OFFICIAL plans that could result in Yorkshire’s sea defences being abandoned, leaving areas of top-quality farmland to the encroaching sea, will cost at least £70m each year in lost crops, campaigners are warning.

The Government is being accused of “lunatic short-term thinking” after its calculations showed the food production land lost each year to the sea would generate far more money for the economy than it would cost to protect it. (more…)

According to the government’s countryside advisors, Natural England, for an island nation like Britain it should be a basic human right to have access to virtually every inch of coast. The idea is that anyone should be able to go to the coast, turn left or right and be able to walk on a continuous footpath as far as they wish.

…

And so new legislation to create a footpath round the whole 2,500-mile coastline of England will be featured in the Queen’s Speech later this year. The Marine and Coastal Access Bill will extend the principle of open access over large areas of England’s uncultivated fells and moors which came into effect a few years ago under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.

…

But the biggest challenge provided by the Holderness Coast to the idea of a footpath around the whole of England is that this is one of the fastest-eroding shores in Europe. Any new footpath in Holderness would be a case of now you see it, now you don’t.

That will not mean that the public right of access is washed away, according to Natural England. The right will simply “roll back” from the clifftop to the best, and the safest, available route.

Read the full article by Roger Ratcliffe on the Yorkshire Post website