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…)

RESIDENTS of a chalet park threatened by coastal erosion fear a town hall bid for a government sea defences grant has failed.

But Barrow Borough Council says that although its application for cash to build permanent sea defences to provide the 500-chalet West Shore Park from storm tides and erosion has failed, it will make another one next year.

Chalet owner Norman Lumb, who has lived at West Shore Park for seven years with his wife Patricia, is on a stretch of the park not protected by a temporary sea wall.

He said: “It is very worrying because we were under the impression something was going to be done this year.

“We are very happy living here but we have seen the deterioration caused by the sea and it is worrying people,”

More than 2,000 people have so far signed a petition put together by West Shore residents demanding permanent protection from the sea, which is still eating under the road in front of the chalets in the unprotected part.

The council paid £25,000 for a temporary rock barrier to be laid last year but it only stretches for half the length of the chalet park frontage and is only designed to last a year.

Some of its boulders have already been tossed about by the sea, but residents living behind it say it has made their lives better and lessened the threat from the sea.

Many retired and elderly people are among those living on the park.

Barrow Borough Council made the bid for grant aid this year, to pay for permanent defences in front of West Shore Park, to the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

The council’s director of regeneration, Phil Huck, will tell councillors at the town hall executive committee next Wednesday that the temporary defences are being monitored and in the event of a collapse caused by the sea repairs, would have to be considered.

But in his report he says the temporary barrier only had a design life of a year.

His report says: “Although there has been movement of some blocks, particularly around the slipway, the defence is holding up well.”

He said the failed bid for a grant for permanent defences had only been a provisional one because the deadline had coincided with a report to the council from consultants Capita on the options for defending West Shore. A more detailed bid for aid which should score better will now be made next year instead.

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…)

A Norfolk MP has denounced a minister’s response to parliamentary questions on controversial Broads surrender proposals as resembling “a dodgy insurance policy”.

Keith Simpson said he was considering organising a select committee-style meeting of the county’s MPs after the “unimpressive and contradictory” letter from environment minister Phil Woolas.

The minister was questioned last month at an adjournment debate in Westminster Hall, initiated by Mr Simpson and attended by most of the county’s MPs, on draft proposals by government conservation advisers Natural England to deal with the consequences of climate change in the northern Broads. (more…)

If the government had to compensate homeowners whose houses would be lost to the sea under proposals for parts of Broadland, it would soon realise it was cheaper to shore up our defences, writes former boatyard owner and major company director JOHN BROWN.

The present policy of the government on flood protection appears to be one purely of money and a lack of interest in any area away from the large centres of population. Nothing new in that, you may say, but this is especially short-term and ignores principles basic to our society. (more…)

It’s time we shut down Natural England (NE), the puppet quango set up by the Government. Unfocused and unloved, it replaced the Countryside Agency and English Nature. Sadly, it now packs neither the effective rural punch of the former, nor the international scientific reputation of the latter. Run by a log-time employee of the Environment Agency, NE is the very model of a New Labour quango. Starved of resources, it’s required to do the Government’s bidding while preserving the pretence of independence. (more…)

A legal victory by the tenant of a cliff-top chalet in East Anglia is good news for everybody living on the coast of England, it was claimed last night.

Charles England, the tenant of a chalet at Easton Bavents, near Southwold, has won an appeal against a refusal by conservation body Natural England to allow him to maintain the shingle sea defences protecting his property.

Last night his neighbour, Peter Boggis, who has spent £500,000 constructing his own sea defences along that stretch of coastline, said: “This decision has repercussions for everybody living on the coast of England. It means bureaucracy no longer has the upper hand to bully people and assure the destruction of their properties.”

Retired engineer Mr Boggis, who is spokesman for Easton Bavents Conservation and is fighting his own legal battle against Natural England over his defences, added: “I am thankful to the inspector and the secretary of state for the clarity of their decision.

“It has been hell to watch my, and my neighbour’s, property being destroyed at the whim of dictatorial agencies, having personally taken care to protect them without cost to the nation until forced to neglect them by Natural England in December 2005.”

Natural England, which declared the area a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) argued that protecting the cliffs would prevent access, study and analysis of geological exposures in the cliff. It said it was in the national interest that natural erosion should continue, and that this outweighed Mr England’s human rights.

But independent inspector Kenneth Smith reported to Defra that, contrary to Natural England’s insistence, the site’s special scientific interest was better served by protecting it against erosion than by allowing it to be destroyed.

He also decided that Natural England’s plans to force erosion on the occupiers would constitute an “unnecessary and disproportionate interference” with human rights.

His report has been accepted by environment secretary David Miliband, who has directed Natural England to issue a consent to recharge and maintain the part of the so-called “soft” sea defence in front of Mr England’s property. Mr England’s solicitor, Peter Scott, said: “This is a ground-breaking decision. It shows that Natural England are likely to be unable, through the creation of SSSIs, to force people to lose their properties to coastal erosion without paying compensation. This is a very significant development in a long-running campaign to save Easton Bavents from being destroyed by the North Sea”. Natural England was not available for comment.

Story by Jon Welch in the EDP