More than 1,200 people made their views known about plans to tackle flood and erosion in West Sussex.

About 1,000 residents visited four exhibitions on the draft Pagham to East Head coastal defence strategy between May and August.

More than 200 residents also gave their comments separately.

The Environment Agency predicts that thousands of properties in low-lying areas could be affected by rising sea levels within the next century.

It said the feedback would be used to shape its final proposals to manage flood and erosion risks between Pagham Harbour and West Wittering, West Sussex, over the next 100 years.

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Piece on Happisburgh from the forthcoming Britain from Above series on BBC

The owners of about 40 homes perched on a cliff top in Dorset have been told their houses are at risk of falling into the sea over the next 20 years.

The residents, in the Old Castle Road area of Weymouth, have already had part of their gardens fall into the sea.

A survey to assess the risk was carried out by coastal engineers from the local authority following recent landslips.

Because the cliff is part of the World Heritage Jurassic Coast, the government policy is for no intervention.

A further 30 homes are at risk over the next 150 years, the report said.

One resident, 90-year-old Reg Bratt, started building his own wall against the erosion 30 years ago.

“In 1978, I started building a wall, with no plans of what I was going to do,” he said.

“I just knew that I had to build a wall. I built massive buttresses, supporting the cliff and the wall just went up.”

Mr Bratt said he had not had any problems since, but some of his neighbours had.

David Webber had to buy his home outright when he moved to the road three years ago because he could not get a mortgage for the property.

He thought the problem would not affect him during his lifetime.

“About two years ago we had very very heavy rainfall, and that completely saturated the earth and we had some drop off – about a foot dropped off, which was alarming,” he said.

However, the residents said house sales had not yet been affected and people had not had problems getting their homes insured.

A Weymouth and Portland Borough Council spokesperson said councillors were trying to change the government’s policy of no intervention.

Councillor Doug Hollings said: “I think we must try and protect, obviously, the areas where the most valued assets are. And that’s obviously people’s properties.”

The residents will have the chance to study the survey in-depth next month.

Meanwhile the council has applied to the Environment Agency for money to carry out another, even more detailed, survey.

Villagers in Norfolk in fear of a scheme to flood them to save the coast have been told that is not the government’s intention.

The floods minister, Phil Woolas, has been visiting Sea Palling, 15 miles up the coast from Great Yarmouth.

He told people there that a scenario by Natural England to allow six villages to succumb to rising sea levels, was not what was going to happen.

He said it was the government’s duty to protect the area.

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Ever since the storm surge and the Great Flood of 1953 threatened the North Kent coast, the inhabitants of low lying areas of the county have lived with the risk that the sea may one day flood their homes.

Nick Crane visits the coast to meet those involved in the management of the shore, along with those who are being affected by the shifting sands and the rising tides.

This part of the coast line has historically been transient. The Wantsum Channel was stretch of water that once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of mainland Kent. Over time this silted up and the channel disappeared, but now it is expected that in the next hundred years the channel will exist again.

The geology is mixed: in some areas the strata is soft and friable, in other parts it is chalky and slightly stronger. Where the rock is soft, and low lying communities are not protected by any sea defences the coast is most under threat.

A Shoreline Management Plan is currently underway. Its aim is to examine the entire coast line of the UK and decide which areas are most at risk and which areas require a strengthening of sea defences over a twenty, a fifty and a one hundred year period.

Controversially there are some areas that it is likely ‘managed realignment’ will be the suggested solution to the encroaching sea level. This means that sea defences will, over time, be allowed to be breached.

Residents of Faversham Road in Seasalter, a small village to the East of Whitstable fear that they will be one of the areas that will be part of this managed realignment. In fifty years time they may have to abandon their homes to the rising tides.

The forecast for sea level rise over the next one hundred years is not good for the residents of Faversham Road and they now face an unsure future and the difficult task of possible relocation.

The article is available to listen again on the BBC website for seven days

A report by a government body has proposed, as one of four policy options, the prospect of 25 square miles of Norfolk surrendered to the sea. Houses would be destroyed as well as local shops, pubs, village and landscape. Under present legislation there would be no compensation.

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Malcolm Kerby, the coordinator of the Coastal Concern Action Group which is trying to save the North Norfolk village of Happisburgh from collapsing into the sea gives his view…

Read the full article on the BBC website and see the transmitted programme featuring Malcolm Kerby, Richard Howett MEP, Steve Hayman and John Gummer MP.

Up to 400 people turned out for the first of three meetings to discuss plans which could see villages in the Norfolk Broads abandoned to the sea. The flooding option is one of four being examined to help save parts of the county from sea level rises.

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