Shoreline Management Plan in basic terms
In April 2013 Richard Steward of the Blyth Estuary Group (BEG) presented the following easily understood explanation of the Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) and it’s effect at his presentation to the residents of Walberswick, Suffolk, just across the Blyth Estuary from Southwold.
“The Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) is the means by which the Environment Agency delivers Government coastal policy.
The SMPs were produced by the Environment Agency’s consultant, Royal Haskoning, and paid for by our District Councils.
The SMPs are not quite what they seem. Whilst they do indeed list areas that will continue to receive protection, they are essentially a list of previously defended areas that are now to be abandoned.
Since the modelled threat of ‘climate change’ appeared in 1990, the Government have been developing a complex system of raised benefit cost
ratio targets, costing methods, outcome measures and dubious science, to remove the responsibility and cost of maintaining defences in rural areas.
The unintended consequences of this policy are vividly demonstrated in the Blyth where our estuary walls are to be abandoned destroying our harbour and footpaths but our property is to be protected at a cost 15 times more than if our walls were not abandoned in the first place”.
Source: Walberswick Presentation 6th April 2013
