BCP Council wants to pin the 2024 West Cliff landslip with soil nails up to 12m and steel mesh, so the closed stretch of prom can reopen. No start date yet.
BCP Council has drawn up a permanent repair for the stretch of West Cliff that slipped twice in October 2024. The aim is to reopen the promenade below it.
Updated 13 October: the council’s seafront projects page says St Michael’s Road will have to close again for a time while the permanent repair is built. Details below.
The plan is to strip out the loose material left by the slip and reshape what remains. The cliff face would then be pinned with steel soil nails and covered in steel mesh.
The council has applied to its own planning department for a Lawful Development Certificate, reference P/26/04604/CLP. The application was received on 22 September and validated on 28 September. The register expects officers to decide it under delegated powers, without a committee meeting.
What the council wants to do
The site is the cliff between St Michael’s Road at the top and West Undercliff Promenade at the bottom, in the Westbourne and West Cliff ward. The application lists the work as:
- removing unstable landslip material displaced in the 2024 failure
- “minor reprofiling” of the slipped material to give a stable cliff face
- soil nails and steel mesh to reinforce the face “and provide long-term stability”
- incline drains to take water out of the cliff
- monitoring meters to track any movement
The tender drawings by the council’s engineers, WSP, add the detail. They show soil nails 8m, 10m and 12m long, plus 5m dowels and raking drains. Trees and scrub across the slope would be cleared first, and loose and overhanging material scaled off by hand or machine under a geotechnical engineer.
The drawings also say:
- the emergency sand berm at the foot of the slip, which they record as installed in January 2025, will be removed
- the remains of damaged beach huts will be taken off site in phases
- the old masonry wall behind the huts stays, subject to inspection once the berm is gone, and may need repair or rebuilding
- a wider exclusion zone will keep the public away from the works
Why it is a certificate and not a planning application
A Lawful Development Certificate does not grant permission. It confirms that work is lawful without needing a full planning application.
The council’s form argues the work is “maintenance and repair” to keep the cliff doing the job it already does. It says nothing new is being built, nothing is demolished, and the use of the land does not change. The aim, in its words, is to “allow the prom at the base of the cliff to reopen for public access”.
It cites a precedent. Similar cliff works at Canford Cliffs, to the west, were granted a certificate in 2020 (APP/20/00123/K).
Planning permission is only one consent. The cliff is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the drawings say assent must be sought from Natural England before work starts.
How we got here
The council’s Sea Cliff and Chine Management report dates the West Cliff slips to 9 and 19 October 2024. It also lists East Cliff slips on 28 November 2024 and 30 January 2025.
A council notice in 2025 said parking on St Michael’s Road had been suspended and a section of the promenade fenced off. A temporary walkway took people round the cordon. The berm, about 30m wide and 3.8m high, was to stay “until a cliff stabilisation scheme can be designed, funded and implemented”.
The funding came next. Full Council voted unanimously on 9 December 2025 to take £1.446m from reserves for cliff management. The Cabinet report named West Cliff as one of the places to be assessed and repaired “so that areas can be made safe for the public”. It put the cost of managing the whole BCP cliff line over 20 years at more than £41m.
The application does not give a cost for West Cliff, and no start date has been published. The drawings are marked “for tender”, which means the council is still to appoint a contractor.
The East Cliff scheme is a separate project. The council said in March that it would start in September 2026, subject to consents and tender, funded by a £3m government grant.
What it means for you
- The prom below St Michael’s Road is not back yet. The council’s own application, filed last month, describes reopening it as the purpose of the work. The work cannot start until the certificate, Natural England’s assent and a contractor are in place.
- St Michael’s Road will close again for a while. The road at the top of the cliff has reopened to traffic, but parking along it is still suspended. The council’s seafront projects page, updated on 6 October, says the short-term repair is only temporary. The road “will need to be temporarily closed again at a future date” for the permanent work. No dates are given yet.
- Expect a works zone when it starts. The drawings call for an exclusion zone wider than the slip itself, and for tree and scrub clearance on the slope.
- Beach hut holders at West Cliff should note the drawings plan to remove damaged hut remains and inspect the wall behind the huts.
- You can view the plans and comment on the council’s planning register. A certificate is decided on whether the work is lawful, not on whether it is a good idea, so comments carry most weight when they deal with that question.
For other planning decisions across the town, see our Bournemouth planning news page.
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