Overview

• The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded £5.5m to North Somerset Council, building on a £10m grant made last year.
• The new funding fills the shortfall created when the RNLI quit the project in June after viability concerns and stepped back from a planned lifeboat base.
• Total external funding now exceeds £20m, with additional support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the UK government and Historic England.
• Work on the pier structure is scheduled to begin by the end of 2025 and is expected to take just over a year, with completion targeted by the end of 2026.
• Birnbeck Pier is the UK’s only pier that links the mainland to an island, has been closed since 1994 and has been on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register since 1998.