Pontoon team confident there are 'no more bombs'

The next phase of creating the Offshore Energy O&M Campus requires the river bed to be dredged

Contractors developing a £25m offshore wind farm base say they are confident they will not cause another bomb scare in a Norfolk town.

Norfolk County Council has applied for permission to remove about 1,500 tonnes of mud from an area where a pontoon will be built on the South Denes peninsular.

In February 2023, dredging for the Herring Bridge resulted in a World War Two device being retrieved from the river.

No one was injured when it exploded as Ministry of Defence (MOD) experts tried to defuse it.

Contractors Tilbury Douglas said they intend to use water jets to blast the river bed, which they claimed would reduce the risk of disturbing any unexploded munitions.

Councillor Daniel Candon and senior project manager Steve Kirk say the site should be handed over in January 2025, with advanced talks taking place with big energy firms

Permission for dredging requires consent - not yet signed off - from the government-sponsored Marine Management Organisation and Peel Ports Great Yarmouth, the port operator.

But Steve Kirk, the senior project manager for contractor Tilbury Douglas, said they had carried out numerous surveys and did not plan to use diggers for dredging.

He said: "We've got to do a bit of dredging to make sure that the pontoon is operational and hopefully we will get that done by the end of the month.

"It's water injection dredging, so we're not disturbing anything in there too much; just lifting the sediment up and letting it flow out with the tide.

"We are confident that we've uncovered everything we can do. We've had two UXO (unexploded ordnance) surveys already and we will continue to do UXO surveys as we do the work."

Mr Kirk, who lives in Norwich, said he was proud the Midlands-based company had hired people from Norfolk to work on the project.

He added: "We're almost complete with the cap and beam [river wall] now; by the end of this month that will be complete.

"In the next few weeks hopefully we shall see some tubular piles going in for the pontoon and link spans and hopefully before Christmas that will mean the concrete link spans could well be positioned in place ready to be opened up next year."

The mooring pontoons will be built in front of the "spending beach" which takes the force out of waves in Great Yarmouth's river port

Daniel Candon, Great Yarmouth Borough Council cabinet member for economic development, said the project was a collaboration between the borough as landowner and Norfolk County Council, which was investing much of the £24.8m funding.

"It's great to see things moving forward here and it's going to have a huge impact on providing further jobs for those in Great Yarmouth, opportunities to learn new skills and contribute to the local economy," he said.

"But it's also going to help make sure that Great Yarmouth is firmly the capital of clean energy in the East.

"We are currently in talks with global operators who are very interested in the key location here; it's the nearest to the windfarms as the crow flies, and hopefully we will have a contractor secured as soon as we can."

The entire length of the site has had new sheet steel piling installed and the ground has been levelled for windfarm component storage