Coastal plans 'flawed' claim
(Eastern Daily Press, 02 May 2005)
Major flaws have been alleged in a controversial coastal-defence plan which threatens homes and businesses worth £250m around the East Anglian coast.
The Shoreline Management Plan has already come under attack in more than 1000 objections from communities on the coast and the Broads in danger from its suggested abandonment of sea defences.
Now the village action group at one of the worst-hit spots – the historic holiday village of Overstrand – claims the SMP's financial calculations are wildly inaccurate, and hopes its own figures will deal a fatal blow to the blueprint.
As the public consultation period closed at the weekend, campaigners claimed that if the plan was wrong about one place, it could very well be wrong about others.
The hard-hitting Overstrand dossier, drawn up in two months, says the plan, which took consultants Halcrow four years to complete, got its sums wrong by many millions of pounds when looking at the impact on the village and the cost of defending it.
It attacks the SMP – which advocates a policy of "managed retreat" between Kelling and Lowestoft over the next century – for its "inaccurate economics" and "poor science".
It says the true cost of such a policy at Overstrand would be £89.5m, not the £7.7m in the SMP, and the cost of defences could be £4.5m rather than the £8.6m suggested. The SMP is accused of taking too much of a broad brush approach which:
- undervalued property at £7.7m when the true figure was £48.6m.
- failed to take any account of the £17m local tourist industry which annually attracts 40,000 holiday-makers, 160,000 daytrippers and creates nearly 100 jobs.
- ignored £21m of blight.
- missed out £1.5m of infrastructure including a sewerage station which would be lost to erosion.
- inflated the costs of building defences but ignored rising property prices.
- made errors over property types, including logging the major Sea Marge Hotel as "residential".
The Overstrand dossier also says the SMP is wrong in its claims that defending the village was making it a promontory, which was stopping 70pc of the sediment flow needed to supply beaches further along the coast.
Independent research also showed that a lot of sand movement happened further offshore and would not be affected.
It also adds that rapid collapse of the local cliffs would muddy the shoreline waters and damage fish spawning grounds, and that no research had been done on the possible impact of the planned new offshore windfarm.
Simon Davies, chairman of the action group, said the report's inaccuracies would be laughable if they were not so potentially serious.
Although they only had time to look at their own village, it was likely the same errors existed all along the coast, undermining the whole SMP project.
He was pleased with the way experts in fields such as accountancy, economics, science and the environment came out of the woodwork in the village to help with the dossier.
"Halcrow probably thought they could blind us with science but this response could be a bit of a wake-up call for them," he said.
The report says the SMP should be rejected and there is a "clear economic case" to carry on defending the coast.
It adds: "It is inconceivable that anyone actually visiting Overstrand could reach the conclusion that the cost of replacing and maintaining the sea defence would justify abandonment of a village of this scale and size."
The Happisburgh-based Coastal Concerns Action Group has not filed an objection itself but has left it to villagers in the areas affected, where it held a series of public meetings to raise awareness of the issues.
They included communities around the Yarmouth area, and even at Horning on the Broads, which could be swamped by seawater if coastal defences are breached.
Co-ordinator Malcolm Kerby said: "We are taking a step back and letting the people all have their say.
"I said earlier that the SMP had prodded a sleeping tiger – now they will see its claws."