COUNCILLORS have voted to improve Weymouth’s flood defences.

Members of Weymouth and Portland Borough Council’s management committee approved an option to investigate improving the town harbour’s defensive sea walls and tidal barrier.

One of the options presented in an officers’ report before the meeting was to ‘move the town centre’.

Committee vice-chairman Coun Mike Goodman said: “I can’t believe there’s anybody around this table that believes we should abandon the town centre – so we can throw out the option of ‘doing nothing’.

“Right now we’re held to ransom – we’ve got no strategy. Let’s make a decision and stop going round and round in circles.”

Roger Allen said some of the information he had read on Weymouth’s flood protection scheme had been ‘extremely alarming’.

But he also expressed concerns over the way the council had been informed about the town’s flood defences and the way the authority has been asked to set a policy.

He added: “We’re being told we’ve got to sign up to something that might put a barrier across the harbour.”