The rising cost of building materials will affect future works on one of the island’s most prominent landmarks.

This week Lieutenant Governor Sir John Lorimer and Lady Lorimer made their first official visit to the Queen’s Pier in Ramsey, and were impressed by the progress made by the Queen’s Pier Restoration Trust.

Sir John said: ’The pier is iconic, not just for Ramsey but for the whole island.

’And therefore it’s wonderful to see the work that’s been done on it.

’It sets a mark down to everyone, [saying] that "it can be done", and it’s a terrific example of what people can do with the enthusiasm and desire to make something good like this - and we should rejoice in it.’

Having started work in 2018, the trust recently received planning permission to progress with stage two of the project.

Graham Curphey, a trustee, and treasurer for the trust, explained just what this means: ’The second phase is another five bays.

’What we’re doing now is we’re doing the first two bays of those five, and we’re now in the middle of getting the scaffold fitted.

’And once that’s done we can get the steel fabricators in to do their surveys, and we can get the steel built and over here probably [by spring] - that’s the time span.

Asked whether they had been impacted by material shortages caused by the pandemic, Mr Curphey said: ’Well, it’s not been that bad so far.

’We’ve actually bought the steel, and that now sits at the fabricators in Glasgow.

’We’ve also bought all the wood that sits on top of the steel, and we’ve ordered and paid for the planks.

’But the point is, it has gone up 50, 60, 70% from what we’d done on phase one (which was completed in July).

’And just this morning we were looking at the cost of screws.

’We use thousands of screws along it [the pier], and they’ve more than doubled in price - so that’s affecting our available cash, as you can imagine.’

When asked whether he thought this was an example of charities and trusts having to do the work which perhaps should be done by the government, Mr Curphey said: ’That is fair to say, but we really can’t get too political on this, because the government owns the pier and we merely lease it from them. But there is no public money at all.

’We are ever so grateful for the continued support from the community.

’And once we’d put bays four and five decking planks up for sale [for the public to sponsor], most of them went in a week - that’s a phenomenal response, not only from across the island but also from the adjacent island as well [Britain].’

Talking about the support that continues to pour in, Queens Pier fundraiser Pauline Johns-Garrett said: ’It’s going very well, it slowed right up during lockdown and Covid, but we recently had a coffee morning and we raised £1,299 in two hours.

She also noted that the Manx Lottery Trust had recently given the group £50,000, and that passers by would often stop by the pier’s site office and give envelopes with ’a thousand pounds here, a thousand pounds there’ to fund the restoration.