Local MP warns of possible 10-year delay to vital cliff works
Resilience progress: GWR’s No 800007 emerges from Parsons Tunnel on 28 April 2023 with the 08.50 Penzance to Cardiff Central, with work to build a rockfall shelter at the tunnel portal in evidence.
Steve Widdowson
THERE ARE growing concerns that work on the SouthWest Rail Resilience Programme on the coastal railway between Dawlish and Newton Abbot could be delayed for up to a decade.
The concerns relate to phases four and five of the works, between Dawlish and Holcombe and Parsons Tunnel to Teignmouth respectively. Phase four, which involves vegetation clearance and cliff strengthening, is almost complete, but Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris raised concern that a planned seven-day engineering possession envisaged for March 2024 may not take place due to a lack of rail replacement buses and that funding may not be able to be rolled over into future financial years.
