Inevitably the Kelling to Lowestoft Ness Second Generation Shoreline Management Plan (SMP2) has reared its ugly head again. This time it takes the form of a consultation on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the SMP2.

Whilst this latest consultation is concerned solely with the SEA it is, quite understandably, being interpreted by many local individuals and communities as a further ‘referendum’ on the SMP itself.

It is now almost six years since this particular SMP2 hit the press (Oct 04) and produced an absolutely unprecedented response (well over 2000 respondents) which expressed the stakeholders (public) utter revulsion and rejection of it and the policy path it proposed for many areas. There was and still remains no policy for or means of managing the consequences of its proposals.

Read Malcolm Kerby’s full comments on the CCAG Website

ANOTHER coastal community is rallying people to loudly oppose a high-level policy which they say threatens seaside homes and businesses.

Campaigners in Scratby this week joined those in Hopton in saying they had no intention of facing the future without a battle and have organised a public meeting in a bid to get more people voicing their concerns over the Shoreline Management Plan which is emerging from its final review.

According to some predictions more than 150 homes and businesses could be lost to erosion in the popular holiday village over the next 100 years, although a crucial funding decision on a £5m rock berm is in Government hands and officials -having spent around £200,000 working up the scheme – are hoping for a positive response. (more…)

The challenges of defending the Norfolk and Suffolk coast from the North Sea look set for another good airing in the coming months. ED FOSS examines the state of play of two key projects – the shoreline management plan for Kelling to Lowestoft and the Pathfinder schemes, which attracted millions of pounds of funding into East Anglia last winter.

Back in 2004, all hell was let loose when the Kelling to Lowestoft Ness shoreline management plan (SMP) was published in its first public draft form, suggesting some dramatic losses of land and homes along the coastline across the next century.

Following its traumatic arrival into the world, thousands of hours of work have been put into consultations, reports and meetings to try to bring the SMP to a standard acceptable to the mainly rural coastal communities which, at the time, justifiably feared they were about to be swept aside both literally by a pounding North Sea and metaphorically by a central government with a perceived urban focus.

The demand has, famously, been for communities facing losing homes and businesses to be guaranteed “social justice”, which in most cases constitutes financial compensation in all but name. (more…)

A controversial plan to deliberately breach a Wells flood bank has been discarded by environmental planners in response to a host of objections from landowners and townspeople.

The Environment Agency (EA) is finalising a draft shoreline management plan (SMP) designed to help the North Norfolk coast adapt to rising sea levels during the next century.

One of the ideas put forward was a £4.2m scheme to reconstruct Wells’ eastern defences further inland, allowing land behind the existing east bank to flood. (more…)

Villagers living on a stretch of crumbling coastline gathered this week to have their say on a vision for the future of the cliffs near their homes and businesses.

Corton Village Hall was the base for a display about the local shoreline management plan (SMP) and a new consultation to look at how the proposals might affect those living in the villages between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

The plan, which covers the coast from Kelling to Lowestoft Ness, proposes allowing the cliffs at Corton, and nearby Hopton, to erode more freely after the next 25 years. The SMP states that if the coastline at Corton is allowed to return to its natural alignment, longer term protection may then become more viable. (more…)

Hopton is aiming to swing a breaker’s ball through a coastal defence plan which suggests no defence.

Leaflets will be dropping on to more than 1,000 doormats urging villagers to take a stand against the Government’s Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) at a public meeting at Potters Leisure Resort on Thursday.

Its suggestion to abandon a huge stretch of the coast to the sea has caused a storm of protest. But Brian Hardisty, chairman of Hopton Coastal Action Group, says not enough people have woken up to the implications of the plan on house prices and the damage it could do to the tourist industry. (more…)

Historic seawalls at Cromer need £6.2m worth of repair work in the next two years, and double that figure to keep them in good shape for another century.

The multi-million pound bill comes as the town’s pier is also in line for £1m worth of urgent repairs.

More than a century of battering from the sand and flint-loaded waves has weakened the 110-year-old late Victorian sea walls.

Like the pier, the walls are not unsafe, but if nothing is done the walls will begin to fail – putting the promenade, pier access, and ultimately cliff top properties including hotels at risk, said North Norfolk District Council’s head of coastal strategy Peter Frew. (more…)

THE son of a Hampshire peer is leading the fight against a new action plan that has angered a group of coastal landowners.

The Hon Ralph Montagu says people living on privately owned sections of foreshore could be denied the right to defend their homes from the sea.

Coastal erosion is posing a threat to about 70 homes between Calshot and Lymington, including a beach house owned by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. (more…)

TWENTY years ago Professor David Bellamy was stood in a house on the east coast, which was about to fall into the North Sea.

Now, two decades later, the international environmentalist and television personality has seen first hand how coastal erosion has taken its toll.

Professor Bellamy was back in Tunstall, near Withernsea, after being invited to Sand-Le-Mere Holiday Park which has lost about 328ft (100 metres) of land since 1969. (more…)