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Tuesday 21 May 2013

Pennington Point: a beach management plan

Residents pledge cash in erosion battle

17th May 2013
Residents have pledged thousands of pounds of their own money to speed up a beach management plan to pinpoint how best to slow down erosion of Pennington Point.
Cliff Road homeowners who fear for their properties want the Environment Agency (EA) to match the amount.
They are willing to stump up £7,500 to meet a shortfall for the blueprint. 
Householders had already spent £10,000 on a planning application for a rock revetment they withdrew in good faith two years ago when the District Council formed a working party to look at tackling the crumbling coastline.
Paul Griew, leader of the Cliff Road Action Group, told the Herald this week: "It looked as if there was about a £15,000 shortfall [for the beach management plan].
"We didn't want to spend lots of time tying to get someone else to fund it - we want to get on as fast as possible.
"While we don't think is our fault that the problem is occurring,  anything to stop our gardens eroding is important.
"If everything gets going we could start getting the beach management plan together in August or September and have that finished in seven or eight months, by the end of the next financial year.
"We will have to wait and see what is proposed to see what action needs to be taken and where funding for that will come from."
The plan will determine how best to manage Sidmouth beach over the next decade.
It is expected to cost £80,000 in total, with £27,000 so far committed by East Devon District Council and a similar figure from the EA.
County Councillor Stuart Hughes was involved in recent discussions on the matter with EA chiefs and said: "I'm pretty confident they are going to put more into the scheme."
Home - Sidmouth Herald

Future vision: Sidmouth coastal erosion insight

Stefan Gordon: 22 July 2011
Images reveal ‘worst case scenario’ at Pennington Point



Sidmouth's current coastline in 2010



'Worst case scenario'- town coast could look like this in 2100 

THESE specially commissioned images reveal how Sidmouth’s crumbling Pennington Point could look for future generations in a ‘worst case scenario’.
Residents and visitors to the town’s stretch of Jurassic Coast were yesterday invited to Kennaway House to find out more on how coastal erosion might affect them.
Computer-generated images showed what Sidmouth’s coast may look like in 20, 50 and 100 years time.
But experts played down fears by saying the rate of erosion highlighted will only happen if no intervention were to take place - and a policy change should alter the picture. “These visualisations are not a prediction of where the coast will be in 50 to 100 years time, rather, they show how the coast might change under a policy of ‘no active intervention’ at Pennington Point - if the policies in the draft Shoreline Management Plan (SMP), published in 2010, were implemented based on national data sets,” said Alexandria Potter, coastal change Pathfinder support officer for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage team.
“The policy for Pennington Point has since changed to one of ‘managed realignment’ in the final SMP and, therefore, this visualisation should only be regarded as indicative of the ‘worst case scenario’ under the previous policy,” she added.
“The time frames are also indicative - with no active intervention the change will come, but it is not possible to forecast exactly when or how.”
A Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) is a large-scale assessment of the perils associated with coastal processes and helps reduce such risks to people and the developed, historic and natural environments.
Government funded ‘Pathfinder’ project surveys, looking at coastal change, suggest people want to know more about the issue and get more involved in decision making and coastline management, say Jurassic Coast experts.
Visitors to yesterday’s exhibition were also presented with ideas that communities themselves have come up with to adapt to change, following workshops as part of the project.

A beach management plan was put together in March 2012:

Half million hope for Sidmouth’s crumbling cliffs

Stefan Gordon; 13 March 2012  
A PROPOSED beach management plan for Sidmouth - it is hoped will lead to a solution for crumbling Pennington Point - is in line to receive more than £500,000.
But a vital slice of the cash won’t come until 2014, and the rest will be handed over by 2017, according to the Environment Agency (EA) and Defra.
East Devon District Council (EDDC) applied for funding from the bodies as it bids to formulate proposals to tackle rapid erosion of the town’s eastern cliffs.
The beach management plan itself will cost £80,000 to produce - with subsequent maintenance works estimated to total hundreds of thousands more.
The EA and Defra revealed EDDC will receive £55,000 towards the £80,000 beach management plan in the 2014/15 financial year. Members had already pledged £25,000 to the scheme in January.
“This would give us an overview of the beach for the next 100 years and a plan of maintenance work for the next 10 years,” said an EDDC spokesperson. A further two instalments totalling £500,000, in both 2015/16 and 2016/17, will follow.
“The second part was a guesstimate of maintenance work required following the beach management plan - £250k for the following two years after the production of the plan,” added the spokesperson.
“If we don’t have a plan in place we would not be successful in bidding for funding for any works, maintenance or new, from Defra.”
EDDC says a beach management plan would give a clear assessment of the issues involved, the options necessary to protect the beach and town, and give the authority a realistic opportunity to bid for further Defra funding in the future.
Last year, a working part set up to find a way forward in tackling erosion at Pennington Point agreed at its first meeting that formulating a plan, as soon a possible, was the best way forward.

A summary of the past two years from Devon Local News:

 Posts Tagged ‘ pennington point ’
January 4, 2013
EAST Devon MP Hugo Swire and Councillor Stuart Hughes are to meet to discuss the plight of crumbling Pennington Point.
Read More »
December 17, 2012
AGGREGATE placed on the beach at Sidmouth and intended for transfer to Pennington Point in the New Year has been washed away by a combination of high tide and stormy seas on Thursday night.
Read More »
December 14, 2012
AGGREGATE placed on the beach at Sidmouth and intended for transfer to Pennington Point in the New Year has been washed away by a combination of high tide and stormy seas on Thursday night.
Read More »
December 10, 2012
HUNDREDS of tonnes of gravel were brought to Sidmouth beach on Thursday in a bid to protect its crumbling eastern coastline – but won’t be put in place at Pennington Point for weeks.
Read More »
December 7, 2012
East Devon District Council is in ongoing talks with the Environment Agency, Devon County Council and other partners with regard to medium and longer-term measures to tackle the problem of erosion of the cliffs at Pennington Point.
Read More »
May 1, 2012
A TECHNICAL group has been set up to tackle coastal erosion at Pennington Point after a working party met on Monday.
Read More »
March 13, 2012
A PROPOSED beach management plan for Sidmouth - it is hoped will lead to a solution for crumbling Pennington Point - is in line to receive more than £500,000.
Read More »
September 21, 2011
A SURPRISE new beach management plan for Sidmouth is being prepared by district council bosses in a bid to protect Pennington Point, Alma Bridge, and sea flood defences.
Read More »
September 21, 2011
SIDMOUTH business leaders pleaded for “urgent” protection of crumbling Pennington Point when planning chiefs plotting the future of the area met on Tuesday.
Read More »
July 22, 2011
Images reveal ‘worst case scenario’ at Pennington Point

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