Southport Pier repair plans to cost £10m more than predicted

The pier - the second longest in the country - will remain shut for many months to come

The cost of repairs to Southport Pier have swelled by £10m more than forecast.

Sefton Council borrowed £3m to pay for restoration of wooden decking after the pier was closed temporarily last winter over health and safety fears.

But the authority now says it expects the cost of the job to exceed £13m, after further problems were found with the steelwork.

It is looking for government funding to help pay for the work.

The inflated cost means the pier - the second longest in the country - will remain shut for many months to come.

'Cut adrift'

Southport's Conservative MP Damien Moore believes the problems could have been addressed sooner.

"That pier is the oldest iron pier in the country it's taken some serious battering in its time, so what has been done to maintain it?" he said.

"It is an iconic part of our tourism offer."

He said the council should have applied to government earlier for money, which would have meant businesses would have had more certainty.

"We could have included the pier in the town deal fund we've had from government," he said. "Sefton Council bid for money for Bootle Strand from the levelling up fund - we could have bid for funding for the pier."

He said businesses that trade on the pier had "been cut adrift" and the council needed to "take a long hard look at itself and establish what went wrong".

"It can't just blame bad weather," he added.

The pier is 160 years old and is the only remaining pier in the Liverpool City Region.

Sefton Council's cabinet will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday, to discuss the next steps.

It said it remained committed to refurbishing the pier.

'Unsustainable'

An independent survey is expected to identify more than 25% of the decking - equating to more than 14 miles (22.5km) - is damaged or in need of immediate replacement.

Marion Atkinson, the Labour-run council's cabinet member for regeneration and skills, rejected Mr Moore's claim the council had failed to maintain the pier.

She said: "This is an iconic but complex Grade II Listed structure that is hundreds of years old and a thousand metres long.

"Given the age, location and scale of historic structures of this nature, it is unsustainable for these to remain the sole financial responsibility of any local authority, as this report demonstrates in the case of Southport Pier.

"There is clearly a case to lobby government for a national fund to address this pressure, and to ensure piers receive an ongoing, ringfenced, realistic and proactive maintenance budget allocation rather than having to reactively respond as seems to be commonplace nationally.

"I fully sympathise with all the business who have been affected by the closure and understand their frustrations", she said but insisted the pier had to remain closed until the refurbishment was complete.