The article in the Independent seems to have hit a nerve - here’s a summary of recent comments and reactions:From the East Anglian Daily Times “Campaigners’ fury over coastal defence”:

Graham Henderson, chairman of Suffolk Coast Against Retreat (SCAR), said monitoring of the coastline should continue for 20 years and said Lord Smith’s comments were negative.

“We do not believe there is sufficient knowledge with regard to climate change and the predicted sea level rises. We want 20 years of maintaining what we have on the coastline of Suffolk and East Anglia and the whole of the UK until more knowledge has been gained.”

He added: “We have always said that we need time and to take an attitude of abandonment to the coastline is very negative. They do not know the outcome of abandoning part of the coastline because water has a habit of finding its way into all sorts of places once the sea defence has gone.”

David Andren, chairman of the Alde and Ore Association, said the group would be looking for a meeting with Lord Smith. “We are obviously alarmed by these comments. It is disappointing as there was some indication that DEFRA and the Environment Agency were beginning to pursue a different plan and Barbara Follett (East of England minister) said plans to abandon flood defences would not go-ahead without the support of the community. This seems to be a backward step. It seems the Environment Agency is going back to taking a hard line approach.”

Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer, a former Secretary of State for the Environment, added: “Chris Smith’s wide ranging speech must be taken seriously. The government must listen to the concerns of the people of Suffolk and the rest of the east coast. We want managed defence, not managed retreat. This must not be the first government in history to abandon Britain to the sea.”

Lord Smith said the agency would publish details next year of the work that has been done and where it thinks the threats to the coastline are. He said the Environment Agency would talk to communities where it thinks defence is not a viable option.

A spokesman for the Environment Agency said it would be investing more than £27m on the East Anglian coast this year.

“Lord Smith has again drawn attention to the fact that, as a nation, we have to make hard decisions about how to deal with the problem of coastal erosion and sea level rise. He is highlighting the need for government to consider the major implications that changes to our coastline could have and look seriously at how we deal with these in the longer term.

“In the East of England we continue, as we have for the past few years, to be in discussion with local communities about how we manage shorelines and we have already published or are talking to people about plans for flood risk management in their area.”

In the West Morning News “Halting coastal erosion ‘impossible’”:

SEASIDE areas across the Westcountry will have to abandoned within two or three generations because the cost of protecting them from coastal erosion is too high, the new chief of the Environment Agency has warned.

The sea will reclaim vast stretches of the UK’s coastline, with some vulnerable sections of the coast in this region evacuated and left to the mercy of the sea, according to Lord Smith of Finsbury.

His doom-laden predictions warn the Government and local councils face tough choices over which areas of coast to defend and which to leave to the water.

The Environment Agency in the Westcountry says places like Slapton Sands and Dawlish Warren in South Devon, Porlock in West Somerset, sections of the South West Coast Path and the Jurassic Coast all face chronic erosion problems.

From Hull “Erosion victims should get compensation”:

OFFICIALS have welcomed a move to consider compensating homeowners who lose their properties to coastal erosion.

It comes after the new head of the Environment Agency suggested residents should be “rehoused at the taxpayer’s expense”.

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His comments were today welcomed by officials at East Riding Council.

Councillor Jonathan Owen, portfolio holder for Policy, Performance and Local Strategic Partnership, said: “For years we have been saying families who are losing their homes to the sea should have compensation paid to some degree.

“Now this is being backed by Lord Smith, head of the Environment Agency, and I hope the Government listens to what he has to say.”