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our Selsey
Campaign for Coastal Defence
SOS letter to the European Election candidates
Come back soon and see their reply!
Dear European Election Candidate,
I am writing to you to ask your view, and your party’s view (if it is different), on a number of related points that I and many other people in my locality feel are important.
I am the Spokesperson for Save our Selsey (SOS), a residents’ group based in Selsey that wants our coastline defended in order protect our community. The group has around 1500 members, a number which reflects the intense interest in this subject in this vicinity.
We are writing to the main parties’ prospective candidates, and want to publish their replies on our website and in our newsletter.
The points are as follows:
1. EC Habitats Directive
As sea levels rise due to global warming, where the coast is defended any salt marshes in front of the sea defences will eventually be lost (they become completely covered by the sea).
The EC Habitats Directive requires Member States to replace salt marshes that will be lost through this process, by flooding land. In our case, salt marshes will be lost at Southampton and Portsmouth over the next 100 years if those cities are defended. In 2005 Selsey was identified as the nearest “suitable” place to create the replacement salt marsh. The Directive does not force British authorities to designate the nearest possible area – it could be provided anywhere in Europe - but this is the approach the Government has decided to take.
Flooding this area at Selsey (by “Managed Realignment”) does mean that hundreds of acres of salt marsh will be created. The EC Directive will be satisfied and, as a result, Southampton and Portsmouth will get the go-ahead to be protected.
However, for the people and businesses that would be destroyed by a Managed Realignment scheme there is no right to compensation. Neither the Habitats Directive, nor the British Government, accept any liability to compensate those people who lose their homes, jobs or businesses when coast defences are withdrawn, even if it is quite clear that the main reason for doing it is to satisfy the Habitats Directive.
We believe this approach is in breach of the Human Rights Act, but there has yet to be a test case.
What is your view, and would you take action, on:
a) The fact that in Britain people can lose their homes, businesses and jobs without any compensation, in order to satisfy this EC Directive, when (for example) in France, the Directive has been put into French law with a caveat that people have to be taken into account?
b) The Government’s (DEFRA/Natural England) insistence that replacement salt marsh must be provided as near as possible to the site where the salt marsh would be lost, when it could be done in uninhabited areas anywhere in the EU?
2. Making certain the coastline erodes
Natural England, the Government’s nature quango, has decided that many cliffs along the English coastline should be left to “erode naturally”. This is particularly the case with cliffs which have SSSI or European protected status, usually because the exposure of the cliffs reveals fossils, or geological strata of interest to scientists.
However, in many cases there are houses or businesses built on top of these cliffs, and in the past the cliffs have been protected from erosion by coast defences, often by these people themselves. Natural England is attempting to ensure that these cliffs erode, even when people lose their homes, jobs and businesses as a result. People who lose their homes in this way get absolutely no compensation, and in some cases have had to pay to have the rubble of their homes removed from the beach. Natural England’s view is that the fresh exposure of the geology is more important than this human suffering.
Here and all around England’s coastline, people in these circumstances are being prevented from protecting their homes by Natural England. It opposes policies of coastal defence where there are such cliffs, and opposes planning consents to repair or rebuild existing defences, even when homeowners are prepared to do this at their own expense.
What is your view, and would you take action, on:
a) The current policy of putting “interesting geology” before people.
b) Natural England’s actions to ensure the coastline erodes.
3. Preventing coast defence works where these “affect” a protected site
Coast defences come in different forms. It may be necessary:
to move shingle from where it is building up, back to where it was eroded for a boat that is dumping shingle on a beach (it’s done at high tide, so the shingle is left high and dry at low tide) to gently rest on the seabed. To put foundations of solid defences into the beach.
In all these examples, if the site is one protected by British law (e.g. SSSI) or EC law (e.g. SPA), Natural England has in the past objected to these operations, even if the result would be that the coastline erodes/floods and people lose their homes (again, without compensation).
What is your view, and would you take action, on:
a) Amending EC Environmental Regulations to make bodies such as Natural England take account of the social and economic consequences of objecting to coast defence policies, or of refusing consent for coastal defence works.
b) Amending EC regulations make bodies such as Natural England take account of the absence in any Member State of full compensation for damage caused by the withdrawal or non-repair of coast defences.
4. Habitat Creation v Food Security
Most of the land being flooded locally, in order to create salt marshes (to satisfy the European Habitats Directive), is farmland. This is at a time when we are told that Food Security (i.e. growing our own food here in the UK so we don’t need to import as much) will be a serious concern in coming years.
What is your view, and would you take action, on:
a) Ensuring that the long term interests of the nation’s Food Security is put before the short term requirement to satisfy the EU Habitats Directive, by the current policy of flooding British farmland to create salt marshes.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to this enquiry.
Yours faithfully,
Roland O’Brien
Spokesperson/Communications Officer
Save our Selsey (SOS)
Contact: info@saveourselsey.org