The VGS representative retires from the BMP advisory group.
There is a serious lack of information from the council.
The most recent meeting of the Sidmouth BMP advisory group was over three months ago.
Questions remain about the tender process.
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Here’s a round-up of where we seem to be with the Sidmouth Beach Management Plan…
The VGS representative retires from the BMP advisory group:
Mary Walden-Till, the longstanding VGS representative on the Sidmouth BMP advisory group, has decided to retire from the position – as per her message yesterday to colleagues:
I have retired from my position with the VGS and therefore will no longer be the Advisory Group rep; the VGS secretary will be taking over. I would like to thank you all for the support you gave me when I first joined the group.
The VGS would like to thank Mary for her years of service – as she has not only attended meetings and asked pertinent questions in between, but has also put together often the only public accounts of what exactly had been going on with the BMP [From the BMP Advisory Group – Vision Group for Sidmouth]
There is a serious lack of information from the council:
The information the council makes publicly available has been woefully inadequate, with the last official report on any advisory group meeting being from March 2020 [Advisory Group – East Devon] and the last press release being from May 2020 [Press releases about the Sidmouth and East Beach Management Plan – East Devon].
There is one recording available online, from March 2023 [Sidmouth and East Beach BMP Advisory Group 8 March 2023 – YouTube] – but that’s it, apart from one for Exmouth from November last year [Exmouth Beach Management Plan Steering Group 28 Nov 2025 – YouTube]
The last meeting Mary attended as VGS representative on the Sidmouth BMP advisory group was at Kennaway House in May last year – and she provides a full report on the main VGS page [again: From the BMP Advisory Group – Vision Group for Sidmouth] The council were also able to send her the full presentation given at the meeting [22nd May 2025 – Vision Group for Sidmouth]
The most recent meeting of the Sidmouth BMP advisory group was over three months ago:
The last meeting was on 10th December, also at Kennaway House – again as reported by Mary on the VGS page, which we reproduce in full here:
Advisory group, meeting on 10th December 2025 and subsequent monthly updates.
I was unable to attend the 10th December meeting, partly because short notice meant I already had a committment at that time. As I didn’t want to miss what happened I asked EDDC if the meeting could be recorded and the recording made available, after initially saying ‘no’ it was discovered that Kennaway House would have the facilities to record audio. Whether that recording was ever made I do not know, if it was then it wasn’t supplied to me.
The Advisory Group now receives monthly updates but they are marked as confidential so there is little I can share. What I can say is that the Tender has gone out for the ‘Design and Build’ contract; unfortunately as South West Flood and Coastal are not responding to requests to see the Brief/Scope which accompanied this Tender document I am not able to say whether the Scope will reflect what the Advisory Group wanted for the town. They have had three requests that I know of, one from me in late January, one from Tony Burch in early Feb and another from Chris Lockyer of Sidmouth Town Council. There have not been even acknowledgements of these requests.
Another thing which is known from the monthly report is that the proposed timescale is slipping.
The original plan had the Tender going out, the bids coming in, and the Council awarding the contract by the 13th of November 2025 after the Tender went out in August 2025. As the Tender didn’t go out until January 2026 that has obviously been pushed back, the provisional date now being 30th April. It was envisaged that the design work would take a year and would commence on 19th December 2025, a revised date now shows a start date of May 2026.
It is annoying that each monthly report shows the last projected amended date and the current amended date rather than the original date and the current amended date. This tends to underplay just how large the delay is becoming and over only a year since the SWFC took command of the project. If it can slip 5 months over a 12 month period then things are not looking good.
They are also allowing more than a year for the design stage now, so instead of reaching the stage where Planning Permission is originally sought in Jan -May 2027 it is now pencilled in for Nov 2026- April 2027!!!! Yes, that doesn’t make sense. They have the dates for Detailed Design Completion ( which comes just before Planning) first as Jan 2027 and that has now been put back to July 2027, it would make sense for Planning Permission to be applied for somewhere in July-Aug 2027 after the design has been completed.
You may gather that the monthly reports are not all that helpful nor reliable. It seems to me that now they have issued the Tender they see the Advisory Group as nothing but window dressing even though they say ‘It is essential that we maintain transparency with all stakeholders regarding these developments.’ ………………. Time will tell.
Questions remain about the tender process:
Finally, in her letter of resignation to the Sidmouth BMP advisory group, Mary adds a passing shot as it were:
I will be keeping a close eye on all the public disclosures in future and hope you manage to get someone who just gets on with it and doesn’t play games as a result of the Tender process.
…