Erosion becomes big problem for coastal living home owners
Q: I’m looking to buy a home by the seaside but the property is near a cliff and I’m worried about coastal erosion ... should
I be?
A: There’s never been a more important time to ask a question like this and the answer will depend entirely on which part of the country you’re looking at and exactly how close it is to our coastline at the moment.
Climate scientists like me talk a lot about rising sea levels but actually the shores of our island are at a huge risk of coastal erosion and the bad news is it’s only going to get worse.
I’ve been front and centre of new research which has found 21 English communities could be lost to coastal erosion in the next 77 years.
By 2100 over £584 million of property could disappear into the sea because of it.
It's impossible to overestimate how serious this is both for the country and millions of people who have homes that are going to be at risk or disappear completely.
We might be accustomed to
seeing some houses occasionally disappearing into the sea on the news but it's going to get far more frequent and far worse.
The coastal communities most at risk are in Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset, East Yorkshire, Essex, Isle of Wight, Kent, Northumberland, Norfolk and Sussex.
Sea levels are rising as global temperatures soar and larger waves are battering our coast during severe storms.
These irreversible changes mean some cliff faces are crumbling
fast.
We can’t turn the tide or build a wall around the entire coast so we urgently need to help seaside communities to prepare for the damage that will most definitely come.
You can use this link and map to see if the area you’re looking to buy in will be affected. Visit onehome.org.uk/coast website.
Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) are publicly available documents but unfortunately most people are unaware of their existence.
Many homeowners don’t know their properties are at risk or that decisions have been made about whether to protect them or not.
On the government website you can check coastal erosion for your area and flooding to see what the risk level is and any government plans to protect your community. Visit www. gov.uk/c website.
Sea level rises in the UK will put 200,000 homes at risk within the next 30 years.
We all know from the news at this time of year that flooding - especially in coastal areas - is a big problem. When you combine those rising sea levels with increasingly bad winter storms and coastal erosion, it makes the UK smaller and leaves too many people without homes or with negative equity as the coast marches towards their door.
If you’re considering a home on a coast please make sure you do your homework. There's enough information available to you to mean you can make your choices wisely. If you don’t, you could lose more than just money.
Angela Terry facts from fiction and explains how you can take simple, practical steps to help savethe planet. Follow @ouronehome & visit onehome.org.uk for more advice