Folkestone’s new leisure pier at the harbour will be open in time for the summer holidays.

Work on the £4.5 million restoration of the harbour arm is progressing extremely well, albeit slightly behind schedule of the original timescale, according to owners Folkestone Harbour Company (FHC).

The company has revealed it hopes the pier will be open in the “latter part of July” – in time for the schools breaking up for summer.

Preparatory work behind the scenes for the remainder of the seafront redevelopment is likely to be ongoing for the rest of the year, with “serious building work” hopefully beginning next year, FHC told the Express.

Damian Collins, MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said after he was re-elected in last Thursday’s general election the seafront regeneration was one of his “key” targets during his next term.

Repairing and restoring the harbour arm to a high standard for people to visit and use has not been an easy task and has forced the time frame to be reviewed since work started last June.

Peter Bettley from FHC said: “We did hope it would be for the spring and early summer, but it’s not going to be. That’s because every time we thought we’d finished a problem, another would crop up.

“A lot of materials used when it was built are materials we’re not allowed to use any more.

“The structure is sound but it’s got to look good and the furniture on the place has got to withstand some pretty ferocious weather.

“The wood is finished, the stonework is finished and the lighting is up.

“It will be a challenge but we want it open for the majority of the school holidays.”

Entry to walk along the pier will be free and commercial space is still being planned as well as fitted out.

Mr Bettley added: "It will be free [to walk along] and there’s no financial benefit and it’s demonstrating to people we’re serious about the whole project.

“Once that’s done it will be another reason for people to come in to the town.

“There will be cafes but they won’t be there at the beginning,” he added. “There’s fitting out and necessary permissions to get depending on who was interested. There may be some pop up facilities there [this year].

“There’s still some work to do. We discovered some issues with the repairs on the concrete.”

Rather than pouring in new concrete to repair it, the pier has been filled in with stones.

“That’s put it back a little bit," he said.

One of the major restoration projects is preserving the character of the historic glass canopy where troops boarded military boats during the First World War to the battlefields in France and Belgium.

It is also going to see the Mole Cafe restored which was run by Folkestone sisters Margaret and Florence Jeffery to give soldiers a last cup of tea on British soil before heading off to war.

Mr Bettley added originally the pier was not going to be one of the first things FHC restored, but they hoped doing the work showed “we’re serious about the whole project”.

An application to review the harbour’s status is being considered by the government’s Marine Management Organisation, while negotiations are continuing with Network Rail, which currently owns the former ferry terminal station, for FHC to take over the site.

Mr Bettley said: “It will be probably next year before anything serious or what people see as serious building work simply because of the scale of the work.”