FARMERS and householders are today being urged to wake up to controversial plans that could lead to their properties being swamped with floodwater.

Objectors say it is not only East Yorkshire cliff-edge cottages that are threatened by the Environment Agency’s proposed abandonment of centuries-old coastal defences.

The Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy, coupled with a likely rise in sea levels, will mean thousands of acres of farmland and will be flooded regularly by the sea within 40 years. (more…)

YORKSHIRE has yet to wake up to the threat of the Humber Flood Risk Strategy, according to National Farmers’ Union secretary for Holderness Ed Davey.

He says farmers need to realise that it is not only cliff-edge cottages which are threatened by the Environment Agency’s proposed abandonment of coastal defences.

The strategy, combined with the likely rise in sea level, will mean thousands of hectares of farmland being flooded by the sea on a regular basis within 40 years – and many more could be hit by knock-on effects. (more…)

If my first day on the Holderness coast was odd, the second was utterly bizarre. In the early morning the coast was blanketed in a sea fog – or “fret” as they call it locally – and the dwellings along the cliff edge, which I got to see now from behind, were ramshackle, winnowed out by the gulf opening up in their former front gardens. And yet still people hung on here, despite the void encroaching beneath their feet. I headed south towards Hornsea, and passed through leisure park after leisure park, each one full of “static” (ha!) homes. (more…)

OFFICIAL plans that could result in Yorkshire’s sea defences being abandoned, leaving areas of top-quality farmland to the encroaching sea, will cost at least £70m each year in lost crops, campaigners are warning.

The Government is being accused of “lunatic short-term thinking” after its calculations showed the food production land lost each year to the sea would generate far more money for the economy than it would cost to protect it. (more…)

AN organisation that represents farmers and landowners in Scarborough has condemned plans to remove safeguards in the new public right of access to the English coast.

The Country and Land Business Association (CLA) says it is shocked that Natural England, the official conservation and wildlife body, wants to remove safeguards that would have stopped the public walking across private gardens and parks.

The rural economy experts say it is “astonishing” that Natural England told the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee it had drawn up a map showing up to 5,000 gardens and parks could be hit.

A spokesman for the regional CLA covering Yorkshire, said: “It is extraordinary that Natural England thinks this is an acceptable way to act. We find it outrageous that the right of householders to enjoy the privacy of their own coastal gardens is at threat.”

At the meeting Natural England said rural property owners would just have to “trust” them on being fair in the implementation of the coastal access plans published recently in the draft Marine Bill.

Story by Trevor Hayes on the Scarborough Evening News website

FARMERS have vowed to continue their fight against plans to allow large parts of Holderness to be claimed by the sea.

National Farmers’ Union (NFU) chiefs attended a meeting in Patrington to see first-hand the impact Environment Agency and Natural England plans would have on farmland.

The NFU claims environmental issues have changed and, with world food shortages, ensuring sustainable food sources has become a priority.

Holderness is known as the bread basket of Yorkshire and is thought to be one of the best wheat-producing areas in the country.

But the agency wants to allow the sea to run further inland to create mudflats for birds.

Read the full story on Hull Daily Mail website

According to the government’s countryside advisors, Natural England, for an island nation like Britain it should be a basic human right to have access to virtually every inch of coast. The idea is that anyone should be able to go to the coast, turn left or right and be able to walk on a continuous footpath as far as they wish.

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And so new legislation to create a footpath round the whole 2,500-mile coastline of England will be featured in the Queen’s Speech later this year. The Marine and Coastal Access Bill will extend the principle of open access over large areas of England’s uncultivated fells and moors which came into effect a few years ago under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.

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But the biggest challenge provided by the Holderness Coast to the idea of a footpath around the whole of England is that this is one of the fastest-eroding shores in Europe. Any new footpath in Holderness would be a case of now you see it, now you don’t.

That will not mean that the public right of access is washed away, according to Natural England. The right will simply “roll back” from the clifftop to the best, and the safest, available route.

Read the full article by Roger Ratcliffe on the Yorkshire Post website

Earlier this week 57 Knipe Point Drive was a two-bedroom bungalow on a clifftop estate worth about £150,000. This morning the house is probably worth next to nothing, even though it boasts a new sea view extending for miles over the woodland and shingle of National Trust-owned Cayton Bay on the Yorkshire coast.

Diggers have demolished two bungalows that stood between number 57 and the cliff edge. The move prevented the houses following in the wake of their well-kept gardens and patios, which plunged 30 metres into the bay below, leaving the hamlet one of the most precarious in the UK. Dramatic landslips caused by unexplained water saturation in the cliff have claimed about seven metres of land at Knipe Point over the past month, and demolition has created a gap in the lines of bright white homes that were worth a total of around £9m.

Read the full story by Fay Schlesinger on the Guardian website