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Campaign for Coastal Defence

SOS Bulletin No 7 – June 2009

Keeping in touch

For the past year we have concentrated on our monthly articles in Selsey Life, and our exciting new website (www.saveourselsey.org), to keep people informed of Selsey’s coast defence situation. Whilst we will continue with these outlets, many people have asked us to print & distribute another Bulletin – so here it is!

Coastal Update

The Coast Defence Strategy (“CDS”) - the policy which galvanised local residents into forming SOS some 2 ½ years ago – is slowly grinding through the Whitehall approval process. We believe it will be approved in its current form, which – thankfully – is very different to what was originally proposed.

The initial proposal was to let Selsey Bill erode, and to let Selsey’s sea walls slowly be overwhelmed by rising sea levels. At Medmerry, the proposal was to let the sea flood a vast area of land (potentially including the caravan parks & many houses), forcing residents to pay £10m to prevent Selsey turning into an island. Ouch!

After much justified public anger and a lot of campaigning, the current CDS suggests 

So, where does this leave us?

Unfortunately, we’re NOT “in the clear”. The policy of “hold the line –sustain” for Selsey town is just a policy: the CDS doesn’t provide any money to do it! So, unless we can get £30m of funding in the next 20 years, the policy won’t do anything to protect our town from decaying coast defences and rising sea levels.

Still, the policy is a start – we no longer need to fight that. What SOS is now concentrating on is ways of getting funding to implement this policy.

Government funding – Together we stand! 

Selsey is not alone in this problem. Many, many small communities up and down England’s coastline have the same problem. Some of them are in a much worse position than us. SOS was recently invited to Happisburgh, on the North Norfolk coast. There, many homes have fallen into the sea. We met a lady whose home has been professionally valued at £1, because it is next in line to fall off the cliff.

Mercifully, Selsey is not in this situation, but we can link up with coastal residents’ groups in places like Happisburgh to form an effective lobby group, which can lobby for changes in Government policy that will help us all. We’re not demanding that all of Britain’s coastline is defended, forever, however much it costs. That isn’t realistic or desirable. Basically, all we’re after is a “fair deal” for coastal communities:

This is a national issue, so the Government should take ultimate responsibility, not offload it to poorly-funded, overstretched local authorities

The calculation to “defend or abandon” coastline must reflect the real costs/losses to affected people and communities where a previously-defended coastline is abandoned, householders and businesses affected should get full compensation for their losses

This is what most coastal groups call “social justice”. SOS will be putting its case in a presentation to a special conference at Westminster on 6th July, that will be attended by the Minister of State for DEFRA, Huw Irranca-Davies MP.

Other ways to get funding to protect our community

Even with a change in Government policy, we’re very unlikely to get the £30m we need over the next 20 years from traditional coast-defence funds. Funding for the recent works at East and West Beach came from this source, but it was extremely difficult to get, and was a tiny fraction of the £30m we will need in the future.

But without coast defences, our community is not going to be sustainable. Coast defence is the foundation on which Selsey’s future stands. We believe that other strands of government funding (e.g. economic regeneration, wellbeing, health, social inclusion, infrastructure etc) should take this into account, and contribute to maintaining our defences.

By making our coastline “earn its living”, and making it more popular for locals and tourists alike, we can make it more valuable and worth protecting. For example, current plans to regenerate East Beach (with a diving centre, improved facilities for commercial fishermen, a better public boat ramp and play facilities) could mean that it becomes “unthinkable” to abandon the sea wall here in the future, because of the contribution the revitalised area makes to the local community.

This funding issue is now one of the main strands of our work.

In the next few months

We will be at various community events over the summer: Sea Selsey, Lifeboat Day, Carnival…please come and see us. We will be continuing our petition – many thanks to those who have already signed it – and signing up new supporters (it’s free to register as a supporter, easy to do on our website, and we don’t pester you).

Many thanks to all our supporters – your support is the foundation of our success!