Projects

The standard of coast protection & flood defence at Poole Bay depends mainly on the level and width of its beaches.  The natural supply of beach material, from cliff erosion, ceased with the construction of seawalls and it now occasionally necessary to replace sand lost to the wind and waves.

Between 1970-2000 almost 2 million cubic metres of sand was used to replenish beaches at Bournemouth and Poole.  The first Poole & Christchurch Bay Shoreline Management Plan (SMP1, 1999) recognised the need for on-going replenishment amounting to a further 3 million m3 over the next 50 years.  Between 2005-2008 our coastline benefited from in excess of 1.8 million m3 of beach material, and the project details recorded at the links below:

Bournemouth Beach Improvement Scheme (BIS4.3*) winter 2007/08

A project to replenish a small section of beach between Boscombe & Southbourne. The dredger Oranje delivered sand to the coast between 8th-14th March 2008.

Poole Bay Beach Replenishment (Phase II) winter 2006/07

Follows the second phase of the scheme between Boscombe and Alum Chine in Bournemouth (BIS4.2*), using a further 700,000 m3 of beach material.

Poole Bay Beach Replenishment (Phase I) winter 2005/06

The first of our project web sites tells how some 1.1 million cubic metres (1.65 million metric tonnes) of material dredged from Poole Harbour was used to replenish beaches at Swanage, Poole & Bournemouth (Hengistbury Head to Southbourne, BIS4.1*) to protect them from erosion.

* Bournemouth's beach replenishment projects are referred to as Beach Improvement Schemes (BIS).  The current phased project (BIS4) is the fourth in recent years [more]