Flooding could destroy Norfolk villages
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Telegraph, 31 March 2008)
Further plans to abandon parts of the coast of Eastern England to the sea are expected from the Environment Agency this year, following the suggestion that six villages around the Norfolk Broads might have to be given up to flooding within the next 100 years.
There are fears that dozens of historic villages would be abandoned to the sea.
Norman Lamb, the North Norfolk Liberal Democrat MP, said: "There would be churches lost, whole communities lost and a lot of older historic buildings."
He added: "Our first priority is that we must defend these communities and ensure that we commit resources recognising the history of the region."
Coastal campaigners expect land from The Wash to Kelling along the north Norfolk coast and between Lowestoft and Felixstowe in Suffolk to fall victim to the agency's plans for "no active intervention" to stop coastal erosion. The latest revisions of the agency's shoreline management plans, originally drawn up in 1996, predict sea levels will rise by up to three feet as a result of climate change. The policy would see hundreds of homes destroyed and swathes of the counties' heritage wiped out.
The withdrawal of maintenance for sea defences along some sections of the coast was proposed two years ago and has already had an impact. Malcolm Kerby, from the Coastal Concern Action Group, based in the fastest eroding section of coast around Happisburgh, said: "These plans have devalued property as far as two miles inland by as much as 30 per cent. When property values fall through the floor that is what ruins people's lives."
Concern about the potential abandonment to the sea of 25 square miles of the Broads emerged last week out of a workshop run by the Agency's sister body, Natural England, which has been undertaking technical research on the impact of climate change on four areas - the Shropshire Hills, Dorset Downs and Cranbourne Chase, Cumbria High Fell and the Norfolk Broads.
Natural England's study follows the Environment Agency's proposed withdrawal of maintenance of sea defences in the Blyth estuary, between Walberswick and Southwold, last autumn, which campaigners believe is likely to be a test case for estuaries along the coast. Campaigners say a policy change at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has led to the presumption that coastal management will be withdrawn in areas where the cost to the public cannot be justified.
Under current laws, residents whose homes are destroyed would not be eligible for compensation and no discussions have taken place to change the situation, according to Mr Lamb. A spokesman for English Heritage, which aims to protect and promote England's historic environment, said: "Norfolk's history as a major international trading region has left it with a rich collection of listed medieval buildings, especially its fine churches."
The six Norfolk villages at risk under the Natural England proposal are Eccles, Sea Palling, Waxham, Horsey, Hickling and Potter Heigham.
Norfolk Broads could be lost to sea in a year
The Norfolk Broads will be lost to the sea, the head of the Environment Agency has said.
Lady Young, chief executive of the Agency, said that salt water could overwhelm the defences around the Broads in a century or as little as one year's time.
"I think the Norfolk Broads will go. They will definitely salinate," she told a conference on climate change organised by the Agency.
Lady Young's warning came after research commissioned by Natural England, the Government's conservation advisers, showed that 25 square miles of Norfolk, including six villages, could be lost to the sea within a century.
Natural England, however, described the flooding of Eccles, Sea Palling, Waxham, Horsey, Hickling and Potter Heigham as one of four possibilities, to be managed over the next 100 years by the authorities including the Environment Agency.
Lady Young, told the conference that if there was something that kept her awake at night it was coastal flooding. advertisement
"I don't want to be chief executive of the Agency when we have an East coast flood that kills 300 people," she said, adding that this was why the Agency spent so much on flood warnings such as the one that accompanied a tidal surge in the North Sea last November.
Lady Young warned that the one metre of sea level rise predicted by climate change scientists this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise would put £130 billion worth of coastal property at risk.
There would be "difficult decisions" for some communities in the path of the sea, she warned.
Lady Young issued a challenge to ministers to make it a duty in the Climate Change Bill currently before Parliament for ministers to plan for adaptation - such as moving communities and sea walls and building flood defences - as well as mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead, the Government had said it would produce a report a year on from the passing of the Bill "indicating what local authorities could do about adaptation."
"Why not a straight duty?" she asked.
Waiting a year would miss the timetable for including more funds in the Agency's budget for flood defence, which the Government has promised will top £800 million in three years' time.
Lady Young also said that far too many housing developments were being built in flood plains against Agency advice.
Her favourite example was of a development being promoted by Lincoln council on the flood plain at a place called Swanpool. "The clue may be in the title there," she joked.
Joan Ruddock, the minister responsible for climate change and adaptation, was asked whether, in the light of predictions that areas such as the Norfolk Broads would have to be abandoned to the sea, the Government had no plans to review the 1949 Act of parliament which says that people who lose their homes to the sea were not eligible for compensation.
She said she was not aware of any plans to review the Act.
Meanwhile, Stephen Haddrill, director general of the Association of British insurers warned that a million of the three million homes the Government wants to see built over the next 20 years were in flood plains.
He called for the Government to make flood defence a clear part of building regulations, so that developers actually installed the measures that they promised in order to gain planning permission.
"There needs to be a clear standard about how houses are built in the flood plain. If not, the insurance industry will have no obligation and no responsibility to insure them," he warned.
He said developers needed to be told explicitly that skimping on flood defence was "a pretty stupid thing to do."
He added: "There's an enormous number of planning applications where the Environment Agency never finds out what the local authority has done. They should report back."
Ron Whitehead of the Flood Protection Association, an industry body, said: "I know of developers who get approval and do as little as possible to comply. There needs to be a performance specification for flood defence - if you have the possibility of this type of flooding you have the following measures.
"Unless the Government closes the loophole, developers will continue to get away with it. If there were building standards, developers would have to take account of flood risk when properties were refurbished, too."
Leader: Norfolk needs saving from flooding
Rarely can the charge that England is disappearing have applied quite so literally. As we report, the Government plans to abandon 25 square miles of Norfolk, drowning homes, farms and whole villages. This won't be the first time that the East Anglian shore has retreated, of course: our coastline has been eroded over millennia. But, until now, local people have imposed their will on their environment.
Now, that will is failing. DEFRA, that most lamentable of government departments, is refusing to fund adequate sea defences. One of the most distinctive and striking of all British landscapes - the endless skies, flat beaches and pewter-coloured waves of the East Anglian littoral - risks being carried away. Land and homes are being placed needlessly at risk. And, to add insult to injury, one of the few properties to have been reinforced is owned by the Environment Secretary's father, Tony Benn - despite it being one of the few coastal estates between the Thames and the Wash with no public footpath.
There is more to this affair, though, than neglect, penny-pinching and the whiff of nepotism. We have written many times of our concern about the metropolitan outlook of this Government which, for most of its term, has not had a single cabinet minister with a rural seat. Perhaps its neglect of the countryside owes something to a sense that there are not enough Labour votes out there worth chasing.
Yet it does not seem to have occurred even to Hilary Benn that, while few Labour voters live in East Anglia, many of them enjoy visiting its shores and many more nurture a concern for the environment that is neither selfish nor affected. Our eastern lowlands are a national, not a local treasure, and if they are lost, they will not be retrievable.