Hundreds of homes on cliffs around Britain should be bought by the Government because climate change is accelerating the pace of coastal erosion, according to the head of the Environment Agency.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Smith of Finsbury said that some parts of the coastline were now impossible to defend and it was unfair that people should lose their homes through no fault of their own.

Local authorities should be given the funding to buy vulnerable houses at a rate based on their original value rather than the market value, he said. They would then lease them back to the owners until the property became uninhabitable.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been considering the idea but has not in the past been keen on a plan that could cost up to £400 million.

The Environment Agency is now working with local authorities to identify the most vulnerable areas and draw up plans to evacuate people from houses that are likely to fall into the sea over the next 20 years. Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire coasts are most at threat, Lord Smith said.

“There will be parts of the coast that can’t in perpetuity be defended. We can’t build a concrete wall around the whole of England,” the former Culture Secretary, said.

According to estimates by the Environment Agency, there are 200-250 properties that are likely to fall into the sea over the next 20 years. Defra estimates that another 2,000 — worth £400 million — are “at risk”.

“I would very much like to see the Government develop a sale-and-lease-back scheme,” Lord Smith said. “You are talking about the permanent loss of someone’s property through no fault of their own, sometimes the property has been in a family for several generations.”

The Environment Agency is now drawing up shoreline management plans for every part of the coastline, in consultation with local authorities.

A Defra spokesman said: “We have recently consulted on proposals to provide homeowners who lose a property to erosion with demolition and moving costs up to £6,000 a property.”

Story in the Times