Brightlingsea Town Council (BTC) has agreed to pay back over a third of the £75,000 grant it received to build the ‘Heritage Pier’ jetty on the town hard because the project has not been fully completed.
The floating jetty was funded by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) with a further £25,000 from BTC funds. It was installed in 2021 with the stated aim of allowing around two dozen coded, or licensed, fishermen in the town to land catches away from other harbour users during the pandemic.
But after being alerted to the fact there are at best only one or two such fishermen in the town, the MMO gave BTC until the end of March this year to submit reasons as to why the whole grant should not be paid back.
Following what BTC says is “an extended period of constructive discussions” with the MMO, the council has now agreed to repay £26,450 – the portion of the grant intended to be spent on piling work that has not been completed.
“As the piling element of the project was not fully implemented, the works did not fully meet the MMO’s grant funding requirements” said BTC.
The original plan would have seen the jetty to extend to low water mark – but the Land Registry ruled that the council did not own the land required and therefore piling couldn’t take place.
“In addition, a substantial portion of the seabed beneath the pontoon is covered by an existing concrete base approximately six feet thick [a legacy of the hard’s use in WWII]. This presented unforeseen technical challenges, making piling operations extremely difficult,” said BTC.
At present, the pontoon is secured by piles at its upper end and by six anchors at the seaward end and BTC says that the piling contractor has not been paid in full as the work was not completed.
As part of the agreement with MMO, BTC has confirmed that all coded local fishermen will continue to have free access to the pontoon until at least December 2028.
The council also thanked the MMO for its “understanding of the operational and technical challenges encountered and for the collaborative and constructive approach taken to reach this outcome”.
Expenditure information published by BTC in December shows that the annual cost of insuring the jetty is just under £1.376.
