SEFTON’S changing coastline is to benefit from a £337,000 government boost.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has pledged the money to help Sefton Council adapt to coastal erosion and dune movements at Formby.

The site was last year highlighted by a National Trust report which named it among the top 10 UK beaches which could be irrevocably changed by increasingly stormy weather.

With one of the largest dune systems in Britain, Sefton Council proposed building a new board walk system at the site to continue access to the sands.

It also proposed a new visitor car park after the last one became inaccessible due to the movement of the beach.Š

The council has worked with the National Trust and the Sefton Coast Partnership to involve local schools and residents with the scheme.

The new DEFTA grant will pay for these schemes to be put in place.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: “Our coastline has always been shaped by the sea and as climate change takes hold the risk of coastal change will only increase.

“That is why we need to help our coastal communities to adapt to this change.

“No one can know or understand what these communities need better than the communities themselves, and with this funding they will be able to work together, to better prepare their people and businesses by adapting to local change.”

Erosion already affects 30% of the English coastline, while other areas are at risk of flooding or an increase in amounts of shingle.

Fifteen coastal communities will benefit from this £11m grant scheme, and winning authorities come from all around the coast.

The 2008 National Trust report stated: “For the last 100 years, the beach at Formby has been eroding at a rate of four metres every year.

“Severe storms can take 12 to 15 metres from the front of the dunes in one event. This can be followed by some recovery as sand blows in from the beach.”

It added over the next 100 years the sands will recede by a minimum of 400 metres.

In June, 2009, Sefton were among the authorities who were invited to enter the Coastal Challenge Pathfinder competition to come up with their own scheme to deal with problems of erosion in their area.

The grants will be used by local authorities to explore and test their own ideas of adaptation.

Story in the Formby Times

Coastal defences that currently protect huge swathes of farm land, natural habitat and housing are to be moved inland, allowing the sea to flood into low-lying areas.

In some parts of the country, householders and land owners have been told they face spending millions of pounds of their own money to build and repair flood defences to try to protect their property.

Among the areas affected are Medmerry, a popular tourist destination, near Selsey, West Sussex, where 612 acres are to be surrendered to the encroaching sea, and East Head, another nearby beauty spot where residents have been told their homes will no longer be protected.

Along the Humber estuary, around 800 homes scattered along the shoreline are to be left at the mercy of the sea within the next 20 years. At the end of that period, a further 1,000 properties in the area will be allowed to flood, including parts of the villages of Kilnsea and Sunk Island. In East Sussex, 260 acres of the picturesque valley of Cuckmere Estuary will also be lost over the next 15 years.

The new strategies have been drawn up by the Environment Agency, the government body with national responsibility for flooding, as it cannot afford to maintain all of the country’s 2,500 miles of coastal defences in the face of rising sea levels.

Instead, officials are drawing up detailed plans for the entire coast of England and Wales to decide where protection can be withdrawn.

The controversial move, however, has threatened to leave thousands of houses and acres of farmland vulnerable to flooding or even permanently underwater within the next 20 years without any form of compensation.

In some areas, the Environment Agency has said that it will repair and maintain defences only if landowners and residents cover the costs themselves. Home owners could also build their own defences, provided they meet planning and environmental rules.

John Bunn, managing director of Bunn Leisure, a holiday cottage and caravan park owner in the Medmerry area, said they had been forced to spend £1.5 million on flood defences that were completed this year and are planning another £10 million of work over the next two years.

“Our mile of seafront is as much a part of our infrastructure as the facilities we offer and I’m passionate about preserving both.

“Chronic underinvestment in sea defences for more than a decade has put us in the position of having to take matters on ourselves.

“We cannot leave the country to shrink – if the Dutch had taken the same approach Holland would now be half the size.”

In Kilnsea, residents have already taken matters into their own hands and are maintaining the defences themselves after the Environment Agency refused to defend their village.

They raised £200,000 through Environment Agency grants and charities to build a new embankment to keep the water from the Humber estuary from spilling into their village.

Nearly two thirds of the country’s coastline is currently defended with shingle banks, sea walls and barriers that are maintained by the Environment Agency using taxpayers’ money. Some land, such as that owned by the Crown Estate, has privately-maintained defences.

The risk of flooding is due to increase over the next century as sea levels rise by up to three feet. But the Environment Agency cannot afford to build new defences and increase the height of existing infrastructure in all of the areas it covers.

Ministers have instead decided to allow the agency to pick and chose the areas it will defend, with priority being given to towns and areas with special historical or natural interest.

The National Trust is also to abandon some of the 180 miles of coastline under its control after taking the decision that it could no longer afford to hold back rising seas and prevent erosion.

Visitors to Studland beach, in Dorset, which is among the worst affected areas, last week demanded urgent action to save the nature spot after beach huts have had to be moved back three times in the past 25 years due to erosion.

The Government currently spends around £600 million a year on protecting against flooding and coastal erosion and this will increase to more than £800 million over the next three years.

But Alison Baptise, national coastal policy manager at the Environment Agency, said that despite the funding increase, the Environment Agency still needed to prioritise where it spent the money by taking a strategic look at the nation’s coastline as a whole.

“There are clearly some areas that are more difficult than others,” she said. “As the coast is dynamic – it has been changing for years and continues to change – we can’t do the same thing at the same place all the time. We need to adapt how we manage it.

“In some areas there are defences built there that we could keep building up but it is not sustainable economically or good for the environment. These are long term changes and are not going to happen suddenly.”

The policy of abandoning defences and not raising defences in other areas has enraged campaigners, who claim house prices in effected areas have plummeted as residents struggle to sell their properties.

Malcolm Kerby, from campaign group National Voice of Coastal Communities, said: “People buy houses behind flood defences in good faith and then the Environment Agency can choose to move or abandon those defences at no cost to themselves.

“People living in areas that are being abandoned are seeing the value of their homes plummeting and they can’t sell them. Why would anyone want to buy a house in an area that will be regularly flooded in 20 years?”

Story by Richard Gray, Science Correspondent in the Telegraph

It’s a bright sunny day in Studland, Dorset. The wind catches the sand and whips it through the dunes and grasses. Helped by the tides, as each grain moves the shoreline slowly but inevitably shifts.

Emma Wright has worked for the National Trust at Studland for the past seven years.

As we walked along the beach she explained she had become used to seeing areas of the beach swept away.

In November it took just one storm for the sea to reclaim 15 metres of the beach.

Emma showed me red and white hazard tape flapping next to some wooden posts – these were all that remained of the wooden steps once used to access the car park.

“It’s just the vegetation left which is holding the dune together and you can see it cracking all the way through.

“That will be just another chunk of dune grass to fall off into the sea with the next storm”, she says.

Summer holidays

Studland isn’t disappearing overnight – its situation is well documented and is just one section of 279km (173 miles) of coastline in south-west England at risk of erosion.

There are around one million visitors annually, but Emma admitted as the years go on there will be much less to visit.

She explained the rows of beach huts at Studland have been moved inland three times in the past.

“If you come on your summer holidays you want to be on a sandy beach.

“Once that sandy beach isn’t there, you don’t want to be sat in a car park. The beach hut becomes a shed,” she says.

So can anything be done?

It is a dilemma for those keen to protect the beach and those who use it.

“People come here because it’s so wonderfully natural, ” Emma explains.

“The National Trust is about nature conservation.”

That means managed retreat – leaving nature to take its course and the inevitable consequences of erosion.

It is one of those days which is perfect beach-walking weather as long as you are wrapped up warmly.

Howard and Sylvia Oliver come to visit Studland often from their home along the coast in Swanage.

They agree the beach should be left as it is.

Pointing towards Brownsea Island, Howard admired the coast: “Look at that – it’s the open stretch of water and sand, it’s just superb.

“I’d certainly be sad if we lost a lot of it.”

He didn’t want to see groynes – wooden or concrete barriers – put up in the sea to slow down the erosion.

“I think it would be a real shame, ” he says.

Inevitable

The National Trust has experimented with gabions, metal grilles filled with rocks, which are supposed to soak up the force of the waves.

But they were washed away.

Some visitors do believe in a more solid effort.

Clive Arnold was over with his family on the chain ferry for the afternoon.

“I think some drastic action needs to be taken pretty soon. I think if you left nature to take its course the beach would be eroded so fast.

“At least if you put groynes in there would be something left for the people to enjoy.”

It is a view recognised by Emma but she believes it will only delay the inevitable and, anyway, the National Trust is well aware of the sacrifices it will have to make as the erosion continues.

Its own visitor centre, car park and restaurant will be lost.

To relocate would cost an estimated £3.6m and there is nowhere for it to go since most of this peninsula is closely protected as a designated Site of Specific Scientific Interest.

Ironically the National Trust is hampered by the very policies it supports.

No-one can tell how quickly the erosion will take effect. As the sand moves, other areas are enlarged.

“At the moment we’re turning back the clock.

“We’re where we were in Tudor times, the sand is moving around and the water has come in,” but even with expert advice, Emma says the future is unknown and that is what makes her job at Studland unique.

“I’d love to know what it would look like in 100 years. It is ever changing and unpredictable”.

Story by Alison Harper on the BBC News website

From the National Trust website:

In the United Kingdom no one lives more than 75 miles from the sea.

For us, as an island nation, the sea has an all-embracing presence. Spiritually and physically we are intimately connected with our shores. The sea has immense power, which we ignore at our peril.

With 1130 kilometres of coastline in its care, the Trust now owns nearly one tenth of the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The extent of our coastal holdings – and the variety of development and coastal features that they encompass – gives the Trust a unique window on the issues of coastal change.

The coast is an immensely dynamic environment. Sea-level rise and climate change are forecast to increase the scale and pace of coastal change.

To help plan for the future the Trust commissioned research to assess how the coastline is likely to change over the next 100 years.

The results suggest that many of the Trust’s important sites are at risk from coastal erosion and flooding.

As a result we face some difficult choices in managing this change, and need to make well-informed decisions that stand the test of time.

Learning from experience, our policy now favours adaptation, to give us time and space to change with the coast and work with the forces of nature.

It is not just the Trust that faces challenges from climate change and sea-level rise. People’s homes and livelihoods are at stake, so wider solutions are needed to help vulnerable communities live with a changing coast.

We have produced a pamphlet called ‘Shifting Shores’, which draws on the National Trust’s experience as Britain’s largest coastal landowner.

The impetus behind this pamphlet was to share experiences of managing coastal change and help strengthen the case for a new approach to planning and managing the future coast.

It highlights some key questions that have to be addressed to meet the needs of society now and in the future when facing up to coastal change.

• Shifting shores – full report (PDF/1.82 MB)
• Read more
• Shifting Shores – Living with a changing coastline
  (PDF/930KB)

Almost 200 miles of some of the most precious stretches of south-west England’s coastline are threatened by rising sea levels, it is claimed today.

Fabulous beaches and cliffs, harbours and buildings are in danger. At least 142 scheduled ancient monuments, 111 listed buildings and one historic garden lie within a “risk zone”. More than 100 miles of public rights of way have already been lost, or could be soon.

The claims are made in Shifting Shores, a report published by the National Trust, which warns that 173 miles of the coastline that it cares for in south-west England could be lost or damaged. Amongst the world-famous sites in danger is St Michael’s Mount, the island off Penzance in Cornwall. The trust says the causeway which is used to cross to the site at low tide may be lost within 45 years.

A boathouse at Agatha Christie’s summer house in Devon could be gone within 15 years, while there are fears that salt water will soon spill into the lagoon at Brownsea Island in Dorset, which would mean the end of a crucial habitat for migrating birds.

Not far away, the trust is looking at spending almost £4m on moving the visitor facilities at Studland in Dorset back from the crumbling coast.

The National Trust, which looks after 450 miles of coastline in the south-west, admits it is already too late for some sites. For example, when the grade II listed harbour at Mullion in south Cornwall is next badly damaged, it will be made safe but not repaired.

Phil Dyke, the National Trust’s coastal and marine adviser, said the government, local authorities and communities needed to think about what would be happening not just now but in 20, 50 or 100 years’ time. “We know how important the coast is for people who live in and visit the south-west. The prospect of the coastline changing is very worrying.”

Three years ago the trust launched a campaign to highlight the problems of coastline erosion at its sites. Today’s report says there has been little progress. “We still have yet to see policy and decision-makers really wake up to the impact of coastal change,” it claims.

Dyke added: “We have seen some positive steps such as the launch of new guidance on producing shoreline management plans and proposals to review planning guidance on the coast. The draft marine bill and a possible flood and water bill should also offer opportunities to develop new, innovative approaches to the management of coastal change. But there’s still more to do. With nearly 30 agencies or authorities involved, achieving a coherent planning and management policy along our coast is difficult. We have yet to see the integrated, long-term planning at a local level.”

To highlight its concerns the trust has published a list of 21 sites it believes are at risk. The 13 on the “high risk” list include many of south-west England’s favourite destinations. Among them is Westbury Court Garden in Gloucestershire, a rare and beautiful example of a Dutch water garden dating back to the 17th century.

The report also suggests that in some areas, good can come out of rising sea levels. At Porlock Bay in Somerset, the breaching of a shingle bar resulted in the development of a new area of salt marsh.

It concludes it is necessary to plan at least 50 years ahead. In many cases people, businesses and habitats will have to be relocated. “In some cases this will mean undoing past mistakes, taking out hard defences and letting the coast realign naturally.”

At high risk

1 Westbury Court Garden, Glos.

2 Bossington, Somerset

3 Lundy Island access road, Devon

4 Godrevy cliffs and coves, Cornwall

5 Penberth Cove, Cornwall

6 St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall

7 Mullion Harbour, Cornwall

8 Cotehele Quay, Cornwall

9 South Milton Sands, Devon

10 Black Ven, Lyme Regis, Dorset

11 Golden Cap, Dorset

12 Studland, Dorset

13 Brownsea Island, Dorset

Story by Steven Morris in the Guardian

Also fetaured in the Telegraph