Defences down for our coastline
(Country Life, 08 April 2008)
It's time we shut down Natural England (NE), the puppet quango set up by the Government. Unfocused and unloved, it replaced the Countryside Agency and English Nature. Sadly, it now packs neither the effective rural punch of the former, nor the international scientific reputation of the latter. Run by a log-time employee of the Environment Agency, NE is the very model of a New Labour quango. Starved of resources, it's required to do the Government's bidding while preserving the pretence of independence.
This is all the sad outcome of a process that Country Life condemned at its inception. We warned that the destruction of English Nature would leave the public with no reliable independent scientific resource for the countryside. We knew that the new agency had neither the budget nor the remit properly to defend the interests of the countryside. What we could not have imagined was just how bad the cuts in resources would be nor how soon NE would succumb to the determination of the Government to withdraw from the effective defence of England's coastline.
Dangerously barmy
This week, we began to realise just how much even we had underestimated the weakening of the protection of our rural heritage. NE announced its proposals for the realignment of the north Norfolk coastline. This envisages the flooding of 25 square miles of countryside, six villages, five lakes, hundreds of homes, and thousands of acres of farmland. Instead of even attempting to continue the coastal protection that for hundreds of years we have determined to uphold, NE is proposing that it would be cheaper to allow the sea to engulf the whole area. Of course, at any point in our history, it would have been cheaper not to protect the coastline, but generations of Englishmen, with fewer technical resources and considerably lesser wealth, have struggled successfully to save the landscape they loved. Mediaeval churches, Tudor farmhouses, 17th-century windmills, Georgian houses, and Victorian cottages - all would disappear if this outrageous plan were to be implemented.
Betrayal
NE is right to say it would be cheaper than the present coastal defence. That's because it proposes no compensation for the loss of property, land and livelihood. It merely suggests that the Government would cease to pay the bills for sea defences and individual citizens could simply bear the loss. Such a piece of arithmetic inevitably provides the Government with an economic case for coastal retreat. However, it goes flatly against natural justice, is probably contrary to European law, and can't be justified by anyone who has the interests of the countryside at heart.
Yet those interests are precisely what NE is supposed to uphold. Instead, it merely does the bidding of the Treasury and Defra ministers whose only priority is to save money. What's more, lest this should be thought to be an isolated example, similar plans are being revealed to shocked communities all the way down the east coast from King's Lynn to Canvey Island.
This is not an issue for coastal people alone. It is the heritage of the whole of England. It is our land and our history that is being abandoned. We have never been richer and yet NE has been told to say that we're too poor to protect our own. We have never had such effective technology at our command, yet NE is pressed to say that climate change means we shouldn't even try to use it. The plan betrays us all. It is Natural England, not north Norfolk, that should be abandoned - and abandoned without delay.
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