BOAT users have been badly let down over a £400,000 scheme to build a new slipway.

The accusation came from former river boatman and ferryman Kevin Pyne who is furious over the way the 'desperately needed' Dartmouth public slipway project has been put back time and again.

And while Dartmouth district councillor Hilary Bastone has said the project is 'not dead', he admitted it is unlikely to go ahead this year.

The project, to build the town's first new public slipway in 50 years, has run into problems from escalating costs to Natural England's concerns about the riverbed habitat of the protected tentacled lagoon worm.

South Hams Council said: 'It has not been included in this year's capital programme but we are hoping to include it in next year's programme.

'We are looking at different designs and to contributors to help offset the cost. In the end we may be able to produce a much better solution. We do not want to lose sight of the project but we are looking at other ways of trying to achieve a good, new public slipway.'

Boat users need a new public slipway because the old one next to the Higher Ferry slipway is falling apart and was declared too narrow for safe launching operations.

South Hams Council put together a scheme to build a new slipway next to the old one – which was due to go ahead early last year.

It even got as far as boat owners being asked to move their craft stored on Coronation Park next to the slipway to make room for construction equipment.

But then the concerns over the five-inch protected lagoon worm sparked off a special survey.

Although the survey failed to find any of the protected worms in the area where the slipway is to be built, the need to redesign the slipway so it could be built on stilts shoved the costs up beyond the council's £400,000 budget.

The council then announced it hoped to get the slipway built at the same time as the £1m scheme to rebuild the two Lower Ferry slipways at Kingswear and Dartmouth.

The ferry slipway work is now under way but the public slipway has still not been started.

Mr Pyne said that Dartmouth desperately needed a new public slipway.

'I feel that I and Dartmouth have been let down over this. I think we both have been the victim of false promises,' he added.

And he blamed the last-minute delays on 'some bunch of tree- hugging turn-ups who managed to stop the work because they thought that they found a rare worm but, as it turns out, it had already cleared off'.

Cllr Bastone said that in the end the estimates for the project had come in too high and added: 'What the council is doing now is trying to put together a better package. It is not dead.'