Coastal residents have called for more help in tackling erosion before they back a new shoreline management strategy.

A straw poll among 100 people who attended a meeting at Happisburgh voted to reject the latest SMP between Kelling and Lowestoft, because revisions did not go far enough to compensate the communities affected by cutting back on sea defences.

The key aim of the meeting held on Friday was to see what people felt about the newly revised draft SMP for the section of coast between Lowestoft and Kelling, drawn up in consultation by North Norfolk District Council, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, Waveney District Council and the Environment Agency.

The SMP which dates back to 2004, provides a large-scale assessment of coastal evolution and presents a policy framework which determines how the shoreline will be managed, for instance which sections of the coast are to be protected.

The revised draft includes three conditions, the first being that a proper technical analysis of the coastline should be carried out looking at what the consequences are of defending one place but not another.

The second condition is for an economic analysis looking at what will be lost and the final condition, that if an area is not to be defended then the social justice and compensation issue be addressed.

Malcolm Kerby from the Coastal Concern Action Group, who organised the meeting, acknowledged the work the councillors had done with the revised plan, but said the feeling was that it did not go far enough.

He said: “We had more than 100 people at the meeting and with a straw poll I took everyone wanted to reject the revised SMP, unless there is a social justice element not just as a condition, but actually built into or made to run concurrent with it.”

District councillor Clive Stockton, portfolio holder for planning policy, coastal strategy and economic development, said however that he believed both the council and the villagers were “singing from the same hymn sheet” with the revised plan.

He also pointed to the pathfinder programme whereby the council has been given £3m as part of the government’s national programme designed to find new ways to help communities adapt to a changing coastline, as starting to go some way to addressing the social justice issue.

The revised SMP plan is due to come back before members of North Norfolk District Council later in the year for acceptance now it has been altered.

Story by Tracey Gray in the Eastern Daily Press

The three main parties have given their views on tackling the problems of coastal erosion along the Norfolk and Suffolk coast.

Last year, proposals to protect the port of Felixstowe and other major towns were put forward by the Environment Agency.

However, Suffolk could still lose the village of Covehithe and 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of farmland as part of a “managed retreat”.

In the Norfolk village of Happisburgh a coastguard station is under threat as the cliff edge it is located near has eroded by 20ft (6.1m) in a decade.

‘More research’

Last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs offered the local councils £3m for trial initiatives such as buying homes, threatened by coastal erosion, from residents.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that if his party won power it “certainly would” put more funding into researching coastal erosion.

He said he was shocked to see homes where “back gardens were quite literally falling into the sea”, during a recent visit to Happisburgh.

He said the Environment Agency report had caused a “huge amount of concern” as it “more or less seemed to write off parts of the Norfolk coast”.

“We will not give up on the people of Happisburgh and other areas of the Norfolk coast,” Mr Clegg said on the visit to Norwich.

Speaking on a visit to Norfolk, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said investing in flood defences and providing funding to help communities cope with the consequences of coastal erosion were part of the government’s strategy to tackle the problem.

‘Serious concern’

He said “quite a lot” of money had come to East Anglia through the government’s coastal change Pathfinder project, adding: “In the end local people are in the best position to decide how we adapt to the power of the sea and the changing coast line.”

He added: “We’re doing our best to respond to the power of nature but it’s something we’ve got to work on together with local councils and local communities.”

A Conservative Party spokesman said that coastal erosion was “a very serious concern” for coastal communities and that climate change was expected to bring a rise in sea levels.

“We need to defend our communities wherever we can, give local communities greater powers to find local solutions to coastal defences, and ensure that the Environment Agency takes greater account of local knowledge in their decision making,” he said.

The spokesman added that a Conservative government would negotiate with insurance companies to ensure that flood insurance is available to as many householders and property owners as possible.

Story on the BBC News Website

A village in the forefront of the battle against coastal erosion is hitting back with a £1.6m package of measures to help local people.

Residents of Happisburgh talked to officials at the weekend about a range of projects from buying up endangered homes to tidying up the clifftop and beach.

And a local coastal campaigner stressed that the way the village tackled the issues was a crucial blueprint for helping other communities in the same situation.

Happisburgh’s crumbling cliffs and threatened clifftop homes have put it in the regional and national spotlight of the coastaI erosion debate, including calls for cash to help seaside villages cope with loss of land and blight on property.

It has been given half a £3m government Pathfinder grant to North Norfolk to help it adjust to the problems.

A public drop-in was held at Happisburgh on Saturday, attended by more than 120 people, to outline some plans for spending it, such as

• Buying a dozen properties inside a 20-year danger line after agreeing their price through an independent valuer.
• Buying other properties with a slightly longer lifespan to lease back to existing or new owners in a bid to avoid blight.
• Tidying up the clifftop to create a buffer including moving a council car park and toilets inland.
• Removing debris such as shattered groynes and ramps from the beach
• Providing advice to help relocate the clifftop Manor Farm caravan park
• A cultural project to record the local history and celebrate its future.

North Norfolk District Council coastal planner Rob Young said the open day aimed to explain the plans but also get feedback from local people.

“People’s lives have been on hold for years and they have been unable to plan for their futures – now we can move on,” he explained.

It was hoped to “move fast” on getting valuations for threatened homes, without “holding a gun to anybody’s head.”

The Pathfinder project would not solve coastal change problems in North Norfolk but it would find ways forward.

Local coastal campaigner Malcolm Kerby, who sits on a government think tank on erosion issues, said he was still disappointed the council only got half of its original bid, but it was a pioneering project for a small community which had helped influence national policies.

Story by Richard Batson in the Eastern Daily Press

Jules Pretty decided that blistered feet would be worth enduring to observe at close quarters the social, as well as environmental, effects of coastal erosion. The professor of environment and society at Essex University walked 400 miles around the coastline of East Anglia and travelled another 100 miles by boat. “I started under the M25 at Thurrock in Essex and finished up at King’s Lyn in Norfolk,” he says over the noise from the espresso machine in an Italian café near the Royal Society, where he is heading for a meeting.

The view of a bustling, traffic-clogged Regent Street beyond the front window could hardly be more different from the expansive sparseness of the enchanting yet crumbling landscape that he encountered over 45 days, sometimes with only birdlife for company. “I heard the curlew and redshank, the outpouring of skylarks, and the crump of waves on the beach,” he writes in the introduction to his latest book, The Luminous Coast.

The title comes from the effect on his vision of prolonged exposure to the suffused sunlight coming off the sea. “When I closed my left eye for a fortnight afterwards,” he recalls, “all the colours in my right eye were bleached out, like an old film.” It seems an appropriate image in the circumstances. Apart from its serious messages about the effects of climate change, the book is also a trip back into personal memory for the 51-year-old, who was brought up in Southwold and Lowestoft.

These days he lives 12 miles inland. A sensible precaution, perhaps, for one who has seen at close quarters how the North Sea is taking substantial bites out of the east coast. “I did a night walk near Cromer with my brother under a full moon that brought the tide in even higher than ever,” he recalls. “We had to keep scrambling up the cliffs to avoid it.” In the cold light of dawn, they observed tractor tracks that came abruptly to an end. What were once agricultural fields are now at the cliff’s edge.

Pretty has little doubt that the map of East Anglia will have been substantially redrawn by the end of the century, by which time his current home may well be much closer to the sea. “Because so much of this coast is one of those special wild places of England – and the effects of climate change are already visible – the walk reaffirmed my view that we should be doing more to protect it,” he says. “As it is, the so-called shoreline management plan seems to have decided that we can’t afford to stop certain places disappearing. Covehithe, north of Southwold, is one, Happisburgh in north Norfolk another. Great chunks are being eaten away. Some houses near the coast are valued at no more than £1. These are the homes of people who have lived there for generations in some cases. They have an emotional attachment.

“The other part of my research was cultural. Modernisation is making us forget the specialness not only of coastline habitats but also the people engaged in practices that are ‘of the place’. Walking not only connects you with the land; it also allows you to come in by the back door, as it were.”

To see people as they really are, in other words, doing the sort of jobs that have become almost extinct. But Pretty couldn’t guarantee just stumbling across the oyster men of Mersea Island in north Essex, the wildfowlers licensed to shoot geese and ducks on Canvey Island or the Norfolk marshes; or, indeed, the reedcutters on the Norfolk Broads. He made an initial mistake of trying to do the walk in one go. In 10 days he covered 160 miles.

Not surprisingly, his feet were killing him by the time he reached Lowestoft. “I had blisters and had to ring my brother to collect me from our old school,” he sighs. “It made me realise that this shouldn’t be a route march. I needed to layer the journey in order to see different places and meet different people at different times of year.” So the other 35 days of his walk were spread out through 2007-08. He would take lengthy taxi rides back to his car, or his wife or friends would collect him. Through careful networking, he managed to meet the wildfowlers and reedcutters. And oyster men? “They let me go out with them,” he beams. “I also went on the Aldeburgh lifeboat. Those guys risk everything with a grace and aplomb that is instructive to all of us. And there’s a deep pride among the local community in what they do.”

One of the hopeful observations to come out of his journey was the strong sense of community that he encountered – “despite the trappings of modern life,” as he puts it. “They still congregate in these little villages and towns. They go to the WI or the local fair or whatever, and they care about where they live.

The question posed by the book is whether the rest of us care enough about them to save these communities from being washed away by ever-rising tides.

The Luminous Coast will be published later this year by Full Circle

Story by Chris Arnot in the Guardian

Homeowners in the coastal erosion hotspot Happisburgh will not have to wait for long into the new year for discussions to start about the payments they may receive for their houses under a project to tackle the impacts of coastal change.

As reported previously in the EDP, North Norfolk District Council has been awarded a £3m pot of government money to trial a number of ground breaking ‘pathfinder’ projects to tackle the impacts which erosion has on communities, individuals and businesses.

The most awaited of those projects is a plan for the council to offer to buy a small handful of the most at-risk houses along Beach Road in Happisburgh and demolish them, allowing their occupants to buy another home instead of being left with nothing.

A meeting hosted by the council on January 7 for interested parties will update parish councils and community groups about progress made on project planning since the cash award was made last month.

It will also tie in the current state of the shoreline management plan, which has been one of the major drivers for the creation of the pathfinder scheme across the country.

But most of the interest will be focussed on the state of the £3m pot. The money will be spread over two financial years, with the initial £900,000 for the 2009/10 year already in council coffers.

A property adviser will be appointed in January to kick off negotiations with homeowners on property values, both for the buy and demolish scheme and the related element of buying another set of homes at slightly less risk and offering them for lease back.

Other actions in the next few months look set to include:

• Finding a piece of land to open a new council car park in Happisburgh.
• A meeting has already been held with Cromer Town Council to discuss how to create a footpath realignment to solve a closure on the Runton Road car park caused by a previous cliff fall.
• Making sure groups have been set up in the community to discuss the detail of how to spend the money.
• Negotiations to move part of the caravan park at Happisburgh which has already lost land to cliff falls.
• Helping relocate Trimingham village hall.

Peter Frew, head of coastal strategy at the council, said it was hoped the buy and demolish scheme, which was not compulsory if people did not want to take it up, would produce a national formula of how to value a cliff top house.

Various factors would be taken into consideration, such as the value of the home when bought, what the buyer knew about levels of risk when they purchased and its value now if it were somewhere without the same risk.

“Each property is an individual case and that circumstances around it are individual,” added Mr Frew.

The January 7 meeting will be held at 6.30pm in the council’s Cromer headquarters on Holt Road.

Story by Ed Foss in the Eastern Daily Press

A woman whose home is likely to fall into the sea says she will refuse thousands of pounds of compensation to which she would be entitled.

Bryony Nierop-Reading’s home is within a few yards of an eroding cliff edge, uninsurable and not worth much in financial terms.

But recently the government announced funds to allow the purchase and demolition of homes like this by the local authority, allowing her to ‘escape’ from the apparent Catch-22 situation and put the cash into another property.

But that was the moment she chose to take the less than obvious choice.

She says that when she bought her three-bedroom Happisburgh bungalow, on the now famous Beach Road, she knew the risks and has now refused to take any money, while issuing a warning that she will not be moved against her will.

“I think it would be totally immoral of me to take any money at all,” said the 64-year-old.

“I love my house, the views are stunning – in fact that is why I bought the place – and I believe the house will be fine for 10 years. I want to live there and die there.

“If there were any idea of the house being compulsorily purchased, I would fight that.”

She added: “I am thrilled to bits for the other people who are going to be offered payments.

“But their situation is very different from mine. I bought this home last year and I was completely aware of the situation and the risks.

“The other people have been here a long time and thought they would be protected by the old sea defences which have now been removed. I always knew the reality of what I was buying in to.”

Mrs Nierop-Reading bought the property for £25,000, a large mark-down on what it would be worth if it was in another location. The details of the compensation scheme are still being worked out, but will be influenced by the purchase price.

The house is the second last on Beach Road before the cliff-line. When she first bought it, she believed the house would be safe for two to three years. But she believes with the way the cliff has been eroding recently and the protection provided by the 2007 rock armour scheme, paid for by £200,000 from North Norfolk District Council and around £50,000 raised by the community, that could be extended to as long as 10 years.

“I am desperate to stay,” she said. “Not only that, I am worried that while the compensation issue is being fought, the idea of preserving the coastline, which I think is very important, is being lost.”

Mrs Nierop-Reading is known for her campaign to save the architecturally-important Whitlingham hospital conservatory at Trowse, near Norwich, and the city’s historic Plantation Gardens. She has three daughters and six grandchildren.

As reported in the EDP on Wednesday, the district council has received £3m of Defra funding to address a range of coastal challenges, including the ability to buy and demolish some at risk homes and to buy and lease back some slightly less at risk homes.

The council’s head of coastal strategy Peter Frew said there was no obligation on any person to accept the financial offers which will be made under the pilot schemes.

He said: “There is no compulsory element to this. But it is also important to note that if a house is unsafe or uninhabitable there are already standard procedures in place which permits the council to serve a notice on an owner.”

Story by Ed Foss in the Eastern Daily Press

Also picked up in the Daily Mail:

But Mrs Nierop-Reading added there was also a principle behind her stand.

‘While the compensation issue is being fought, the idea of preserving the coastline is being lost,’ she added.

‘This country is a small island and cannot afford to lose land. I don’t accept having a policy of “managed retreat” where you just let the sea come in.’

Malcolm Kerby, of Happisburgh’s Coastal Concern Action Group, said the prospect of compensation was ‘groundbreaking’.

‘For the first time ever we have genuine recognition from central government that these problems exist,’ he added.

The council yesterday said householders would only be able to take advantage of the compensation for a limited period of time.

En Grande-Bretagne, le réchauffement climatique se fait déjà sentir, notamment dans le Norfolk, région la plus exposée face à la mer, dans le nord-est de l’Angleterre.

Watch the video on TF1

Officials responsible for spending £3m of government money in a bid to tackle a range of coastal challenges in north Norfolk have pledged to make it a priority to talk to individuals and communities about how the money will be spent.

As news of the ‘pathfinder’ grant to North Norfolk District Council continued to sink in yesterday, the reaction of delight turned to questions about how the project would work in practice.

As reported in yesterday’s EDP, the north Norfolk handout was by far the biggest of 15 grants made nationally, with Waveney District Council coming in second with £1.5m and the majority of others below the £1m mark.

While some of the £3m in north Norfolk will be spent buying clifftop homes which are at imminent danger and having them demolished, or buying and leasing back some less at-risk homes, there will also be a large amount of money for other projects which will be explained more fully to the public.

“There are a number of steps we need to take first and one of those is to communicate with local people to make sure they buy in to the things we want to do,” said Rob Young, the council’s senior coastal planner.

“The ideas put into this project came from members of the community and we now want to take those ideas to the wider community and discuss them.”

A key meeting today of the council’s coastal management board will start to guide the complicated project, looking at priorities and workloads.

A desire to “make a difference on the ground” relatively quickly was also an important step, said Mr Young.

The money from government has not been not ring fenced because it was a pilot scheme dealing with a range of issues not closely explored in the past, so the council and its partners had flexibility, he added.

Meanwhile Malcolm Kerby, coordinator of the Happisburgh based Coastal Concern Action Group, said it was now important to allow people to “sit down in a cool, calm atmosphere” to work out how best to spend the money.

But urging a note of caution, he added that once the pathfinder scheme came to a close at the end of March 2011, it was important to achieve continuity.

“This is a scheme with a set amount of time to run and once we are past that date in less than 18 months time, it is vital communities are not put into a new vacuum.

“We are at an incredibly exciting moment, but what this has to produce in the end are permanent policies which help people both here and all around the country.”

The council’s cabinet will discuss the pathfinder project on Tuesday, when they will be asked to give delegated powers to senior officers, including chief executive Philip Burton, to make procurement decisions.

Council officers have explained that the move is necessary because of the tight timeframe in which the £3m needs to be spent – some of it before the end of March and the remaining majority by the end of March 2011.

Story by Ed Foss in the Eastern Daily Press

For Malcolm Kerby climate change is no distant threat to the Third World. He lives where it is already ruining lives… in Britain.

His home is in the small village of Happisburgh on the North Norfolk coast where the shore is retreating, battered by increasingly ferocious rising seas.

“This is the front line of climate change in Britain,” he says. “We can’t deny it. It’s happening. We see it with our own eyes.”

Sea levels are predicted to rise by a minimum of 37cms by 2050.

Latest world predictions claim they will reach 1.4m by the end of the century if the present rate of warming continues.

The flat Norfolk coast would be swamped, the Broads would become seawater and Peterborough a coastal town.

But all that’s in the future. Happisburgh has already lost 26 homes in 17 years and several more are on the verge of tipping over the edge as long-term erosion of the soft-sediment coast speeds up.

But last night there was, finally, some hope as the the North Norfolk coast was awarded £5million by the Government to fight climate change erosion.

It will allow those about to lose their homes to the sea to receive compensation for the first time – and Malcolm was thrilled. He said: “It is quite simply the most important step ever taken in the management of our coastline.

“For the first time the coastal communities have a future.”

And North Norfolk Liberal democrat MP Norman Lamb, who has been closely involved in the campaign to get help said: “It’s a really massive breakthrough. It’s the first time ever the rights of people threatened by the sea have been acknowledged.

“It is a recognition that climate change is a threat. There will be many communities hit.”

Peter Frew from North Norfolk council said the money would be spent on 20 projects including demolishing homes teetering on cliffs and helping businesses. But despite the relief Malcolm warned: “We mustn’t be complacent. It’s only money until March 2011. We have still got problems.”

Happisburgh’s troubles began in the mid-90s when the sea defences built after the disastrous 1953 floods failed and were not replaced.

The cliff to the south of the village retreated a couple of hundred metres and a huge bay formed. Then in 2005 the village found it was official policy to “manage the coastline”.

That means defending towns, cities and strategic points but not spending millions defending smaller communities like the 850 in Happisburgh.

Coastal campaigners were furious that through all the talk of global climate change there was less action on those in the UK who faced losing everything with no statutory right to be protected from the sea. Malcolm says: “We had to make them understand this is not a Happisburgh problem. It is a national problem.”

Happisburgh formed the Coastal Concern Action Group and began fighting, recently creating the National Voice of Coastal Communities.

European-backed laws give more protection to sea cabbages and wildlife threatened by coastal erosion than people.

And it made Malcolm furious. He says: “I am sick to death of the Jesus creeper kaftan mob saying great crested newts, worms and things that fly have to come before human life and limb. If Flora and fauna is threatened Government has to find it a home. It could cost hundreds of millions to move a couple of newts or a sea cabbage. It beggars belief.”

The Environment Agency predicts it will spend £1billion a year by 2035 on coast and flood defences due to climate change.

A spokesman said: “We will defend communities where financially viable but you can’t build a wall round the whole UK.” Phil Dyke, National Trust Coast and Marine Advisor believes the sea could rise up to a metre over the next 100 years with more huge storms.

He added: “It may prove better in the long run for some communities to move and be supported by government.”

For Malcolm, though, the coast is something more. Some 16.9 million live in coastal areas with no one more than 75 miles from the sea. He says: “We are an island nation. It’s that coast and the people who live on it who have shaped us as a people.”

WILD CHANGES

The Met Office predicts the UK will start having hotter, drier summers along with warmer, wetter winters.

Central England has already increased by an average of 1C since the 70s.

And by the 2040s the record summer of 2003 will be the norm in Britain.

Here are some of the changes already happening…

• Nature The false widow, below, is the UK’s most venomous spider and has a painful bite. It’s spreading east from Devon and is likely to travel northwards. Plants, including daffodils and Hawthorn, are flowering several months earlier. New exotic wildlife, such as the Harlequin ladybird and olive trees, are also thriving.
• Health The 2003 heat wave caused 2,000 deaths and the NHS is expecting 5,000 extra cases of skin cancer by 2050. Warmer, wetter winters will see a rise in asthma but 20,000 fewer cold deaths.
• Travel By 2050 road and rail transport will be mostly carbon-free. The number of train users has doubled in 10 years, and is set to increase by half as much again over the next 30 years.

PERIL OF FLOODS

More than five million people in England and Wales live in properties at risk of flooding.

In Cumbria they are still mopping up after the worst deluge in the area for 1,000 years.

And November generally was the wettest on record with an average 8.5ins of rain across the country.

Get used to it, say climate change forecasters. We may not always get higher overall rain but localised storms causing flash floods will increase.

Mary Dhonau, of the National Flood Forum charity, said: “A monsoon type rain is now starting to hit the UK far more.

“The only way we can survive is to make our homes flood resilient.”

In 2007, 55,000 homes and 6,000 businesses were hit causing £3billion of damage. This led to 80,000 insurance claims.

Story by Mike Swain in the Mirror