AMBITIOUS plans to build a £6 million pier in Minehead are being resurrected by the chairman of the town's Chamber of Trade.

Mike Padgett, of Friday Print, believes a replacement pier is vital to the region's tourist industry and would offer healthy returns to any private investors.

He is already busy contacting individuals, National Lottery groups and other local organisations to gauge support for the much talked-about project.

The pier scheme last hit the rocks at the end of 1997 when even an 11th hour appeal from famous Minehead-born author Arthur C Clarke failed to win a £2.5 million grant from the Millennium Commission.

The bitter blow came just a month after members of the then Minehead Pier 2000 Association were told they had also missed out on a bid for £1.65 million in European funding.

But Mr Padgett is confident the scheme will come to fruition eventually, providing he can rally enough support.

He told the Free Press he wanted to see a truly traditional replacement pier built in Minehead, rather than one featuring futuristic elements as was proposed in 1996-97.

He said: "The Millennium Commission asked the association to change the pier plans, which they did, and then it still refused to give them any money.

"Locals wanted to see an ordinary, traditional pier in the town, and that is what I'm hoping to resurrect.

"It is a very worthy scheme and I think people should take another look at it."

In the past, the pier project has won the backing of district and town councils, while local MP Tom King pledged to highlight the need for the pier at the highest level when he tried to get the scheme back on course at the end of 1998.

He was hoping to secure support from South Wales MPs in a bid to put pressure on the Government to part-fund the project as part of an integrated transport system.

Two years ago, more than £6.5 million in grants was given to the towns of Clevedon and Penarth to renovate their piers and Mr King was hoping to secure the same level of support in Minehead.

Had the West Somerset town been awarded similar cash resources, a new pier could have been completed within 12 months and a ferry service started between the Somerset town and Welsh coast.

Mr Padgett said that Cardiff was just over 20 miles away by sea and a simple one hour trip by ferry. By road, the same journey would currently take more than two and a half hours and clock up more than 230 miles.

He said: "I've already had correspondence from the White Cross Ferry Company which is interested in the possibility of running a direct link between Minehead and Penarth.

"That would mean hour-long trips to Cardiff to do shopping, watch rugby matches and even to get to Cardiff International Airport."

He said almost a quarter of visitors to Minehead's Butlins holiday resort came from South Wales so there was already an obvious market for a ferry service.

He added: "This town needs tourists and if we don't get tourists this town will die."

He hoped the pier project would ultimately be self-financing, estimating that ferry fares alone could generate an income of at least £2 million once the service was up and running.

Representatives from the Waverley Trust, which operates the steamers Balmoral and Waverley across the Bristol Channel, pledged their support for a pier in Minehead in 1997, while feasibility reports into the project were carried out by West Somerset District Council in the same year.

Anyone interested in adding their voice of support to the scheme should contact Mr Padgett on 01643 706155.