Responsibility

Coastal management in England and Wales is the responsibility of a wide range of organisations with no overall integrated approach.

This has sometimes led to delays and conflicts.

Organisations include:

- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (defra)

- Environment Agency

- County, rural and urban local authorities

- English Nature Countryside Commission

-National Trust

- National Parks Authorities

- National Nature Reserves

Each local authority has a statutory duty to provide coastal management plans which meet the Government’s policy aim:

“To reduce the risk to people and the developed and natural environment from flooding and coastal erosion by encouraging the provision of technically, environmentally and economically sound and sustainable defence measures.”

In addition, the local authorities are obliged to “discourage inappropriate development in areas at risk from flooding and coastal erosion”.

Assistance with funding for coastal management schemes comes from the government but local authorities may need to borrow money or raise local taxes in order to pay the full costs which in may cases come to millions of pounds.

Planners have the added complication of taking into account:

1. Predicted sea level rises due to global warming

2. Sea level rises or land level rises due to isostatic readjustment following the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age.