Kent Tonight Special:  The Eastchurch Gap Collapse - video Dailymotion

KentOnline / KMTV

With no plans to shore up the stretch of coast they live on, their homes at Eastchurch gap are at risk of collapsing with the cliffs.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:23 Hello and welcome to this Kent Tonight special.

00:26 Now what lengths would you go to stop your home from collapsing off a cliff?

00:30 This is the question that the residents of a coastal community on the Isle of Sheppey have been faced with.

00:35 With no plans to shore up the stretch of coast they live on,

00:38 their homes at East Church Gap are at risk of collapsing with the cliffs.

00:42 So what options do they have?

00:44 Well tonight we'll hear how this community is attempting to shore up their homes

00:48 and why nature's been left to run its course on this stretch of Sheppey.

00:52 Our reporter Patrick Hughes has been to meet some of the residents.

00:56 On the northern coast of the Isle of Sheppey,

00:58 a small community have faced some of the most dramatic consequences of coastal erosion in recent years.

01:04 In June 2020, then resident Emma Tullett was forced to flee with her children

01:09 after a collapse of the cliff edge sent her home tumbling toward the shore.

01:13 Several of her neighbours were evacuated and forced to spend months in temporary accommodation.

01:19 Three years on and the people of Surf Crescent worry that any day they could be next.

01:25 I went there to find out what it's like living on the edge.

01:28 One resident, Steve Staples, told me that he and his wife are sick with fear every day

01:33 but that they have nowhere else to go.

01:36 We've got two suitcases packed ready to go

01:39 and all our paperwork, our documents and our passports all in a bag hanging on the back of the bedroom door

01:45 so if anything happens we can get out quick and scot-free.

01:48 So what keeps you here? Why have you decided to stay here?

01:51 Well I've got no mortgage. I'm retired now.

01:55 How am I going to find somewhere else?

01:58 They won't give me no money for this house.

02:01 No one's going to buy it.

02:03 So I'm stuck.

02:05 When you bought it did they give you...

02:07 A hundred years. I had it a minimum of a hundred years.

02:11 I had a surveyor come round and said 'you're safe for at least a hundred years here'.

02:15 I mean if the house does go, like you say, you're retired, what would you do then?

02:19 I don't know. I really don't know.

02:22 Live in a caravan I suppose.

02:25 Because the council wouldn't give you anything for your house.

02:29 No one would help you. I don't think the insurance would pay you out either.

02:33 And after a series of field appeals for help to the local council

02:36 several of the residents have taken controversial steps to secure what they see as the future of their homes.

02:42 One of those people is Ed Kean who has spent £18,000 of his retirement pot

02:47 literally buying time by paying to dump construction waste in an attempt to shore up the cliffs.

02:53 When did you start getting involved in trying to build the Smith back up?

02:56 When the house went and it started coming back towards my house.

03:03 And the council said they had no money to do any sea defences or anything.

03:07 So we had to do it ourself.

03:09 It's not just me. One house has gone. I'll be next.

03:14 There's 50 little houses around here. So it's 50 dwellings. It affects 50 people.

03:20 But he and his fellow residents have since received a legal stop order from Swale Borough Council

03:26 to cease all works on the grounds that they were illegally tipping waste and contaminating the area.

03:31 That means for those living in Surf Crescent they're forced to return to doing all that they can do.

03:37 So they're watching and waiting.

03:39 Patrick joins me now. Patrick we heard from a few of the residents in that report there

03:43 but you did spend three days with the broader community of Surf Crescent.

03:47 How are they feeling about this issue now?

03:49 Well as we heard from that package just now there's a lot of fear still there.

03:54 Steve told me, we saw, he and his wife are just worried sick.

03:58 He told me when I was there that his wife is losing a lot of sleep over this kind of thing.

04:02 They have two bags packed ready to go at any time.

04:05 And along with that there's a real sense of frustration, almost a sense of abandonment from this community

04:10 that they've really been left to fend for themselves.

04:12 And although a lot of people were really happy to talk to us when we came there,

04:15 there was a lot of resistance too.

04:17 I mean one man told me that media crews had been there seven days a week, almost 24 hours a day

04:23 when this first happened three years ago when Emmett Hull's house fell off the cliff.

04:27 And after talking to them again and again and not seeing any progress being made on this issue

04:32 they just really didn't see a point in talking to media anymore.

04:35 They didn't feel like that publicity was helping them in any way.

04:39 But at the same time there's a lot of resilience in this community.

04:42 When I was talking to Steve on his terrace he just kept telling me about why wouldn't you live here.

04:47 I mean look at the view.

04:48 And they love living there and that's really clear.

04:51 And they just want to get some help and have some progress made on this issue.

04:57 And we also heard in your package about the concerns about the tipping that the residents have been engaged in.

05:02 What are the broader concerns about that issue?

05:05 So I mean there are a few sides to this.

05:07 Sweelburgh Council themselves say that because these residents,

05:10 Sweelburgh Council say that these residents were trying to rebuild the road there

05:14 and that this constitutes a planning application.

05:17 But they haven't made that planning application and so they've put in that stop order

05:20 because it's a legal development.

05:23 At the same time the Environment Agency in June of this year, they put a restriction order down

05:28 and yeah they've blocked off that site because of environmental concerns.

05:32 Thank you Patrick.

05:33 Well more of your time on the Isle of Sheppey now.

05:36 This time asking what options there are for the residents of Surf Crescent.

05:41 Peter MacDonald was formerly a councillor at Sweelburgh Council and has recently been re-elected.

05:46 He says he's fighting to change the government's approach to managing the cliffs.

05:50 Much of the northern coastline of Sheppey falls under a zone of no active intervention.

05:55 Simply put that means let nature take its course.

05:58 In late 2020 the council did vote to change that policy to one of protection

06:04 but Peter says that progress has since thawed.

06:07 But now that he's back in the council he's determined to see progress on that policy change

06:12 and on his plan to slow the decline of the coastline using a seawall.

06:16 I'm determined to see that some progress comes to our poor island which is being washed away.

06:22 On the seaward side we want to put some wooden groins in and then some dredgings

06:26 and we have got already agreement from the Maritime Agency to bring in ballast

06:32 that would have sunk down at the end of the ice age.

06:35 The whole project will be just over a million pounds now.

06:39 Jordan Henderson MP for Sittingbourne in Sheppey also lives on the island

06:44 and has been raising the issue for over a decade.

06:47 One of the problems that those residents face is that they purchase their properties

06:56 knowing that there is likely they would lose their homes.

07:02 Sadly some of those people bought their homes thinking that they would have

07:08 perhaps 40 years worth of usage of them.

07:12 That's not to say that I have no sympathy.

07:14 I have a lot of sympathy with the people that live there

07:17 and I very much hope that something can be done and I believe that something can be done.

07:23 He says whether a plan to save the cliffs would work or not

07:26 doesn't matter because of one glaring issue.

07:29 Sadly Natural England have made clear to me that they will oppose any proposal

07:39 to stop the erosion of the cliffs.

07:41 But how much time could a few groynes in Gibbons buy?

07:44 KNTV approached Natural England for a statement.

07:47 They told us these cliffs are geographically the most extensive section of London clay in Britain

07:53 and for natural erosion of the cliffs exposes fossils

07:57 which inform our scientific understanding of the ancient environment in which they lived.

08:02 And therefore it's important that natural processes are allowed to continue

08:08 so that the scientific value of the SSSI is maintained for the present and future generations.

08:16 I approached independent coastal erosion expert Professor Derek Jackson of the University of Ulster

08:21 to get his thoughts on the plan for the seawall.

08:23 Engineering structures are almost a part-time solution.

08:26 You will have to upgrade them, they will degrade over time.

08:29 Climate change is really changing the picture and the scene here.

08:33 Are there any other kinds of solutions that you prefer more personally?

08:37 There are options that some people are beginning to think outside the box a little bit,

08:42 particularly in the US where government have looked at almost a managed retreat solution

08:49 where they try to manage the coastline as it moves back.

08:52 In that case they actually buy the properties that are under imminent danger or future danger,

08:59 they take those properties, they buy them out and they relocate people.

09:03 Patrick, we heard from the MP Gordon Henderson there that Natural England would oppose any intervention on these cliffs.

09:10 It's worth us unpacking that a little bit more.

09:12 Why would they be against interventions on this site?

09:15 It's an interesting one. So first we have to start with the site itself.

09:18 It has a SSSI status, that's a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

09:23 And Natural England has given it that designation because they say it's one of the largest stretches of London clay in Britain

09:30 and that it's home to a lot of interesting fossils that they want to preserve for their scientific value,

09:35 for researchers, scholars, etc.

09:38 Now part of that is that they want to allow the coastal erosion itself to proceed.

09:44 The coastal erosion has its own status within this SSSI status

09:49 and any interference with that erosion means that people won't be able to study these fossils and things like that.

09:54 Now when I spoke to Gordon Henderson, the MP, he has a very different take on the matter.

09:59 He told me that he thinks that this status itself is illogical

10:02 because he feels that these fossils will be washed into the sea anyway when the cliffs erode.

10:07 And he told me that in his opinion it was a real shame that the government were placing

10:12 these scientific commodities and values and fossils above people's homes and lives.

10:20 And we also heard from Councillor Peter MacDonald

10:23 and he was talking a little bit about how the Swellborough Council had previously voted to change that

10:28 non-intervention status that's currently across the cliffs.

10:32 Where are we at with that vote?

10:35 So yeah, this happened in late November of 2020.

10:39 The Council did vote to try to change the policy from one of non-intervention to one of protection.

10:44 But the Council themselves don't actually have that authority.

10:47 They have to consult with relevant authorities, which there are a number of those

10:51 and the most relevant is the South East Coastal Group.

10:54 And the Council have consulted with these authorities

10:57 and they say that they have come back with the evidence and they've looked at the evidence

11:02 and they think that there is enough evidence there to continue with this non-intervention status

11:07 and there isn't enough evidence to change it to one of protection.

11:10 But at the same time they say that they're still considering their options,

11:12 they're still exploring their options, so really it's a matter of watching this space.

11:16 Probably not the outcome that the residents would have hoped for their community.

11:24 But well, thank you very much for watching this Kent Tonight special

11:28 about coastal erosion on the Isle of Sheppey.

11:31 That's all from us today.

11:32 There is more news from across the county throughout the evening.

11:36 Goodbye.

11:37 [Music]

11:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kent Tonight Special: The Eastchurch Gap Collapse

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