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Campaign for Coastal Defence

from 'Selsey Life' July 2010

More about Finance

On 17th June, the Environment Agency will have considered whether government funds should be spent on the recommended coastal defence works at West Beach (at the time of going to press, the outcome was not known).
Coastal defence works have traditionally been carried out by the public sector, through government funding. Coastal District Councils like Chichester DC have “permissive” powers to carry out coast defence, but don’t get a regular budget from government to do significant works.

Instead, Councils tend to set aside a very modest “maintenance” budget (in Chichester’s case, roughly £65,000 for its 11km coastline) from the Council Tax. They largely use this to draw up works proposals and funding applications, which are sent to the government’s Environment Agency. If the Agency agrees to fund the works, they are done; if it doesn’t, the plans are shelved due to lack of finance.

The Agency decides what gets funding on the basis of a complicated set of rules laid out by central government, and the amount of money it’s got. Unfortunately, 85% of the Agency’s “flood” budget is allocated to inland flooding. Only 15% (£110m) is spent on the coastline - about enough to build one timber groyne per 4 miles of English coastline! In fact, protecting major cities wipes up most of the budget, so what remains is grossly inadequate to deal with smaller coastal towns and villages. As a result, many coast defences are being left to decay.

With the likelihood of severe national spending cuts, SOS feels the balance between coastal and inland expenditure should be re-examined. An across-the-board cut would have a disproportionate effect on smaller coastal communities, some of whom are already losing homes.  SOS has joined the National Voice of Coastal Communities (NVCC), which brings together many similar groups from around England’s coastline, to put the case for this rebalancing of the budget.

There are other measures which we’d like implemented, to actively encourage investment in coastal defence. For example private defences - though usually built to protect specific assets - often have a much wider public benefit.

 Here at Selsey, Bunn Leisure propose spending some £15m to protect the caravan parks – works which will simultaneously protect the western flank of Selsey, comprising hundreds of homes, worth millions of pounds. To anyone in Selsey the very significant and real public benefit of this is obvious. But it is not adequately recognised by government – in fact various regulations positively discourage such private investment. This makes no sense, particularly when public finances are about to be slashed. We hope the new government takes note. More on this in a future issue.