Tens of thousands of tonnes of sea defence rock will be shipped to Norfolk’s coast by barge in the run up to Christmas, while a sister operation pumps huge quantities of sand from the seabed to build up the beaches.

The multi-million pound project will beef up and repair both the soft and hard defences around Waxham, Horsey, Winterton, Sea Palling and Eccles as contractors Team Van Oord carry out the work on behalf of the Environment Agency.

Although the news of strengthened defences has been welcomed, the detail of the wider management of such projects has been criticised by campaigners, as has the location from where the sand is being dredged.

The project will see 280,000 cubic metres of sand used to recharge the beaches at Sea Palling and Waxham, while 30,000 tonnes of rock will be brought to Eccles and Horsey.

The sand will be dredged from the seabed approximately 10 miles offshore between Yarmouth and Lowestoft and piped ashore.

The recharging project was launched in the mid 1990s as part of a wider scheme which saw nine granite offshore reefs built at Sea Palling and Waxham to protect the Broads - resulting in altered patterns of longshore drift and the starvation of sand supplies to beaches to the south of the reefs.

The recharging was controversially shelved in 2005 after Defra withdrew Environment Agency funding. That funding has now been made available again.

Rock will be used to build ten groynes between Horsey Ness and Winterton Ness Gap to replace failed timber or rock groynes.

Surplus rock buried under the beach will also be excavated for reuse, while a 275 metre stretch of rock revetment at Eccles will be reconstructed.

Last night, Malcolm Kerby of the Happisburgh based Coastal Concern Action Group, said the beach recharging was happening at a stage when it was “utterly urgent”, but he said the decision to dredge so close to the coast was “madness”.

“The Dutch are the world’s masters in this and they have a simple rule - don’t dredge within 15 miles of the coast or you risk increasing erosion rates.

“Are we barking mad? It’s too close.”

Mr Kerby was also critical of the project not taking into account Happisburgh, especially the area called Low Light, which has long been considered a key ‘back door’ to the Broads.

“Any defences for this bit of coast are a good thing, of course they are,” he said.

“But the one place that’s most vulnerable, the Achilles heel if you like, is at Low Light, where no money has been spent for half a century, and you have yet another example of totally bonkers coastal mismanagement by the government.

“If you wrote down what the government have been doing with our coast, you would be accused of making it up - no one would believe you.”

An Environment Agency spokesman said last night: “It is more environmentally friendly to bring the rock in by sea rather than by road or train.

“Delivery dates for the rock will begin in early October.”

Story by Ed Foss in the Eastern Daily Press