Sheet Piling Coastal Erosion Works Save Cliffs and Beach Huts!
Iconic beach huts have not only been saved by sheet piling installation works but boosted in number, thanks to Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd teams stemming the impacts of coastal erosion, using 21st century steel sheet piling techniques to strengthen crumbling cliffs in the Essex resorts of Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea.
Urgent remedial work was required along a 200m stretch of cliff face, experiencing slippage due to the build-up of groundwater. For safety reasons, 13 of the resorts’ iconic beach huts were temporarily removed, after three areas of cliff face were deemed at risk of collapse in February 2020. Also threatened were the all-essential tourism assets of the lower and upper promenades, plus infrastructure such as sewer systems and the seafront road.
When the client, Tendring District Council, reallocated £2.1m of sums held to fund the essential works, Sheet Piling UK was quickly appointed by the contractor, Breheny Civil Engineering, with whom it has enjoyed a long working relationship. The brief was to not only strengthen the cliffs which required such urgent attention but to also ensure no further slippage of the existing slope during the installation of the cliff-retaining steel sheet piles.
This brief was made more challenging by the restricted access to the cliff face, which had to be via the narrow promenade, 15 metres from the line at which the steel sheet piles had to be installed. No vibratory equipment could be used, so Sheet Piling UK specified the use of a silent Giken F201 pile pressing machine serviced by a Sennebogen 673R telescopic crawler crane, with both coming from its own fleet of equipment.
Ordinarily, the stiff-to-very-stiff clay – the ground conditions at the pile line – would have been softened by using a water jetting technique. However, in this case, this was not appropriate. Together with Breheny, Sheet Piling UK’s in-house design team developed a working procedure that minimised the amount of water used to assist pile pressing, particularly in the zone above the critical slip planes that had developed within the slope failure.
Working with this equipment and the specially devised methodology that adapted typical pressing techniques to the unique scenario of this coastal erosion project, Sheet Piling UK installed 315, thirteen-metre-long steel sheet piles at one of the locations in Clacton-on-Sea (Kings Parade) and a further 95 sheet piles, of the same length, at Russell Road.
The works were completed over a seven-week period in summer 2021, ensuring that Clacton-on-Sea, which has been delighting visitors since its foundation in 1871, can continue to do so. The strengthening of the cliff has paved the way for 30 more beach huts to be installed, in a town that published its own Beach Hut strategy in 2013, seeing these iconic features as integral to British seaside tourism and a means of bolstering the local economy.
The battle to save the cliffs, in a town where the infamous Battle of Pier Gap was once waged between Mods and Rockers, has been won and the works should provide protection for 50-100 years. Defences at Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea once warded off Napoleon’s fleet. Now, steel sheet pile defences are keeping coastal erosion at bay, thanks to the input of Sheet Piling UK.
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Sheet Piling (UK) Limited is one of the UK's leading piling contractors. Owning and operating a comprehensive range of specialist piling equipment Sheet Piling (UK) Ltd also carry extensive stocks of new and used piles enabling rapid reaction to any urgent requirements or emergency situations.