Urgent work on the West Beach seawall shuts the beach access ramp for about 12 weeks. The council's own pages give three different start dates.

Chichester District Council is strengthening a failing section of the West Beach seawall at Selsey, and the beach access ramp inside the work site will be closed to the public for the whole job. The council’s coastal team puts the duration at about 12 weeks, which lands the finish between the middle and the end of November depending on which start date is right.

What is harder to establish is when it starts. The council’s own coastal team publishes three different start dates for it, two of them on the same page.

Three start dates, one scheme

Coastal Partners is the shared coastal team for five councils, and Chichester District Council joined it in 2022 as the fifth. It is the body running this work, and it is the council’s own voice on it. Across two of its pages, the same scheme starts on three different days:

  • Its dedicated works page opens by saying the council is “undertaking urgent work to a section of the seawall at Selsey West Beach, starting on the 1st September 2026”.
  • Further down that same page, under Working Hours, it gives “Start Date: 24th August 2026”.
  • Its Selsey Coastal Scheme updates page, in its August 2026 entry, says the work “is due to start at the end of August 2026”.

All three are on coastalpartners.org.uk, and they are eight days apart at the extremes. Nothing on either page carries a correction or a note saying which supersedes which, and all three were live when we read them on 26 August. It matters this weekend in particular, because the ramp closure and the bank holiday land on top of each other, and a resident cannot tell from the council’s pages whether the ramp is already shut.

What the work involves

The council is not repairing the existing wall so much as building a second one in front of it. The published scope is:

  • installing a new steel sheet pile wall in front of the existing seawall
  • drilling into the existing structure and filling any voids found
  • placing concrete between the new and existing structures to reinforce the seawall
  • encasing sections of the current concrete revetment where required

The work is carried out from the foreshore, in front of the defences. Sheet piles arrive by lorry and are lifted off by a crane mounted on the vehicle. Concrete is pumped to the frontage through a pipe laid along the existing seawall.

Normal working hours are 7am to 7pm. Coastal Partners says notice will be given for any work outside those hours, and that hours and activities may vary with the tide and with safe access to the site.

What it means for you

The access ramp is closed, the coastguard footpath is not. Coastal Partners says access to the works area is “extremely constrained”, so the ramp normally used to get down to the beach sits inside the construction site and is shut for the duration. The public footpath next to the HM Coastguard station stays open at all times and is the route to the beach while the work runs.

Three other things to expect at the western end of the town:

  • Temporary plastic fencing separating pedestrians from construction vehicles during deliveries, with all deliveries supervised by traffic marshals.
  • A small number of site team cars parked in the designated parking area on West Street.
  • A site compound holding welfare facilities for the team, the working area and storage.

If you are heading to Selsey over the bank holiday, this is at the western end only. It does not affect East Beach, where the council scheduled separate footpath patch repairs for the first week of August, or the Danefield Road frontage, where about 9,000 tonnes of shingle was due to be tipped over three to four weeks from the start of February.

Why now, and why in the summer

Coastal Partners says recent inspections found deterioration in a section of wall that is “approaching the end of its serviceable life”. This frontage is especially exposed, and it has needed emergency repairs twice before, in 2007 and in 2023.

The team is blunt about the consequence of leaving it. If this section failed before the longer-term Selsey Coastal Scheme is delivered, it says, “there would be a significantly increased risk of coastal erosion and flooding to nearby homes and infrastructure”.

That is also the answer to why contractors are on a beach in the holiday season. The council says the project was “delivered through an accelerated programme” specifically to get the biggest possible working window before the winter storm season, when this stretch regularly takes high-energy waves.

Three published start dates for the Selsey West Beach seawall works A timeline from August to December 2026 showing the three start dates Coastal Partners publishes for the same scheme: 24 August 2026 in the Working Hours section of its works page, the end of August 2026 on its Selsey Coastal Scheme updates page, and 1 September 2026 in the opening line of the works page. Each is followed by a bar showing the stated 12-week duration, ending on 16 November, around 22 November and 24 November respectively. The council says it is working to finish before the winter storm season. One scheme, three published start dates Each bar is the same stated duration, about 12 weeks, measured from a different start date published by Coastal Partners. Source: coastalpartners.org.uk, read 26 August 2026. Works page, Working Hours box: 24 August to 16 Nov Coastal Scheme updates page: end of August to 22 Nov Works page, opening line: 1 September to 24 Nov 1 Aug 1 Sep 1 Oct 1 Nov 1 Dec End dates are our arithmetic on the council's own "approximately 12 weeks", not published finish dates. Graphic by Chichester Live
The gap between the earliest and latest published start is eight days. All three appear on the council's coastal team's own website.

The bigger scheme this is buying time for

These works are a holding operation. The long-term answer is the Selsey Coastal Scheme, which covers about 4km of seafront and is still only at the design stage.

Selsey’s position is unusual. Before the seawalls went up in the 1950s, Coastal Partners says, the town had one of the fastest eroding coastlines in England. Those walls are now at the end of their design life, having been built more than 50 years ago for the conditions of the time.

£2.9 million has been awarded by the Environment Agency from the government’s Flood Defence Grant in Aid fund, and that money buys the options appraisal and outline design only, not construction. Building anything would need a further, separate award. The council is direct about the odds in its frequently asked questions: the money available from central government “is limited, and there is strong competition for these funds across the country”.

The same page contains the sentence residents should probably read twice:

The council recognises that the defences are ageing and fragile, and there are limited resources to maintain them. Future defence failures should be anticipated.

Public events on the scheme options were held at the Selsey Centre on 17 and 18 April 2026 and drew 260 visitors. Coastal Partners takes questions and mailing list requests for the scheme at selsey.coastal@havant.gov.uk, the address it publishes because the partnership is hosted by Havant Borough Council.

Where to check

More from Chichester Live: roadworks and travel, planning news, house prices and things to do in Chichester.