WEST Bay's £18million sea defence scheme has come through its first big test with flying colours.

As the worst storm in more than a quarter of a century battered coastal towns and villages across the westcountry the resort escaped virtually unscathed.

The new West Pier and beach defences stood firm as winds of up to 80mph and ferocious seas smashed harbour walls and brought flooding to communities throughout the region on Wednesday.

Fishermen's leader David Sales said the storm was about the biggest you could get - but the new defences had proved more than a match.

"You can only say that Costains have done a superb job for us," he said. "It has really worked well.

"Apart from 1987 when we got the tail end of a hurricane you would not get a much more severe storm than that with strong winds, a high tide and a heavy groundswell coming in off the Atlantic.

"We got a few pebbles coming over but the new pier and the replenished west beach worked really well compared to what used to happen. We should be really thankful it is there now. "I couldn't believe how quiet the harbour was inside. This was its first big test and they have done a really super job. It is money well spent."

Assistant harbourmaster James Radcliffe confirmed that the new defences had held up very well. There was much less damage than usual after such a big storm.

"We have been clearing up a bit of debris on the West prom but it is nothing really," he said. "We have been very lucky."

Nick Browning, West Dorset District Council's principal engineer, said: "Yesterday's storm conditions were the strongest test so far of the new structures in the outer harbour.

"I'm pleased to say they performed as they were designed to, and conditions in the inner harbour were much calmer than they would have been previously."

But sea defences at the Freshwater Caravan Park were breached by the storm. The exceptionally high tides coupled with increased river levels brought flooding to the lower field at the site.

A spokeswoman said Environment Agency staff had spent the past few days beefing up the floodbank there ahead of the forecast storms.

"No one has suffered any damage and no caravans have been flooded," she said. "It is just basically water in the lower fields and we don't book that land out anyway - so we are quite happy."

At Seatown the car park was flooded and the attendant's hut ended up on its roof in the river. Park attendant Carol Sawyer said it was quite a dramatic sight.

* The design of West Bay's sea defence scheme was agreed following wave tests on a £95,000 scale model at the Hydraulics Research centre at Wallingford in Oxfordshire.