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…)

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…)

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