A year after a tidal surge breached flood defences around a north Suffolk estuary, a landowner has vowed to work with coastal campaigners to protect the land he loves.

Andrew Blois, who owns hundreds of acres of grazing, marsh and farm land in Walberswick, next to the Blyth Estuary, has been working for the last year to repair some of the flood walls which were damaged in last November’s storm surge.

“These defences were built by my family 300 years ago. I’m not going to be the Blois who gives up on them,” he said. (more…)

Flood defence campaigners are to lobby parliament in what could be a crucial week in their bid to save land and homes from being lost to the sea.

Members of the Blyth Strategy Group, which opposes the Environment Agency’s (EA) plans to stop maintaining flood banks in the north Suffolk estuary in the next 20 years, and representatives from local councils will travel to Westminster tomorrow.

The move comes less than a week after environment minister Phil Woolas visited Norfolk communities and told them that in spite of draft proposals by Natural England to allow a 25 sq mile area of land to flood, their homes would not be sacrificed to the sea. (more…)