The decision to cut £5 million from flood defence schemes in Norfolk, leading to a cancellation of plans to re-inforce a breach between Eccles and Winterton could put thousands of homes at risk of flooding.
Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk has described the plans as "ludicrous" and potentially "disastrous".
Norfolk faces massive flooding problems in the future with sea levels continuing to rise. Even the environment agency have condemned the cuts.
If this were London, there would be a furore, but because it is in a rural part of the country, our views are ignored. People in Norfolk could rightly ask two important questions of this Labour government.
1) Why isn't the millions of pounds the government earns from dredging of the North Norfolk coast spent protecting the North Norfolk coastline ?
2) Why do we allow the Dutch to take shingle from out coastline to protect their coastline but then cuts funding to protect Norfolk villages from flooding.
If the Eccles/Winterton breach is breached, a whole area in land around the Broads could be flooded, spelling disaster for the Norfolk economy and ruining the ecosystem of the Broads as it would be polluted with sea water.
Read more about it in the EDP HERE.
Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk has described the plans as "ludicrous" and potentially "disastrous".
Norfolk faces massive flooding problems in the future with sea levels continuing to rise. Even the environment agency have condemned the cuts.
If this were London, there would be a furore, but because it is in a rural part of the country, our views are ignored. People in Norfolk could rightly ask two important questions of this Labour government.
1) Why isn't the millions of pounds the government earns from dredging of the North Norfolk coast spent protecting the North Norfolk coastline ?
2) Why do we allow the Dutch to take shingle from out coastline to protect their coastline but then cuts funding to protect Norfolk villages from flooding.
If the Eccles/Winterton breach is breached, a whole area in land around the Broads could be flooded, spelling disaster for the Norfolk economy and ruining the ecosystem of the Broads as it would be polluted with sea water.
Read more about it in the EDP HERE.
3 comments:
I'm very concerned about coastal erosion too. From what I understand, different agencies keep passing the buck, nobody wants to take resposibility, there is no collaborative effort to resolve this very serious problem.
What concerns me is that the UK government know so little about the effects of dredging for aggregates off the North Norfolk coast yet they keep renewing licenses.
The Coastal Concern Action Group have worked really closely with the District Council and Norman Lamb, and I know that one senior councillor who lives in Happisburgh, one of the most affected villages, said that when they went to speak to the EU about it in Brussels, they knew more, much more, than the UK government. So much for remote Europeans !
More argument for localism: If Norfolk had a decent level of political power, then they could do this for themselves, and would know it needs doing (and take the profits from the dredging or stop it if its wished).
Central government doesn't have a clue about the needs of the country outside Westminster (and perhaps senior minister's constituencies).
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