The report from the cross-party select committee makes for grim reading. Not because it contains surprising revelations — coastal communities have been shouting about this for years — but because it documents, in clinical parliamentary language, the systematic abandonment of British citizens by their own government.
Households are going bankrupt. Businesses are closing. Homes that families have owned for generations are literally falling into the sea. And the policy response from successive governments has been, in essence, to shrug.
The Scale of the Problem
Britain’s coastline is eroding faster than at any point in recorded history. Climate change is accelerating the process through rising sea levels, more intense storms and changing weather patterns. Communities from Norfolk to Yorkshire to Devon are watching their properties lose all value as they edge toward cliff edges that move closer every year.
The committee found that homeowners in erosion zones face a uniquely cruel financial trap. Their properties are unsellable — no buyer will purchase a house that may not exist in a decade. They are uninsurable — no insurer will cover a structure on an eroding cliff. And they are unmortgageable — no bank will lend against an asset with a negative trajectory. Yet these homeowners still owe council tax, still hold mortgage debt, and receive no government compensation for the loss of what is, for most, their largest asset.
The Policy Vacuum
What makes this particularly egregious is the absence of any coherent national policy. There is no statutory right to coastal protection. There is no compensation scheme for properties lost to erosion. There is no managed retreat framework that helps communities relocate with dignity. There is, in short, nothing — just a postcode lottery of local authority responses that ranges from inadequate to non-existent.
The committee’s recommendations include a national coastal erosion strategy, a compensation mechanism for affected homeowners, and ring-fenced funding for local authorities dealing with the crisis. These are sensible proposals. They are also, in the current fiscal environment — with defence spending rising, the Iran war draining resources, and the Chancellor clinging to her borrowing rules — unlikely to receive funding.
Climate Change Comes Home
Coastal erosion is often treated as a niche issue — a problem for a few unfortunate communities on vulnerable stretches of coast. This framing is dangerously wrong. The committee’s report makes clear that the affected population numbers in the tens of thousands, that the economic cost runs to billions, and that the problem will worsen dramatically as climate change accelerates.
It is also a preview of what climate adaptation looks like when governments refuse to plan for it. The homeowners of Happisburgh and Hornsea and Hemsby are the canaries in the coal mine. Their experience — watching their lives collapse while politicians offer sympathy and nothing else — will become increasingly common as the climate crisis intensifies.
Parliament has now documented the problem in devastating detail. The question is whether anyone in government will read the report — and whether reading it will lead to action. On current evidence, the answer to both questions is no.