Work has continued apace on the long-awaited restoration of Queen’s Pier.

Contractors Lunt & Sons of Douglas have removed and replaced the rotten lintels in the entrance building with rolled steel joists, which will make the buildings structurally safer.

There was a ’restricted access’ placed on the building by the Department of Infrastructure until this job was completed and passed by building regulation officers.

The larger rotten lintel is estimated to weigh one ton.

Security cameras have now been installed and there are eight in total in various places around the pier.

Gate number 3 has been removed from its original position at the pier apron to bay four allowing repairs to be carried out to first three bays.

Volunteers from the Queen’s Pier Restoration Trust says stripping of the deck and supporting timbers on bay 1 will start as soon as the scaffold platform has been completed.

They say the original iron girders and structure will remain in place to ensure stability of the pier structure, and maintain a connection to the land via the promenade wall to prevent any movement of the pier.

But they say that if any movement of the pier had taken place over the years, then it would have become evident by now with a staining of the iron structure, and gaps within it would have appeared.

No such movement of the structure, the seabed or the piles supporting the pier legs has been detected.

Volunteers have begun refurbishing the original Opepe teak planks, lifted from bay 1 in rotten areas.

These are being sanded down to a good surface, and coated with Danish oil.

Random lengths will be used in future to make the pier safer by filling in the holes in the deck beyond bay 3.

The volunteers’ trust last month signed a five-year lease with the government that will allow them to begin work.

Planners have approved the Queen’s Pier Restoration Trust’s application to restore the first three bays. Some £60,000 is needed for the work on the pier’s first bay.