Communities may have to move inland because of coastal erosion

Residents living in some towns and villages along the British coastline may have to move because of rising seas, the chief executive of the Environment Agency is expected to say today. 

Coastal erosion is leading to the loss of homes in the UK, particularly in Norfolk and Suffolk.  

In a speech to a flooding and coastal erosion conference, Sir James Bevan will say that an “inconvenient truth” is that some British communities “cannot stay where they are”. 

“There is no coming back for land that coastal erosion has taken away or which a rising sea level has put permanently or frequently under water,” he will say. “Which means that in some places the right answer — in economic, strategic and human terms — will have to be to move communities away from danger rather than try to protect them from the inevitable impacts of a rising sea level.” Bevan will not name particular communities at the conference in Telford, the Daily Mail reported. 

Sea levels around the UK have risen by 15.4cm since 1900 and the Met Office has forecast that modern levels could increase a further 1.12m by 2100. 

The Environment Agency will set out its risk management strategy, which will include producing a national assessment of flood risk, an updated coastal erosion risk map and long-term investment scenarios to better inform future decisions as part of a £5.2 billion investment by 2027. 

Bevan, 62, who joined the environment agency in 2015, will say that it has been trying to move away from “carbon-intensive materials” such as concrete and steel and instead to deploy more natural flood defences that include restoring coastal salt marshes. 

A £36 million initiative run by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency is also trying out methods to reduce the effect of coastal flooding in the east of England, including creating temporary car parks in “erosion zones”. 

Jim Hall, professor of climate and environmental risks at the University of Oxford, said: “There need to be honest conversations within coastal communities about what the future holds.”