NATURAL England experts have objected to a bid by residents to slow the decline of Sidmouth’s crumbling coastline – because the scheme will halt rapid erosion.

Cliff Road homeowners hope to reach an agreement with the body over their proposals for a £900,000 rock revetment along the base of cliffs near Pennington Point.

A group of residents, turned activists, spent £10,000 on a planning application they think will prevent catastrophic flooding of the town, protect Alma Bridge and the coastal footpath, and save their properties from toppling into the sea.

But Natural England says the proposed rock revetment is in “direct conflict” with a shoreline management plan for the area. (more…)

AN OPPONENT of plans to create a wetland habitat and flood scheme at Donna Nook claims the community has been “stabbed in the back” after a local authority announced it could not rely on its original grounds for refusal.

East Lindsey District Council has been preparing to be represented at an appeal lodged by the Environment Agency after its plan to create a wetland habitat and flood scheme at Donna Nook was refused last year.

The wetland would see acres of farmland flooded and would compensate for the loss of habitat around the Humber estuary due to coastal squeeze.

But in a U-turn, ELDC said things have since changed which meant its reasons for refusal could not be relied upon to win the appeal. (more…)

A groundbreaking policy to help beleaguered Suffolk homeowners who face losing their homes to coastal erosion is to be formalised next week.

On Wednesday, Waveney District Council is to set in stone a lands right move promise for people in Corton and Easton Bavents.

Once ratified, people who face losing their property to Mother Nature over the next 20 years can move to safe land nearby and still keep residential land use so they can build similar properties if they follow relevant planning law.

Businesses will also be able to relocate in similar arrangements. (more…)

Rob Young (coastal planner at North Norfolk District Council) looks for a new approach to coastal planning in the New Planning Policy on Development and Coastal Change consultation paper – article published in the Town & Country Planning Association Journal, October 2009

The coast is dynamic. That is, it changes – with the tides, with the seasons and with the climate; and so too should our approach to it, or so claims the recent Consultation on Coastal Change Policy, issued by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). This article explores some of the issues facing planners in coastal areas and examines the response to them in the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG’s) Consultation Paper on a New Planning Policy on Development and Coastal Change.

The construction of coast erosion and flood defences over the years has created the impression that resisting the action of the sea in particular locations will somehow achieve a static state within which we can act with certainty about the future. In the face of sea level rise, however, it has become all too apparent that this is a false assumption, and ‘coastal change’ has for the last two decades become an increasingly common phrase.

Many of our coastal resort towns grew in the 19th and 20th centuries behind flood and coastal defences (and the promenades that went with them) first engineered by wealthy Victorians. This was obviously not the first time the natural line of our coast had been manipulated; however, it was the Victorians who created, on a large scale at least, the process which is perhaps the root of many of the coastal challenges we face today: the cycle of defend-develop-defend. But protected settlements are only secure from erosion if the defences can be maintained, which with rising sea level becomes technically more challenging and increasingly more expensive to achieve.

Read the full article

CAR parks, cafes and tourist developments could be built in areas of coastal erosion as plans are unveiled to relax planning laws.

The building of any development is currently prohibited within any area affected by coastal erosion, such as Earnse Bay on Walney and land near to the Eskmeals gun range near Bootle.

But Planning Minister John Healey has outlined plans to relax laws in a bid to stimulate economic growth, which could see permission being granted for tourist developments. (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…)

Communities being eaten away by coastal erosion in north Norfolk are set to get a helping hand in their battle against blight.

Villages are not just fighting to shore up their sea defences, but also trying to stop their crumbling cliffs sterilising local life by putting a block on progress.

Moves are afoot to relax planning guidelines to allow more flexibility for developments, extensions and changes of use inside “no go areas” likely to be lost to erosion. (more…)