Twenty-eighth Report Adapting Institutions to Climate Change Cm ...

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SMPs have a prominent role in the proposed planning policy on development and coastal change.
It is proposed to encourage the use of an agreed evidence base, drawing primarily on SMPs, which
will provide the means of identifying risks for a local area and offer proposals as to how to manage
them. The SMP would then be a material consideration for decisions on planning applications.
The Commission nevertheless noted that there is some confusion concerning the precise
function of SMPs and how they align with the planning system. As mentioned above, SMPs
are not management plans (for example, they have no means of implementation 75 and they are
not statutory documents). They are described as providing an information base but, at the same
time, they contain management scenarios which may be difficult to distinguish from proposals
for policy. That said, they potentially form a very important high-level document from which
strategies for coastal flooding and erosion risk management can be developed.
During our study we received evidence from the Anglian Coastal Authorities Group concerning
the draft SMP for the Kelling to Lowestoft coastline covering parts of Norfolk and Suffolk.
First published in 2004, it recommended a policy of ‘no active intervention’ for some locations
where it had previously been ‘hold the line’. In some areas where knowledge of this decision
became widespread, properties and businesses were financially blighted; additionally there was
a perception among local communities that no further protection or compensation would ever
be offered. 76
An important step in development of an SMP is public consultation. The revised SMP for Kelling
to Lowestoft was put to public consultation, but its initial preparation had lacked adequate or
effective communication with the local communities. A particular concern of local communities
was that in their view the SMP underestimated the social and economic value of property and
activity in a given coastal location. Another issue concerned the lack of a mechanism to consider
the social implications – such as disruption – and consequential losses for those whose homes
would be lost. We return to this difficult issue in Chapter 5.
FIGURE 3-VII
Evidence of cliff erosion at the site of the old lifeboat launch along the coast
from Happisburgh 77
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Chapter 3