THE Environment Agency will be asked to fund urgent work on the Watchet to Blue Anchor road – in danger from erosion and landslips – if Somerset West and Taunton councillors agree at their meeting next Tuesday to work with other authorities on a long-term plan to save the road.

The B3191 road has been in the headlines over the past year when the Blue Anchor Hotel was closed after fears that it could collapse over the cliff and landslips at Cleeve Hill leading into Watchet closed the road for several weeks last December. District councillors will be asked by environment lead Cllr Sarah Wakefield to work with Somerset County Council on a coastal protection scheme and to seek funding from the Environment Agency.

Chris Hall, assistant director, climate change and assets, will say in a report that if nothing is done, the road and a number of properties risk being lost in the coming years.

This would have a severe impact on the Blue Anchor and Watchet communities and on the tourist industry on which they rely.

He said: “The situation at Blue Anchor has deteriorated in line with erosion predictions and the hotel is now within two metres of the visible terminal crack on the cliff.

“This erosion rate not only places the hotel at risk but also the highway infrastructure and the route integrity from Blue Anchor to Watchet.”

Mr Hall said the preferred county council option for the Blue Anchor section of the road was to protect the existing highway with a coastal defence engineering scheme and to realign the road away from the cliff edge at Cleeve Hill.

“The situation at Cleeve Hill continues to worsen, with a temporary closure of the road during December last year. While the trigger for this closure was a failed sensor, the precarious nature of this section of road cannot be underestimated.”

Plans for a 136-home scheme on Cleeve Hill, due to be reconsidered by council planners this month, include re-siting the road.

Mr Hall believed that the option to protect the road could only be delivered if there was sufficient land on which to build a protection scheme which included grading the cliff to a suitable angle.

“With the erosion continuing, the land left to deliver a scheme is diminishing. The Environment Agency view is that there is no temporary scheme that can be put in place, and the only way forward is to move straight to the delivery of a permanent solution.”

Mr Hall reminded councillors that the then West Somerset Council had put in a bid to the Environment Agency in 2014 for a scheme to protect the Blue Anchor Hotel and the B3191. It failed for “a range of technical and valuation reasons” and no funding was received.

He said that the council spent further time looking at the areas of failure identified by the Environment Agency and how these could be resolved, but decided to cease further work due to the complexities of the scheme.

Since then, no further work on financing a scheme had taken place, but council officers were in touch with other agencies and had regular contact with the Blue Anchor Hotel owners.

Mr Hall said answers were needed for the key questions concerning who would pay for any major protection scheme, who would be responsible and who would fund future maintenance?