The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) requires councils to identify Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs) where rates of shoreline change are expected to be significant over the next 100 years, taking into account impacts of climate change. Yet, currently, few local planning authorities (LPAs) have felt confident to undertake this task, citing a lack of reliable or consistent methodology to establish such designations. As such, support for LPAs to manage development in often active coastal zones, with little regard for future coastal erosion or flooding hazards, is limited.
The SWEEP Coastal Change Management Area project comprises three packages of work, each of which has resulted in a final report to principal project partner, Natural England.
Work package 1 Report – Review of CCMAs
This report provides a review of existing CCMA uptake in England with analysis of the approach and methods adopted to achieve the designations. Broadly speaking, CCMAs are designated as required for regions, within the Shoreline Management Plan (SMP), classed as No Active Intervention or Managed Realignment (NAI/MR) and rarely for Hold The Line (HTL), in-line with NPPF guidance.
A review of approaches within England show methods of CCMA designation driven by a dominance of SMP and EA flood zone input with additional “buffers” applied to provide more conservative boundaries. While there is some variability in “buffers” applied to CCMAs, the underlying approach is to adopt the most recent SMP guidelines/erosion rates.
Work package 2 Report – CCMA Method
WP2 presents approaches to CCMA development using two case studies in the Taw-Torridge Estuary and East Devon as examples to explore the types of data available and the role they play in developing a CCMA.
Work package 3 Report – Draft CCMA Regions
The report provides details of the digital GIS files supplied in support of this document. Some discussion on the specific regions is provided, however, the focus is on an explanation of different files that are provided to delineate the short (20 yr) medium (50 yr) and long term (100 yr) likely coastline positions as generated following the methodology outlined in WP2 Version 2 report. For erosion dominated coastlines three epochs are predicted and associated ‘buffers’ for each coastline are also supplied. For inundation/flood dominated coasts the 1:200 yr level (including sea-level rise) is used to generate a single region with additional ‘buffer’ lines also provided to accommodate coastal paths and mapping accuracy.
| Report to: Natural England |
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| Published: September 2019 – June 2020 |
| Provided by: Coastal Processes Research Group Project Lead – Dr Tim Poate Project Manager: Prof. Gerd Masselink |
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