Could it be salvation for Norfolk – or is it cloud cuckoo land?

A massive wall built out at sea and linking Great Yarmouth to Happisburgh, enclosing dozens of square miles of water and turning it into a freshwater haven for wildlife and tourism, could be the answer to some of the climate change challenges facing Norfolk and the northern Broads.

The idea has been put forward by Mike Evans, who has held a series of high-profile posts in the boating world, such as chairman of the Royal Yachting Association, and is the current president of the Norfolk and Suffolk Boating Association and a representative of private boat owners at the Broads Authority. (more…)

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.” (more…)

A successful multi million pound bid to solve major coastal problems in Norfolk and Suffolk was hailed by experts and campaigners last night as the most important step ever taken in the management of the coast.

And as three local authorities – North Norfolk, Waveney and Great Yarmouth – celebrated winning nearly £5m out of a national pot of £11m to address a range of challenges, officials in charge of managing the coast said the money would help individuals about to lose their homes to erosion, the two counties as a whole and also build future policies for the rest of the country in the face of climate change.

A small number of people teetering on the very edges of some cliff tops, including in the now internationally known erosion hotspot of Happisburgh, were for the first time guaranteed payments for the loss of their homes where they had previously faced walking away with nothing. (more…)

A leading Norfolk coastal campaigner says the county’s cause has been helped through brief encounters with senior government and opposition ministers on successive days.

Today Malcolm Kerby had a fleeting meeting with Conservative shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert during the MP’s flying visit to Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex for a fact-finding tour about coastal defences.

And yesterday he had a 45-minute session with Defra environment minister Hugh Irranca-Davies in London, to discuss funding issues. (more…)

Home owners who face losing their East Anglian properties to coastal erosion were offered the hope of receiving proper compensation last night.

The chairman of the Environment Agency has suggested that the government sets up a buy and lease scheme along the region’s coast.

Lord Smith said that authorities such as North Norfolk District Council should be given funding to purchase and then lease back up to 250 homes that are likely to fall into the sea in the next 20 years. (more…)

The chairman of the Environment Agency Lord Smith has unveiled a radical plan to help hundreds of homeowners threatened by coastal erosion.

The coastlines of Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire have been particularly vulnerable to the sea with many losing their homes without compensation.

Lord Smith has told BBC Look East local councils should buy up homes threatened by the sea and then lease them back. (more…)

Campaigners have given a cautious welcome to government plans to relax rules allowing more developments in areas of East Anglia at risk of coastal erosion.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is considering removing the blanket ban on building in under-threat areas to boost local economies.

While development such as housing will still be forbidden, temporary schemes which could boost tourism and recreation could be allowed under the proposed changes. (more…)

The government last night announced a raft of new ideas aimed at helping people who lose their homes to coastal erosion – but campaigners said that although the plans had merit, they still fell short of the full compensation package necessary.

Launching a three-month consultation into coastal change policy, Defra officials said they would create a new pot of £11m to help investigate how to address change. Local authorities could bid to become coastal change ‘pathfinders’ and access some of the money.

The Defra consultation will also discuss providing cash to meet certain costs of demolition and moving house for those faced with losing their homes to erosion.

But the suggested figures look to be limited to a maximum of £1,000 to cover removals and redirection of post and up to £5,000 to cover knocking down the threatened property. It would not extend to covering the value of homes, even if they had been previously defended and were now subject to damaged or removed sea defences, a key demand of coastal campaigners in recent years. (more…)

Coastal Concern Action Group, based in Happisburgh on the North Norfolk coast, held a meeting in their parish church on Friday attended by around 200 people, celebrating ten years of the founding of the group, and their achievements during that period.

After a welcome from Rev Philip Wood, Diana Wrightson, one of the members of the CCAG steering group, recapped the circumstances that led to a similar meeting held in St Mary’s Church ten years ago to discuss the issue of worsening coastal erosion of Happisburgh’s cliffs. Following that meeting CCAG was set up under the leadership of their Co-ordinator Malcolm Kerby.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk then explained the political impact that CCAG had brought about through its policy of constructive dialogue rather than direct confrontation, and the scope of the influence that the group now received. He also summarised the current position that although there was currently no sign of change of a policy on defending the coast, there had been changes in attitude to the possibility of  ‘compensation’, and that the campaigning of CCAG had been a large factor in that change. (more…)

A campaign body which has attained international importance on the issues of climate change and coastal erosion, or a tiny community group representing the interests of a few hundred people in the Norfolk clifftop village of Happisburgh?

On the 10th birthday of the Coastal Concern Action Group, Ed Foss explains why it is both.

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The clifftop village of Happisburgh is not alone in its plight.

Yet it has become an international icon in the worldwide battle against the impact of a changing climate, its name being mentioned by media organisations, government institutions and academic bodies across the globe. Australia, America, Japan, South Korea, Holland, Germany, Canada and France are just some of the countries that name has reached.

Linked inextricably with the mention of Happisburgh is the Coastal Concern Action Group, a body born of local need in 1999 because it was recognised that the village’s problems with erosion needed focus. (more…)