when that is complete we can start the construction phase.’

The scheme is one of many being carried out by the ESCP which has also carried out work in Southsea when the promenade crumbled away on Boxing Day last year.