Dawlish cliffs could collapse at any time

Newton Abbot MP says action needed

 Crumbling sandstone cliffs above the vulnerable waterfront railway line between Teignmouth and Dawlish could collapse at any time, the local MP has warned.

Vital transport links in and out of Devon are being put at risk by the government’s failure to fund the final phase of a crucial ‘resilience’ project.

Major works have been completed at Dawlish, where the railway line was left hanging in mid-air after a fierce storm washed away the ground beneath it in February 2014.

Network Rail has fortified the sea wall and rebuilt parts of the station itself to withstand future storms.

But the crucial final phase of the work – stabilising crumbling cliffs between Dawlish and Teignmouth – is still waiting for a package of at least £80million in government money to be confirmed.

The chancellor’s recent spending review had nothing for campaigners lobbying for the rail defences to be completed.

Now Newton Abbot Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, who lives in Dawlish, says the government must act.

“It wasn’t the break in the sea wall at Dawlish that closed the line for eight weeks in 2014,” he said. “That took two weeks to repair. It was the cliffs collapsing, and it cost the South West economy something like £1.2 billion.”

Mr Wrigley, who raised the issue during a recent Westminster debate, said history showed that a cliff collapse happened every 10 to 15 years, meaning another one is due. 

Costs, he said, were rising all the time the work was being left undone, and an engineering team assembled specifically for the job had been disbanded because the money had not come through.

“If we as local MPs don’t keep on standing up and talking about it, we will have another collapse and lose the railway for another period of time,” he said. “The collapse could be tomorrow, it could be next year, it could be in 10 years time, but we’ve just got to keep on pushing to make sure it’s not forgotten.

The full interview with Martin Wrigley is on this week's Devoncast podcast.