NEW national seashore defence policies could mean major changes for two Torbay beaches.

Before Torbay Council adopts the latest version of the shoreline management plan to meet climate change predictions, it is to consult about the future of Goodrington Sands North and Broadsands.

The latest version of the government’s plan proposes not fighting the sea but allowing a ‘managed retreat’ inland to create new beaches. (more…)

Waves, tides and storms regularly batter the wild coastline of Lancashire. It is nothing new for the landowners who see their land lost inch by inch every year.

But now this destructive climate cycle has left the shores crumbling and communities fearing they could be lost under water forever.

After years of protecting the shoreline, local authorities could wave the white flag at mother nature as they consider leaving the future of the Lancashire coastline in the hands of the gods.

Lancaster City Council is working with the North West England and North Wales Coastal Group, the Environment Agency and other organisations to draw up a Shoreline Management Plan (SMP), to establish the best way to manage the changing coast, now and for future generations.

Plans are to either to maintain the current coastal defences or allow the defences to weaken and let swathes of agricultural land turn to marshland. (more…)

THERE’S a clue in the name Langport; the town did indeed once have a port, even though it is situated more than a dozen miles from the sea – and could be renewing its maritime links in the not too distant future if climate change experts meeting in Copenhagen last week are right.

Scientists now believe that global warming will have far more profound consequences on sea levels than had previously been estimated – they are predicting that the planet’s oceans will rise by more than a metre by the end of this century, rather than the half-metre increase they had been working on.

Not only will this have an acute significance for individual communities located at present-day sea levels, but entire areas of the South West peninsula will be in the firing line when it comes to widespread coastal flooding. (more…)

Proposals to realign coastal defences and surrender part of a nature reserve to the sea look set to get the go ahead.

RSPB wardens have applied for planning permission to allow some of the sea wall at Titchwell Marsh, near Hunstanton, to be breached.

They existing defences are prone to being overwhelmed by storm surges, which would lead to a “catastrophic loss of habitat” for rare birds including the bittern and bearded tit.

But by allowing controlled flooding on parts of the site, brackish lagoons would become salt marsh and provide a barrier for more important freshwater pools and reedbeds further inland. (more…)

MORE than 60 acres of nature reserve on the Suffolk coast are to be abandoned to the North Sea.

The Environment Agency will on Friday reveal plans to “withdraw maintenance” from an earth bank which protects part of the internationally important Minsmere nature reserve, between Dunwich and Sizewell. (more…)