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.

Strung with vast and often-deserted beaches, the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is one of the county’s primary draws. It’s not just the beaches that lure visitors, however — backed by dunes and fringed with pine forests, this dramatic, 175sq-mile stretch of rural England also features mudflats and saltmarshes that teem with a rich variety of wildlife. Base yourself in the heart of the AONB and you’ll find plenty to while away a weekend: charming flint houses and medieval churches in sleepy villages like Wells-next-the-Sea and Burnham Market, bracing walks in the sea breeze, and a fantastic food scene, with fresh, locally caught fish taking a starring role on menus all along the coast. visitnorfolk.co.uk

He said that even with the increased traffic as a result of the change in people’s lifestyles, usage was nowhere near its peak and he was confident there would be no immediate problems.

But he said he and his team of 30, including two people installing systems and a number of engineers, were working flat out as calls were coming in fast from people needing their systems upgraded to enable them to work from home more easily.

“I can’t foresee any problems at the moment. We are working really hard, our team doing the installations are completely booked up for the next three weeks and we are getting a lot of phone calls from people saying they need to work from home ‘today’ – really we need people to plan a little more but we are doing what we can for everyone who contacts us.

“At peak times we are at around 60-65% of the capacity giving us another 35% headroom, we are seeing traffic spread out during the day rather than the usual peak of 5-7pm when everyone used to start watching Netflix. So although traffic is higher we aren’t seeing the daily peaks.

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.