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.
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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.
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