AS A SURFER, Sean Gardiner has everything but the wave. “All the gear but no idea!” scoffs his friend Lizzie as he topples off his new board in the shallows. Gardiner, 37, is strictly a “grem-lin” — an L-plate surfer who is unlikely to improve if he remains on the “ankle busters” of waves lapping the beach at Boscombe, the Dorset resort just east of Bournemouth.

But the good news is that a reef made of sand-filled bags will be in place 250 yards offshore, alongside Boscombe Pier, by August. It will create waves about 13ft high — big enough to make surfing worthwhile — and should turn 77 good surfing days a year into more than 150.

This £1.4 million engineering project is a critical part of a seafront regeneration scheme in Boscombe that is aimed at a new breed of property buyer, of which Gardiner is typical. Young, successful, with plenty of disposable income, they are the “stockbroker surfers”. The rationale behind the project, as outlined by Mark Smith, the head of tourism at Bournemouth Borough Council, seems to make perfect sense. The days when surfers were adolescent beach bums are long gone. Unpeel today’s surfing dude or dudette from a wetsuit at, say, Polzeath or Watergate Bay in Cornwall, and you will quite likely find a London City banker down for the weekend. “We have liaised with the people who have made surfing a vital factor in the regeneration of Newquay and we are going to follow their example,” says Smith.

So the reef will make the waves, while a cool £11 million is being invested in sprucing up the pier, parks and the promenade, creating restaurant space and building upmarket beach huts to be hired by the day. Barratt is stumping up £9 million of this money in payment for an underused car park where it is building a block of 169 apartments. “Bournemouth University estimates that property here will increase by 5 per cent a year over and above the expected rate of appreciation when we have finished the improvements,” says Smith. But the scale of regeneration needed at Boscombe is not to be underestimated. Lying to the east of Bournemouth’s 7½-mile-long beach, the town was fashionably genteel in Victorian times, peaked in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, then sank with the coming of cheap package holidays in the early 1970s. Today charity shops and cheap stores abound, and the crime rate is high.

BACKGROUND

• The cost of a sea view

• Bargains on the coast

• FOCUS ON . . . TRURO

• Do floods scupper sales?

• Once more unto the beach

Seaside house prices soar

City-dwellers driving up property prices by the sea

• The boom town rocks

BACKGROUND

• From winos to wine bars

BACKGROUND

• Ramsgate rules

• Shoreham gets trendy

• The coast’s next wave

• House Hunter: Sideways to Brighton

• A change in the tide

BACKGROUND

• Focus on . . . Exeter

• Between Rock and a hard place

• Focus on property in Taunton

• Focus on: Gloucester

BACKGROUND

• A new star rises

• Bargains in paradise

• The ten most expensive places to live in Britain

• Cornish dream

BACKGROUND

• Row your boat home

• A view to a killing

• Can't afford Salcombe?

• New faith in cathedral city

• A perfect pitch

Nevertheless, property prices in Boscombe have risen by 28.9 per cent in the past four years, according to Hometrack.

So what attracts Sean Gardiner to Boscombe? “I’m starting up a new career as a photographer, which means I need to be near London. At just over 100 miles, Boscombe is ideal and it also has an international airport on the doorstep.” Gardiner has bought a two-bedroom apartment in The Reef complex, a development of luxury apartments built in a horseshoe shape so that many have sea views. Prices range from £250,000 to £925,000. Gardiner, who bought one off-plan last year in the £350,000-£380,000 price range, has seen its value appreciate by 10 per cent already. “If you equate Sandbanks to Mayfair in London, then Boscombe is Camden,” he says. “It’s edgy, but there’s also an arty, village vibe. It is good value for money.”

The buy-to-let market here is booming. Julian Hewlett, manager of Taylor Viscount estate agents, said: “You can pick up a good two-bed flat, just back from the seafront, for about £170,000 to £180,000 and it will let for about £650plus a month.”

Local people are wary of expecting too much of new council schemes, but the early signs are that the Boscombe Reef will be a winner. The opera house, with its sleek Art Deco-style interiors, is to reopen in June, and two high-street coffee chains are coming soon. The Reef: 01202 557766. Barratt’s Honeycombe Beach: 023-8076 9988. For examples of Sean Gardiner’s work go to www.seangardiner.co.uk Design your own modern pier: a competition by the British Urban Regeneration Association. See www.bura.org.uk (click on seaside network)

SEASIDESPECIAL

SINCE the decline of seaside towns, many have attracted low-grade development by small outfits or ambitious local builders. The future seems brighter, however; with pressure on the public to become carbon neutral, minds are set on holidays at home. In June 2006 BURA (the British Urban Regeneration Association) launched its Seaside Network, connecting local authorities with developers and community groups. The results are very encouraging:

Lytham St Annes, near Blackpool, has completed its regeneration project. It has revitalised the town, recovering the Victorian character of the resort. Government and lottery funding worth £4 million has attracted £20 million of private investment.

Scarborough and Filey are two coastal towns working together to promote each other.

Whitby Harbour is under huge redevelopment. The aim is for completion of such Yorkshire coastal towns by 2010.

Rhyl and Margate, both with problems of high unemployment and deprivation, have strategies and teams in place and are in the initial stages of their regeneration projects. LORNA BLACKWOOD

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