Worthing’s only public slipway left ‘buried under shingle’

A keen Worthing sailor is calling on the council to clear the town’s only public slipway so that it can be used by boat owners, says the Worthing Herald.

Paul Devereux says the slipway in Goring is ‘neglected and buried under more than one metre of shingle, rendering it quite unusable’.

He discovered it that way when he took his dinghy there some weeks ago, hoping to enjoy a day out on the water with his family. Instead they had to turn around and go home.

With his sailing holiday in Greece cancelled due to Covid-19, he had been looking forward to taking his boat out into the sea – but has not been able to do so.

“It’s a nice slipway, it’s quite broad, but they’ve just failed to maintain it,” Devereux says.

“Worthing tries to promote itself as a coastal seaside town with leisure activities for boats. But there’s not one available public slipway in the whole town, which is not really helpful.”

He believes it has been unusable for at least six or eight months, adding: “One would assume they would have cleared it by summer.”

Devereux, who grew up in Worthing and has lived in the town off and on for 50 years, contacted the council about the issue – and was not satisfied when its replies blamed the lack of maintenance on recent storms and the pandemic.

He called them ‘lame excuses’ and said it would only require one person in a bulldozer to shift the shingle.

The slipway has been obscured for months now, to the point where he said: “Some people don’t know it’s there. It needs to be looked at, not just for me but for everybody.”

A spokesman for Adur and Worthing Councils told the Worthing Herald: “During recent years, changes to coastal patterns offshore have resulted in shingle levels rising at the Goring end of the coastline.

“This has seen the flat section of the beach increase by 10 metres southwards making it increasingly difficult to clear and keep shingle off both the Marine Crescent and Sea Place boat ramps.

“We understand the frustration from some boat users and are currently investigating ways to resolve this issue moving forward.”