There is no great master plan': anxiety as UK homes, roads and railways sink into the sea

The remains of a coastal road in south Devon lie crumbled on the foreshore, with tarmac, steel, and concrete scattered where the Slapton Line links Kingsbridge and Dartmouth. Winter storms demolished a section of the A road between Torcross and Slapton, an area facing rising sea levels and coastal erosion. Hundreds of people plan to walk the route as the tourist season begins to show how the collapse has affected livelihoods and threatened local lifestyles. Local concerns focus on slow or absent repairs, with calls for even minor improvements. MPs’ findings point to a lack of national preparedness for erosion across UK coastal communities, and Devon county council faces a repair cost that strains its transport capital budget.

"The dramatic coastal road, known as the Slapton Line, has an environmentally protected freshwater lake on one side and the sea on the other, and links the towns of Kingsbridge and Dartmouth. But this year, winter storms demolished a section of the A road between Torcross and Slapton, which is at the frontline of rising sea levels and coastal erosion, fulfilling a destiny that was predicted more than 30 years ago, but that has not been prepared for."

"On bank holiday Monday, hundreds of people will walk the route of the road as the tourist season begins in earnest, to highlight how its collapse has hit their livelihoods and put lifestyles under threat. It is just worrying that nothing is being done, says Gill Sterry, owner of the Sea View campsite. I know it takes a long time but its been three months now. Something could have been done to improve the road even just a little bit of tarmac in places. We feel forgotten about."

"The rubble in Devon is evidence of what a committee of MPs say is a total lack of national preparedness for how to tackle the inevitable erosion of land beneath the feet of coastal communities all over the UK. No great master plan has slipped into place. There isn't one, says Dan Thomas, cabinet member for highways and transportation at Devon county council, as he contemplates the 18m cost of repairing the road, which would not even include defences."

"18m out of our whole capital budget for transport of 80m almost 25% of that budget for a year: that is a sucker punch that the council cannot take. From the East Riding of Yorkshire, where the soft cliffs of boulder clay at Holderness are retreating at rates of up to 4.5 metres per year some of the highest rates in Europe to the north Norfolk coast, to Suffolk and down to the Isle of Wight, communities are at the forefront of an eroding coastline."

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