Erosion in Yorkshire: “You can't defend everywhere”

Last winter’s exceptional weather – which included record rainfall and 11 named storms – was almost certainly the trigger for the unprecedented losses but as climate change becomes an accepted reality, council officials and those living near the coast are having to come to terms with a faster rate of erosion.

 

Until now, modelling what might happen in the future has been based on historic annual erosion rates. From these, the council says it expects around 102 residential properties will be lost to the sea by 2105.

 

But that doesn’t include any allowance for climate change. New long-term coastal erosion forecasts, which include climate change modelling for the first time, are due to be published by the Environment Agency early next year. They will map out three potential future scenarios for the coastlines around the UK that are most at risk from erosion. 

 

 

County councillor Denise Howard, who represents the East Wolds and Coastal ward, says: “With the mapping, obviously there is a lot of science behind it, but I just don’t think you can map the force of nature. I live on that coastline and it’s literally changing massively on a monthly basis.”

 

The council launched its own Changing Coasts project last year with the aim of working more closely with local communities to both respond to and plan for the impact of coastal erosion both now and in the long term. Recently, council officials met with their counterparts in three parishes to start discussions over potential future housing options and financial assistance for residents who will eventually be forced to relocate.

 

Funded through the government’s Flood and Coast Innovation Programme, the four-year project includes a commitment to deliver new small-scale community housing schemes to replace properties that will be lost to coastal erosion as well as experimenting with trial temporary uses on so-called “transitional land” where permanent development is no longer appropriate or viable.

 

However, the project is not offering any financial compensation for those land and property owners at risk of coastal erosion and none of the funding will be allocated to the construction or maintenance of sea defences.

 

As such, it reflects the council’s long-standing shoreline management policy of defending key areas of population and infrastructure along the coast while adopting a managed retreat elsewhere. With 85km of vulnerable coastline between Bridlington and Spurn Point, building and maintaining defences along the entire length is considered neither physically nor financially feasible.

 

 

A relatively recent new defence scheme in the seaside town of Withernsea underlines the point. Around 6,000 people live there and, along with neighbouring Hornsea and a major gas terminal facility at Easington to the south, the town is one of the so-called “hold the line” locations under the shoreline management policy.

 

The scheme involved extending the town’s sea defences southwards by constructing a 400m-long barrier of rock armour made up of 70,000 tonnes of granite imported from Norway. The £7 million cost was supported by a £3 million grant from the European Regional Development Fund, fortunately signed off before the UK’s departure from the European Union.

 

However, similar post-Brexit financial support from successive governments has yet to materialise, making it harder for local councils to make the numbers stack up. A gloomy recent East Riding of Yorkshire Council paper on the issue noted: “It is important to report that some feasibility studies have indicated that flood and coastal risk management investment is not economically viable, with large funding gaps present for scheme proposals. This largely reflects challenges around the funding rules we must work with to secure government grant aid. 

 

“In addition there has been a significant reduction in the number of external funding sources available to support projects compared with the previous investment cycle. Examples include the Local Growth Fund and the European Regional Development Fund which contributed over £26 million to our works between 2015 and 2021.”

 

Jeremy Pickles, the council’s sustainable development manager, says that, while the current policy of defending major centres of population and critical infrastructure along the coast will continue, “our ability to defend beyond that is zero. Regardless of environmental impact, the overall sustainability – whether that is environmental, social or economic – of defending the whole of our coast doesn’t stack up because the reality is that if we did defend all of it, you end up with Lincolnshire under water.

 

“For us it’s about transitioning. The reality is we have to work with the natural processes we have got in order to sustain the bits that we currently do. We are looking at transition and adaptation but I don’t think the answer is defence everywhere.”

 

The council’s coastal change manager, Richard Jackson, acknowledges that a future scenario in which currently defended towns such as Hornsea and Withernsea become increasingly isolated by coastal erosion on either side is “something we are heading towards”.

He adds: “There are a lot of options to look at but yes, [the coast] will continue to move back either side of those places.”

At Kilnsea, the only visible defences against the sea are accidental. Once perched on a cliff, the collapsed remains of a concrete First World War gun battery now lie half-buried in sand on the beach while a section of the old main road hangs over the cliff edge like an Olympic diving board. 

Inside the Blue Bell, the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has converted part of the building into a mini-laboratory as part of a project aimed at re-establishing an ancient seagrass meadow off Spurn Point. As well as being able to capture carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforest while supporting a variety of marine wildlife, the tiny plants offer an unusual alternative to imported Norwegian rock in the battle against the tide.

 

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