Newspaper Articles

Echo article about the management plan for the Solent coastline

There was an Echo article last Wednesday that really caught my eye which I decided to follow up. It was about the management plan for the Solent coastline. It caught my eye for two reasons: the first was that I wasn’t sure I was aware of this plan and secondly, it affected my constituency. The map in the Echo suggested that for chunks of the coastline on the western boundary of my constituency along Southampton Water and the Hamble nothing would be done to stop the sea encroaching on the land. On the eastern boundary, around Portchester and Fareham Creek, the line would be held.

Having had my appetite whetted by the article, I’ve dug a little deeper now and looked at the report. It is an interesting document but quite lengthy. It looks at the impact over a hundred years of rising sea levels and coastal erosion and suggests the steps that might be taken to mitigate the effect over the next 20, 20-50 and 50-100 years. It is quite sobering reading. Much of the coastline along the Solent in my constituency from Meonshore through to Swanwick is countryside or beach. The report suggests that because of this the landscape will change in the years to come as land is eroded and new inter-tidal areas will be formed. Where there is property such as the Maritime College in Warsash then there will be realignment with new defences being built on the land side of the existing defences. The realignment will be defended.

On the other side of the constituency, a different approach has been adopted given the scale of residential, commercial and MoD property around Fareham Creek and Portsmouth Harbour. Here more sea defences will be needed to protect the area from flooding.

One of the challenges is who will pay for the defences. One of the messages from the consultation document is that 60% of the shoreline covered in the report is privately owned and therefore the owners will be expected to pick up the tab. This affects much of the shoreline and some of the property along the Hamble and Southampton Water. In other areas where the plan envisages the line will be held the expectation is that the taxpayer will foot the bill, but there is no price tag attached.

Of course, the report also begs the question whether the plans to build some 80,000 houses in our area over the next twenty years is realistic if our area is going to be so badly affected by coastal erosion and rising sea level. Our local councils need to think carefully about this. We need to be very careful where we build property if we are to avoid the risk of them being flooded.

This consultation poses some very interesting questions about which parts of our coastline we should protect and which we should leave to allow nature take its natural course. It is something we should all think about carefully.