'It would be good to know how long we have left': This clifftop community is falling into the sea

When Billy Butlin opened his titular holiday camp on the North Yorkshire coast after the Second World War, easy access to the sea was key to attracting visitors. But 80 years later, the sea could start driving away both tourists and locals and lead to 45 homes – including Butlin’s own art deco mansion – becoming uninhabitable due to fast-moving coastal erosion. 

The North Yorkshire region has some of the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, with certain parts losing up to 4.5 metres each year.  

“I worry about it, and I think there are big things we could do, it’s the whole business of climate change,” says Jo Burton, who has lived at Flat Cliffs near Filey for 15 years. “We could do things to manage the coast better, such as planting long-rooted plants, which would help to manage the erosion, we could do something about the access road and perhaps stop heavy traffic.” 

When she bought the house, which was built in the 1920s, Burton says she “made it my business to read the shoreline management plan, which states that in 50 years it is likely to be in the sea”. 

Local officials agree, and North Yorkshire Council (NYC) has said it wants to “buy some time” for residents of the 45 properties at Flat Cliffs which are “at imminent risk of loss” from coastal erosion. The authority is seeking funds from the Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee (RFCC) to help produce a plan for the endangered clifftop community.  

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Without the £90,000 for which it has applied, the council says residents would be “unprepared for the loss of properties”, making it difficult to manage the process when the time comes for the buildings to be abandoned. 

While some properties have already been damaged by coastal erosion and have required stabilisation, many residents of the hamlet say that they are well aware of the issues posed by coastal erosion, but no one Big Issue spoke to said they were planning to leave their homes any time soon. 

As a summery breeze blows over from the glistening North Sea and the sound of construction workers chatting echoes in the background, there is a distinct sense that people are determined to stay. One family is expanding their property just a few metres from the cliffs, while Butlin’s former coastal retreat has undergone a large-scale renovation, which has not gone down well with some residents.  

Additional issues are posed by the fact Flat Cliffs can only be accessed through the neighbouring Primrose Valley holiday village, down a steep and narrow road – which is also at risk from erosion. 

In 2018, an improvement project was completed on the sole access road, intended to “prolong the duration before its loss, while acknowledging the recession processes would continue”. 

“Every year, the road gets worse and it has to be repaired regularly. So, if that keeps happening and gets worse, it’ll be a bit of a nightmare,” says Christopher Pinchbeck, who has lived at Flat Cliffs for most of his life.  

Unusually, for an area dominated by second homes and holiday lets, many of the houses at Flat Cliffs are lived in year-round. A large number of residents are pensioners and have also raised concerns that if the road were to fall away it would be “a very significant problem” in a rugged clifftop environment. 

As sea levels are set to rise by more than a metre by the end of the century, coastal erosion will affect increasingly large parts of the UK coastline. In many cases, seaside communities already face an uphill battle with significantly higher rates of deprivation and worse health and economic outcomes than non-coastal towns. 

Now, they face an added burden from stronger seas, more frequent storms and other climate emergencies. 

“It would be good to know how long we have left,” says Pinchbeck, who concedes, “although, that would be scary as well. But if there is a plan, I’d like to know about it.”  

Stuart Fish, who bought his house at Flat Cliffs in 1997, and lives on the scenic clifftop with his wife, said he had seen the coastline recede over the decades and slippage was “very clearly” visible. 

“What is frustrating is that local government doesn’t really seem to be prepared to do anything.  

“They’re spending some money, but it’s just doing a survey to tell us all to bugger off. We would be better off spending it on some coastal defences.” 

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Defra’s long-term shoreline plan for the next 100 years currently concludes that it would be “technically, economically or environmentally unsustainable” to maintain, let alone introduce, coastal defences in the area.  

It adds that “temporary defences installed to manage immediate risk will not be maintained, in order to encourage natural shoreline evolution and protect its character.” 

A similar approach is being adopted along the east coast from the Humber to Dover. In June, the National Trust was given the go-ahead to remove sea defences from a beach in Dorset to “allow nature to take its course” in response to coastal erosion. 

North Yorkshire Council has said it needs funding to implement the “necessary relocation and removal activities for residents to withdraw themselves and their assets from the areas at risk”. 

Councillor Keane Duncan, until recently in charge of the council’s highways and whose responsibilities included coastal protection, acknowledged that “unfortunately, erosion remains a risk for some properties along North Yorkshire’s coast and we are monitoring vulnerable areas and actively seeking ways to support communities and individuals to manage the impacts of coastal erosion”.  

Despite calls for greater action on coastal erosion across the UK, and for the government to treat it as a
natural catastrophe, there is a sense among some that coastal communities are being left to fend for themselves. 

Professor Mike Elliott, emeritus professor of estuarine and coastal science at the University of Hull, has for years highlighted that national and local authorities are wary of “opening the floodgates” to compensation claims or lawsuits about the impacts of erosion or failures of preventative measures. 

Sitting in her glass-walled lounge, which has a clear view of the houses below and the wide expanse of the North Sea, Burton reflects on the future of the coastal community: “I’m probably not going to be here in 50 years’ time when they say this will all be in the sea, but there is something we could do about it.  

“I think it needs a global solution, as it did after the Second World War. I’m not saying it was perfect, but there was some recognition that we needed to look at what was happening collectively.  

“We could do something about it on our particular bit of the coast. We could do something about it regionally, and we could address some of the unpredictability. And globally, we have to look at climate change.” 

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