The most precariously situated luxury home development proposed in Britain is threatened by a collapsing cliff.
Britains most precarious development site, shrinks almost monthly as it crumbles into the sea at an alarming rate. The plan was to erect Nine £1.5 million pound holiday homes on the spectacular cliff edge site two hundred feet above a wild Cornish cove. However, after a long and highly contentious series of planning applications and subsequent objections involving both government agencies and conservation groups such as Save Whipsiderry Cliffs, The Marine Management Organization, The Duchy of Cornwall, and Cornwall County Council, a stalemate exists as developers state they plan to object to the current refusal to allow build permission to continue, on safety grounds. The rapidly shrinking site sits between the busy coast road between Newquay and Watergate Bay and was the site of a hotel named Paradise Cove. The public footpath that separated the site from the cliff edge collapsed into the sea just months ago. Questions are also asked as to how owners of the properties could ever be eligible to be insured let alone mortgaged as providers would be cautious.
The developers suggest that deep rock bolting and meshing with a regular maintenance and renewal regime would provide sufficient stabilization to reduce erosion to an acceptable level to protect the proposed development for at least 125 years.
Living Quarter Properties (Porth) Ltd caused a stir when it started work on the beach below at Whipsiderry. The company fenced off part of the beach while it craned down diggers to pull rocks from the beach to backfill the cliff caves and drill concrete holes into the cliff face to shore it up, protests saw police attendance and protesters dragged along the beach.
The scheme has angered local residents who fear it will destroy the beach below and damage the sea cliffs which are habitats for rare nesting birds, bats, and endangered flora.
A revised application proposed a deep network of rock bolts and meshing to the cliffs to help stabilize. Imagery from a drone survey showed the cliff face is currently unstable and that there is potential for further landslip if left in its current state. Meanwhile, yet another huge cliff face collapse has now shrunk the depth of the proposed site from the edge to the public boundary to just 25 meters. Whilst legal processes take place, Mother Nature it transpires, has a more pressing time scale.