Folkestone & Hythe District Council Commissioned Report On The Leas Promenade Escarpment Cliff Summit Stability.

 

LIDAR Survey & VSSA Leas Cliff Summit & Escarpment
Having requested before Christmas under a Freedom Of Information Request from FHDC over the LIDAR Survey carried out during the Summer of 2024 on the Leas Escarpment Cliff face and the Visual Slope Stability Assessment, I can report we received a 71-page document report with diagrams, photos, and a lengthy written evidence analysis yesterday.
LIDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, is an active remote sensing system that can be used to measure vegetation height across wide areas. It can show us the topography, i.e. lay of the land beneath tree canopies and vegetation. 
 


 

A whistleblower employee at FHDC contacted us and told us we had to get our hands on this report, as basically their opinion was that they feared FHDC may be ignoring its findings and, crucially, its recommendations and doing what it seems to do best, i.e, nothing!
The report places much gravitas on the height and weight of the trees along the summit and mid-slopes of the Leas escarpment, the soil conditions, and the cliff face/hillside instability due to the amount of rainfall we get, which adds to its instability.
It gives dire warnings of more than the 2 locations on the FHDC's own report, where further landslides may well occur in the future, both of which we have extensively warned about in this Facebook Community Group warned about extensively. 
 

 
We recently asked under a Freedom of Information Request of FHDC to see the Tree Risk Assessment, that the council must surely have carried out on the whole of the Leas escarpment, the Leas Promenade summit, the cliff face, mid-slopes as far as can be visually seen, and the coastal park from the bottom of the Road of Remembrance south side, all the way westward to the Radnor Cliff end of the Leas Promenade.
Finally, FHDC told me they could not let me have copies of any Risk Assessments, as inspection dates are recorded on software that is not publicly accessible, within a remote third-party database that is not extractable.
We disagree that what can be uploaded onto a 3rd party database can surely also be downloaded. What don't FHDC want us to see exactly?
 

 The report mentioned in the timetable above is a landslide that occurred back in 1985 at these coordinates, Easting 622510 and Northing 135548, which we Googled to see what result we might get.
 
It pinpoints an area on the Escarpment Cliff Face directly in front of the Southcliff Hotel where we believe another partial slide occurred sometime in 2024.
 
We can find nothing about this Landlside in 1985 on the Council's website or by Google and so have nothing to go on.
 
What we do know is that sometime in 1981, the Leas Cliff Theater was closed for some time whilst the Leas Cliff Cafe and Box Office were constructed. Could it be possible that at the same time they widened and strengthened the service road down to the Leas Cliff Hall, which might have weakened the cliff face, contributing to the eventual landslide there in 1985?
 
 The only other time this service road might have seen extensive works done to it was back in 199,9 when work was carried out to create the Channel Suite.
 
 
  The landslide here in 1985 might be the reason the steep pathway from the Coastal Park up to the Leas Promenade via the service road to the east of the Leas Cliff Hall was closed to the public and has never reopened.
 
 
 

 You have to sometimes wonder at the credibility of some reports and surveys if the company, such as this one, EPS Environmental Protection Strategies Ltd., can't even get the date correct when it was given the commission to carry out this survey by FHDC. It had to have been April 2024, a few months after all the landslides, and not April 2022, almost 2 years before they occurred.
 
The survey actually took place on the 10th May 2024. 
 
Plus, having been given this commission to carry out this survey, would you not have thought the company would have made sure that FHDC gave them access to the Road of Remembrance site and opened up the fencing to allow them to survey the area? 
 
 
 
 Join us on our Facebook Group Protect & Preserve The Folkestone Leas
 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/746105824775303
 

Location: Folkestone, UK

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