FLOOD defences and the future shape of the Dorset coastline will come under the spotlight with a series of road shows next week.

Residents across Purbeck, Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and the New Forest have been invited to view the Shoreline Management Plan (SMS), which covers the coastline from Hurst Spit to Durlston Head.

The blueprint, which is now being consulted on, is one of 49 plans across the country which will help the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs form their flood and coastal defence strategies for decades to come.

It takes on particular significance this week after the devastation caused by widespread flooding in Cumbria. (more…)

A leading Norfolk coastal campaigner says the county’s cause has been helped through brief encounters with senior government and opposition ministers on successive days.

Today Malcolm Kerby had a fleeting meeting with Conservative shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert during the MP’s flying visit to Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex for a fact-finding tour about coastal defences.

And yesterday he had a 45-minute session with Defra environment minister Hugh Irranca-Davies in London, to discuss funding issues. (more…)

RESIDENTS living on the east coast have been given the chance to have their say and find out more about future plans for developing coastal areas and managing flooding issues.

Partner agencies representing the Lincolnshire Coastal Study and two ongoing Shoreline Management Plan reviews in the county were present at a joint event at the Coronation Hall in Wainfleet. Consultation events also took place in Skegness and Chapel St Leonards.

The events form part of a public consultation period for the Shoreline Management Plans which will help define how coastal defences are managed over the next 100 years. (more…)

Residents of Walney’s West Shore Park fear coastal erosion at Earnse Bay will eventually lead to their chalets being flooded.

Two years ago, temporary flood defences were put in place to protect the park.

Now government organisation Natural England has met with members of Barrow Borough Council and the owners of the park, Embra, to discuss how to build long term protection for the Earnse Bay residents.

Chris Lumb, marine delivery leader for Natural England said: “It was a very helpful and constructive meeting. (more…)

A Suffolk man has lodged an appeal against a court ruling that he needs planning permission for sea defences to protect his home.

Peter Boggis, 78, installed his own defences near his Easton Bavents home, but Natural England wanted the fossil-bearing cliffs to erode naturally.

In October, the Court of Appeal said Mr Boggis must apply for planning permission for the protection.

Now he has asked the Supreme Court if he can appeal against the ruling. (more…)

As reported in Construction News and numerous other sources:

Dungeness in Kent has been dropped from a Government list of potential locations for new nuclear power stations.

The location, which was one of eleven sites nominated by industry in March, was not listed in the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s draft National Policy Statements consultation, which opened today (9th November).

Concerns about how to mitigate potential environmental impacts at the site, coastal erosion and associated flood risk were among the reasons. (more…)

Rob Young (coastal planner at North Norfolk District Council) looks for a new approach to coastal planning in the New Planning Policy on Development and Coastal Change consultation paper – article published in the Town & Country Planning Association Journal, October 2009

The coast is dynamic. That is, it changes – with the tides, with the seasons and with the climate; and so too should our approach to it, or so claims the recent Consultation on Coastal Change Policy, issued by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). This article explores some of the issues facing planners in coastal areas and examines the response to them in the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG’s) Consultation Paper on a New Planning Policy on Development and Coastal Change.

The construction of coast erosion and flood defences over the years has created the impression that resisting the action of the sea in particular locations will somehow achieve a static state within which we can act with certainty about the future. In the face of sea level rise, however, it has become all too apparent that this is a false assumption, and ‘coastal change’ has for the last two decades become an increasingly common phrase.

Many of our coastal resort towns grew in the 19th and 20th centuries behind flood and coastal defences (and the promenades that went with them) first engineered by wealthy Victorians. This was obviously not the first time the natural line of our coast had been manipulated; however, it was the Victorians who created, on a large scale at least, the process which is perhaps the root of many of the coastal challenges we face today: the cycle of defend-develop-defend. But protected settlements are only secure from erosion if the defences can be maintained, which with rising sea level becomes technically more challenging and increasingly more expensive to achieve.

Read the full article

Home owners who face losing their East Anglian properties to coastal erosion were offered the hope of receiving proper compensation last night.

The chairman of the Environment Agency has suggested that the government sets up a buy and lease scheme along the region’s coast.

Lord Smith said that authorities such as North Norfolk District Council should be given funding to purchase and then lease back up to 250 homes that are likely to fall into the sea in the next 20 years. (more…)

The chairman of the Environment Agency Lord Smith has unveiled a radical plan to help hundreds of homeowners threatened by coastal erosion.

The coastlines of Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire have been particularly vulnerable to the sea with many losing their homes without compensation.

Lord Smith has told BBC Look East local councils should buy up homes threatened by the sea and then lease them back. (more…)

GEOFFREY Cox, MP for Torridge & West Devon, attended a meeting with the Northam Burrows 1716 Committee and local Councillor Andrew Eastman, to discuss the erosion of the sea defences at Westward Ho! and Northam Burrows.

The 1716 Committee, which is predominately made up of graziers and commoners, expressed substantial anxiety that the work to recharge the pebble ridge to protect the Burrows from erosion had not gone forward.

Geoffrey Cox said:: “Those at the meeting gave me a lively account of their concerns for the Burrows and it was very useful to learn of the perspective of the 1716 Committee. The Burrows are a precious resource for our local community and it is essential that all parties work together to preserve and improve them. I will do all that I can to promote their welfare.” (more…)