NEW hope came this week for the desperate residents of the crumbling East Cliff in Lyme Regis.

West Dorset District Council engineers have come up with a plan which could save the cliff from the landslip that is threatening to demolish it - and take people's homes along with it.

Plans are in place to reinforce the cliff as part of the massive ongoing engineering scheme to secure Lyme Regis, but engineers don't anticipate starting until April 2006, by which time residents of East Cliff fear their homes will have crumbled away.

Senior engineer with West Dorset District Council Keith Cole said this week: "The advance works that we've identified would give everyone on East Cliff a few years before we get on with the main scheme in 2006. It would reduce the risk that is there at the moment for a while."

Mr Cole said engineers were concerned about a manhole at Charmouth Road car park which led to a large pipe in the cliff and discharged surface water in to the sea. He said if measures weren't taken to strengthen the area, the pipe system could be lost in a landslip, "and the last thing you do with a landslip is lubricate it, " said Mr Cole.

He said that if the council were to carry out strengthening measures at Charmouth Road car park, they might be able to use the machinery while it was up there. This would reinforce the whole East Cliff area, including the garden of dog warden Derek Hallett, who has led the residents' campaign to safeguard their homes.

Mr Cole said: "The area below the car park is the area that residents have been anxious about in recent months. If we were to carry out the work at the car park, we could also put some piles in to the cliff, which would help to stabilise the whole area."

He explained that piles were huge concrete and steel pillars which bore deep into the ground and effectively underpinned the soft surface layer of the cliff.

The engineers' plan, together with a cost estimate, will now go to the district council's management committee, which will decide whether to present the plan to council members.

Mr Cole said it was a long way off from succeeding and would depend greatly on whether the district council was prepared to fund work like this in advance. He stressed that the district council did not have a statutory duty to fund stabilisation work for peoples homes. He said stability of a person's home was the responsibility of the home owner. Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin, who has been involved with the East Cliff residents campaign to save their homes, said the news was a step in the right direction.

He said: "The door, if not yet open, is ajar."