A BLUEPRINT to safeguard to Sidmouth seafront – and to pinpoint a solution to reduce rapid erosion at Pennington Point – has been delayed by three months.

The project team behind the Beach Management Plan (BMP) this week announced that work to collect data will take longer than expected.

Discovery of ‘vital’ historical beach management data held by an external consultant has been highlighted as one of the reasons for the ‘slippage’.

East Devon District Council, leading the £75,000 project, says it could be ‘some time’ before this material can be provided and analysed.

A working group managing the scheme now calculates that the information gathering exercise will take up to three months longer than was originally thought.

It has postponed its next meeting from May to September.

Councillor Andrew Moulding, who chairs the BMP steering group, said: “In the course of the data review for this project we have identified other reports related to the Beach Management Plan which we need to review in order to maintain the quality of the project and ensure the end result is the right one. This data review has delayed the overall project by around three months, which means the next Steering Group meeting to look at the baseline information for the plan will be delayed until September, with project completion now estimated to happen around April 2015.

“It’s unfortunate that there will be a slight delay in this project. But we need to ensure that we are being thorough in examining all the historial data. If that means a delay in order to enrich the final stock of information then it will be worth the wait”.

He added the missing historical data is vital in helping the current team understand the design standards of the most recent coastal protection schemes. This in turn will help them to decide on any new beach management processes or physical structures.