FURIOUS residents are threatening legal action after their homes were blocked following a massive landslip.
Tonnes of rubble and earth crashed down seafront slopes at Peterhead, leaving the 65ft embankment unstable and jeopardising nearby houses and businesses.
Part of Mackenzie Crescent at the top of the cliffs has been fenced off since the incident, which happened exactly two years ago.
Last month, Aberdeenshire councillors rejected calls to spend £610,000 to safeguard the site and re-open the road – instead opting to have the street closed off permanently.
Now the council is facing a legal challenge from angry residents who say the move has devalued their homes and made them near-impossible to insure. A group of about 40 neighbours have banded together and asked solicitors in Edinburgh for advice on how to force the council to rethink its plan.
The local authority does not own the land, but drew up emergency proposals to secure the site in early 2012.
Originally it was thought the job would cost just over £200,000 – but the estimate soared to more than three times that sum earlier this year.
Resident Linda Smith said the rising bill was no excuse for inaction.
“Aberdeenshire Council originally said they would rectify the landslide, but since the cost has dramatically gone up, they’ve decided to walk away from it and not do anything,” she said.
“This puts us in a hellish situation.
“We tried to move our house insurance and we’ve been declined because, we’ve been told, we’re now living in a high-risk flood area.” She said it would be very difficult to sell any of the properties around the roadblock.
“Nobody in their right mind would buy a house round here now,” she added.
Another resident, Anne Watt, said: “We’ve been in touch with a solicitor in Edinburgh who specialises in this type of case.
“We need to speak this over with her and see what our next course of action will be. We can’t stand back and do nothing.”
Residents, who said they had been kept in the dark throughout the mostly private negotiations, said the ground has visibly moved in the past two years.
Locals will be consulted in the new year about plans to close off the road. Concrete bollards are proposed for one end of the street, with collapsible ones – which can be taken down to allow access to emergency vehicles – at the other end.
Peterhead councillor Stephen Smith, who opposed the road closure plan and campaigned for the cliffs to be made stable, said last night: “I’ve argued strongly that Aberdeenshire Council should carry out remedial works, given that we have an engineer’s report stating that the slope is unlikely to offer continued support to the carriageway of Mackenzie Crescent.
“Unfortunately, the administration group opposed that and voted it down, opting instead to simply ‘stop up’ Mackenzie Crescent and take no further action.
“I believe this is a false economy and will cost more to deal with in the longer term.”
A council spokesman said Councillor Smith’s motion was defeated in a 36-28 vote by an amendment by Councillor Jim Gifford who said the £20,000 road closure plan was “a sensible, pragmatic solution”. Councillor Martin Kitt-Hayes supported the cheaper option, arguing the council could not fund the works when costs had risen to £600,000 and could still rise further.