Flooding And Erosion Damage Across The UK

Coastal beauty spots have suffered years' worth of erosion in just a few weeks due to the winter storms that have repeatedly battered the UK.

Cliffs have been left crumbling, beaches and sand dunes eroded, defences breached, and shorelines and harbours damaged by up to 80mph gales and tidal surges.

The National Trust has warned with more extreme weather predicted, the rate of change on the coasts will speed up.

Sky News presenter Jeremy Thompson spent Friday flying over some of the worst affected areas in Dorset and Hampshire, as well as the flood-hit parts of Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire and the Thames Valley that have been left saturated by more than six weeks of heavy rainfall.

Over the coast of Hampshire between Boscombe and Bournemouth, he saw evidence of a landslide.

He said: "It's very fresh, 20m of the cliff-face has literally fallen away and there's a lot of activity round the base of it at the moment."

Studland Bay has lost up to 10m of its beach this winter. Trees have been left strewn across the beach, footpaths have vanished and beach huts left teetering on the brink.

Speaking to Sky News on the beach, Elli MacDonald from the National Trust said: "We've seen up to 10m of erosion just in the last two weeks.

"We've had big chunks of chalk come off onto the beach, we've had a fairly significant landslide to the south of the bay, which we've had to cordon off, and some concrete steps are kind of floating in mid-air because of the erosion."

Nearby Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, recently voted Britain's favourite nature reserve, has also lost several metres of coast.

Head ranger Reuben Hawkwood said: "Our shoreline has been ravaged by the high tides and record-breaking winds.

"We've lost several metres of coast in some areas, our cliffs are crumbling at an incredible rate and it has broken through some of our remaining sea wall below the castle which has required a very quick fix to prevent it threatening buildings.

"The weather has destroyed some of our beach access, washing out steps and eroding cliffs which are frighteningly close to paths."

The speed of erosion at Birling Gap on the East Sussex coast - which marks the start of the white chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters - has been "breathtaking", according to Jane Cecil, National Trust general manager for the South Downs.

"We've had about seven years of erosion in just two months. As a result of this loss of coastline, we are having to act now and take down the sun lounge and ice cream parlour, safeguarding the integrity of the rest of the building. We have to think long-term," she said.

In Longford, Gloucestershire, which has suffered from weeks of flooding, residents are concerned by plans for 570 new homes to be built near land that has been underwater for weeks.

Phil Awford from Gloucestershire County Council told Sky News: "The misery we saw this morning at Sandhurst in particular, where people are sacrificing their homes saying they don't want to go back there, that's a terrible situation to be in - and it's very difficult to say to people, 'We're going to build these houses above you', when they know there are no offers potentially going to go in for their homes."

In Datchet, Berkshire, businesses have suffered "enormous" financial loss as a result of the flooding.

Restaurateur Domenico Bosa-Whyte, who has been out of business for two weeks, told Sky News: "For us the financial costs have been enormous. We cannot carry on seeing these kind of things happening. This has dragged on for two weeks and the costs are enormous.

"Everyone has now pulled together but before the floods things were not in place.

"You can make cutbacks in life but sometimes you have to look at what you're cutting back on because you end up paying more money out."

Other sites affected by the winter storms include Mullion Harbour in Cornwall, Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula, important wildlife sites at Blakeney, Norfolk, and Orford Ness, Suffolk, Murlough national nature reserve in Northern Ireland and Formby in Merseyside.

The National Trust, which owns more than 740 miles of coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has called for more long-term planning to minimise the impact of the changing climate.

"We're expecting more extremes, less predictability, more stormy events, combined with an underlying issue of rising sea levels," he said.

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