Southwold always seemed an unlikely holiday destination for the Prime Minister: charming, upmarket, its development paternalistically guided by the Adnams brewery. The one thing he might have liked was the quiet. Except that, when Gordon Brown was there, calm was thrown to the blustery North Sea winds.

The burghers of this most easy-going of seaside towns actually mounted a demonstration. The subject that had got their blood up was coastal defence.

Over the past couple of days, Lord Smith of Finchley has relit the firework. Otherwise known as the ex-Culture Secretary Chris Smith, he now heads the Environment Agency.

A report on sea defences, due next year, is expected to make uncomfortable reading for parts of Norfolk, Suffolk and elsewhere. Already, the River Blyth, near Southwold, is being abandoned.

Read the full story by Clive Aslet in the Telegraph

People faced with losing their homes to coastal erosion or flooding by the North Sea last night welcomed a breakthrough in their fight for financial compensation.

A senior government adviser, the new chairman of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith of Finsbury, yesterday urged the government seriously to consider using taxpayers’ money to re-house those who lose out to the encroaching sea.

It is the first time anyone of such standing has responded to the pleas of homeowners not to be left empty-handed after the sea claims their homes. (more…)

ENVIRONMENT Agency officials are talking to the owners of 23 homes in the Blyth Estuary over possible ways to reduce the risk of their properties flooding and minimising damage if they do flood.

The move follows proposals to phase out maintenance of flood defences in the estuary in order to release more funds to help protect populated areas.

At first 40 properties in the Blyth estuary were expected to be at increased risk of flooding if the proposals went ahead but a further, more detailed study has established that only 23 of them are protected by the existing walls – in a deteriorating condition and, according to the Environment Agency, likely to cost £34million to re-build.

Officials are now talking to the owners about ways to protect their properties on a local basis – by creating small earthbanks in strategic locations. (more…)

EUROPEAN funding could soon be available to protect land and homes in north Suffolk which are to be abandoned to the sea.

East of England MEP Geoffrey van Orden, met flooding and erosion experts from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) in a bid to secure funding to protect the Blyth estuary.

Mr van Orden, who took a boat trip around the estuary in February to see breaches in the walls for himself, said that the meeting in Cambridge was a success and he is now working towards putting in a formal bid for regional development funding. (more…)

Flood defence campaigners are to lobby parliament in what could be a crucial week in their bid to save land and homes from being lost to the sea.

Members of the Blyth Strategy Group, which opposes the Environment Agency’s (EA) plans to stop maintaining flood banks in the north Suffolk estuary in the next 20 years, and representatives from local councils will travel to Westminster tomorrow.

The move comes less than a week after environment minister Phil Woolas visited Norfolk communities and told them that in spite of draft proposals by Natural England to allow a 25 sq mile area of land to flood, their homes would not be sacrificed to the sea. (more…)

Groups fighting plans to abandon coastal areas to the waves have resolved to work together to convince the government to drop the controversial proposals.

Councillors from across Suffolk and Norfolk coastal areas and from all levels of local government met for a conference in Southwold today. Also among more than 100 delegates were coastal pressure groups, Natural England, Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer and Euro MP Geoffrey Van Orden.

They were united in wanting to stop the Environment Agency’s policy of “managed retreat”, or letting nature take its course as sea levels rise and coastal erosion continues. The conference focused on the Blyth estuary, one of the areas which will be most affected by the policy, but also heard of concerns elsewhere on the Suffolk coast and in Norfolk. Delegates decided that co-operation and communication were the key to persuading government to drop the plans and instead invest in flood defences. (more…)

A SENIOR Government minister has admitted plans to abandon sea and river defences along parts of the Suffolk coast might not go ahead unless the policy has the full support of people whose homes and businesses would be affected.

East of England minister Barbara Follett promised to take back to Whitehall the message that allowing the sea to flood hundreds of acres of the county, including the Blyth Estuary, would have a major impact on the character of the area of outstanding natural beauty, its wildlife habitats and the public’s access to them.

Mrs Follett joined leaders of Suffolk’s coastal local authorities and MP John Gummer to look at the £10million flood defence work being carried out at south Felixstowe and to hear concerns about the Environment Agency’s plans for the rest of the coastline. (more…)

Article in the Times by Libby Purves:

It is strange when the sun shines on days of meteorological crisis. It happened here in Suffolk after the ’87 hurricane, glorious blue-and-golden days illuminating a chaotic landscape of fallen timber and sparking power lines. On Friday morning too it shone, as the storm surge drove great hammering, spouting fists of water up against sea walls, drowned quays and turned the A12 into a shining extension of the Blyth estuary. Early in the day the sea wall at Aldeburgh, a thin battlement between rising brown river and hammering waves, felt like the only place to be. There is fear and loss and inconvenience in these great natural events, but there is also exhilaration.

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