Work has began to create a truly golden beach for Southend's Golden Mile.

Cambridgeshire-based contractors Edmund Nuttall started the ball rolling by shoring up Southend's sea walls to prevent flooding.

And golden sands, imported from Clacton, should be adorning Southend beach from the pier to Lynton Road, Thorpe Bay, by June next year.

A Government handout of £2.6m is being used to partly fund the £6m project which has been drafted by Southend Council and consulting engineers the Halcrow Group, from Wiltshire.

Roger Weaver, Southend's executive councillor for planning, transportation and engineering, said: "It will be a golden beach for a Golden Mile.

"Obviously it will create an environment which will not only enhance the area by how it looks but can be enjoyed by people."

In the first stage of work, huge wooden piles are being driven into the beach by heavy machinery. They will act as foundations to improve three slipways used by boats.

The concrete sea walls up to the promenade, which act as flood defences, will be repaired and work will also be carried out to pipes which drain water away from the beach down to the sea.

From April, another pipe aboard a dredger will pump sand from the sea back on to the beach.

A maintenance and replenishment programme will be put in place to ensure sandy beaches through the year after the initial work is completed.

The design involved more than one year's study of natural habitats and has received the support of English Nature.

Delighted - councillors Roger Weaver and Anne Holland study the plans for the beach with the council's assistant director of engineering, Graham Dare as heavy engineering machinery starts driving piles deep into the ground

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.