The final safety checks are being carried out and council and contractors are meeting to decide if Bournemouth’s much anticipated surf reef can officially be declared ‘open’.

Experts from Plymouth University will check it performs in the way it should before the final payment is made to contractor ASR. The sum is 10 per cent of the original £1.5million fee to build the reef, although this has since increased to £3.03m.

The university experts will conduct site visits and collect data from on-site cameras to monitor the shape and power of breaking waves. They will also keep tabs on the number of surfable days and the number of surfers at both the pier and reef areas, compared with previous years.

The council are keen to stress that the surf reef is not a wave machine. It doesn’t create waves from nothing, but acts as a ramp, pushing existing waves upwards and shaping them into better quality surfing waves. It will only make a difference on days where there is already good size swell occurring naturally. But in the surf season (September through to April), it will mean more surfable days, more surfable waves and a better quality, consistent break.