Two councils will be given £36m to tackle coastal erosion.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the cash would help those living by the coast “to prepare and plan”.

Some of the measures include replacing damaged buildings and access roads, as well as repurposing land into wildlife habitats or temporary car parks.

The cash will be split between East Riding of Yorkshire Council and North Norfolk District Council.

Defra hopes the money will be used to “help deliver and test innovative adaptation projects” such as replacing public or community owned buildings in at-risk areas with “removable, modular or other innovative buildings”.

The Environment Agency will run the scheme until March 2027.

“These two locations are already living with the challenges of coastal erosion and between them include 84% of the properties at risk of coastal erosion in England over the next 20 years,” a Defra spokesperson said.

For decades the picturesque seaside from Bridlington to Withernsea has been a haven for holidaymakers from across the country. But it is quickly becoming known for another reason: it is the fastest-eroding coastline in northern Europe.

Figures published this week showed that parts of the coast were disappearing far faster than first thought. A combination of stormy weather and rising sea levels caused more than 10 metres of cliff to disappear from a 2-mile stretch of coast in just nine months last year, compared with the annual average of 4 metres. In just six months, three strips of coastline lost nearly double what they expected to lose in a year.

On Green Lane, residents are on the frontline of this unwinnable war with nature. “You can get up one morning and open your curtains and you’ve lost your fence, or your garden’s gone,” said Carly Davis, 30, whose rented chalet is one of more than 20 home at imminent risk of being swallowed by the sea in the next year.

Davis, not her real name, points to the half-missing fence at the foot of her garden and the wet clay cliff, freshly-exposed by the waves. All along her street, huge chunks are missing from gardens and the cliff is just 9 metres from some people’s back doors. The main road that once led to their street now ends precipitously at the cliff edge. A bright red sign warns: “Danger. Cliffs subject to coastal erosion. DO NOT PROCEED.”

It will become the first community in the UK to be decommissioned as a result of climate change; while other villages along England’s crumbling east coast have lost houses to accelerating erosion, none have been abandoned. It may also create hundreds of British climate refugees: the residents of Fairbourne are not expected to receive any compensation for the loss of their homes, and resettlement plans are unclear.

It will not be the last village to meet this fate. Sea levels around the UK have risen by 15.4cm since 1900, and the Met Office expects them to rise by as much as 1.12m from modern levels by 2100, putting at risk communities in coastal floodplains and on sea cliffs, which are found around much of the east and south coast of England. 

The west of Wales and north-west England are also vulnerable. Even if the world’s governments succeed in reversing increasing emissions in line with their Paris climate commitments, sea levels are set to rise for centuries, as the impact of higher global temperature and warmer oceans takes effect.

Houses left teetering on the edge of a cliff when sand dunes below were washed away during storms will be demolished before Easter, a council says.

Residents were forced to leave the 13 bungalows on The Marrams in Hemsby, Norfolk, after they became unsafe.

The wooden chalets started to collapse on to the beach on Tuesday and it is feared they will fall down completely.

Great Yarmouth Borough Council’s leader said now the bad weather had subsided they could be dismantled.

On Tuesday, it was confirmed 15 people had been left homeless when the properties collapsed.

Graham Plant said the properties would be removed by the council so they do not become a hazard at the popular tourist beach.

Evidence of communities on the Humber dating back 8,000 years will be discussed at a free community drop-in event at Welwick Village Hall on Monday 4 September.

Archaeologists will be on hand between 2-7pm to talk through the early findings from a geophysical study and small scale excavation between Outstrays and Skeffling last autumn.

The study found that the area contains a long and interesting history, with evidence of storm surge deposits, ancient river channels and areas of peat from as far back as the Middle and New Stone Age (approximately 3,000 to 8,000 years ago), which suggests that landscapes occupied and exploited by prehistoric people survive beneath the current farmland.

Across the higher parts of the site evidence was also found of Roman settlement activity which evolved into the medieval period as communities settled closer to the shore as the land was drained.

The initial archaeological assessment formed part of the design for the Outstays to Skeffling Managed Realignment Scheme, a new habitat creation project on the Humber Estuary working in partnership between the Environment Agency and Associated British Ports.

The black and white photograph, taken over a century ago, shows a row of seven terrace houses set well back from the sea in an idylic location atop the white chalk cliffs of England’s south coast.

Fast-forward to this week and the scene at Birling Gap, near Eastbourne, East Sussex is quite different.

Instead of a picture-perfect postcard of peaceful coastal lifestyle, it is now a worrying example of the fast-paced erosion that is tearing up parts of the British coastline.

Photographs taken this week, in sharp contrast to an image of the row of houses taken in 1905, shows a cherry-picker removing the walls of a former coastguard cottage left teetering on the edge of cliffs.

Just six inches from the end of the cliff at Birling Gap the home has become the third victim of the encroaching sea. Two other properties were demolished in 1994 and in the early 2000s

The snappily named ‘Economic valuation of the benefits of ecosystem services delivered by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan’ report, to which this Defra press release refers, addresses some of these fundamental questions. It “monetarises” the value of natural assets using a number of techniques which, whilst removed from the layman by the use of opaque terminology and highly technical academic methodologies, do provide (on face value) a really important clue to the value of things which may have been seen as intangible in hard cash terms.

This is important because it helps us get right to the heart of the conservation versus development agenda by ascribing values to things which might be lost or compromised by development. It also helps in the coastal debate. It does this by offering more evidence to demonstrate that the current approach, which still heavily concentrates on the physical value of buildings, could be widened to recognize the not inconsiderable value of landscapes and habitats, when decisions to defend or not defend areas suffering coastal erosion are considered.

Mr Kennedy has spent 14 years collecting rocks on Hunstanton beach to construct sea walls as a defence against rampant erosion along this stretch of coast.

I think it might be a bit unfair to characterise the man in the excerpt from the article which follows as an eccentric.

In fact, I wonder if government policies which struggle to put a high enough premium on protecting rural coastal settlements with a limited a number of “chimney pots” are not more eccentric?

From time to time I get the opportunity to raise the importance of rural coastal communities and promote a consideration of their unique challenges.

I heard the inspirational story of how a community had achieved super-fast broadband by digging its own fibre cable trenches recently to overcome the connectivity challenges it faces through the graft of local people.

I wonder if we oughtn’t to get a few more people in coastal communities interested in following Michael Kennedy’s approach?

Not that we should let government off the hook on the issue of leading the charge on coastal erosion. But with Liverpool pulling out of the Big Society pilot because it feels government is not providing the right funding climate to make the project work, this highly apposite tale of  a local “Canute” does also make me reflect on the limits to individual endeavour in the face of the big challenges communities face.