Fears historic Northumberland golf course could fall into the sea as residents call for action

Residents in a Northumberland seaside village have been urged to take action to battle issues around coastal erosion that could see a historic golf course lost to the elements.

Alnmouth Village Links Golf Club was established in 1869, making it the oldest nine-hole links course in England. However, climate change and increasing tidal surges caused by storms have put the course and other parts of the village under threat.

Since 2013, there have been five major storm events that have caused damage. This culminated in Storm Isha earlier this year which saw part of the fifth hole washed away.

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More than 60 local residents attended a meeting of the North Northumberland Local Area Committee held at the golf club on Thursday to discuss the problem. Ian Garrett, a member of a subcommittee set up by the club to try and tackle the issue, said the problem affected more than just the golf course.

He said: "This is an important community issue. Earlier this year a severe storm led to coastal erosion at the fifth green of this historic golf club. We want to share information about what we have done and what we have found.

"We felt compelled to share it with the younger generation who want to build lives here, because ultimately it will impact them. We wish to develop a short-term plan which will buy time in terms of dealing with coastal erosion before creating a medium and longer term plan that will protect the wider community and the golf course, because the impacts are great.

"It will require a collaborative approach at all levels - community, county and nationally."

Professor Stephen Lockley of the Alnmouth Shoreline Defenders group explained that the committee had made efforts to try and combat the problem, but this had been complicated by numerous landowners as well as Government agencies with different restrictions including Natural England and the Northumberland Coast National Landscape.

He added: "The tidal surge took away a relatively small bit of the golf course and the common. We set about trying to fix it, but I had no idea how complicated Alnmouth really was - it can't be more difficult to do anything anywhere.

"Our environment is vulnerable. We have to look after it, it has to be cared for. Storms and tidal surges have gotten more and more frequent - where we might have got one a year, we now get three or four every winter.

"These things are random - we don't know when they're going to happen. What we have to be able to do is respond to them in a planned way. If this is going to happen three or four times a year, we have to have a way of dealing with it."

The committee, alongside the village's burgage holders and supported by Northumberland Estates, have restored two "groynes" on the beach to prevent erosion. These wooden structures are built to limit the movement of sediment and interrupt water flow, limiting the speed of erosion.

Nick Watson, Northumberland County Council's flood and coastal erosion risk management engineer, said a report had been commissioned by the council to look at possible solutions to the problem in Alnmouth. The report would look at what the community wanted as well as what would be allowed by regulators.

He said: "There's nothing right now that is a very obvious action. Our survey will be looking at that.

"It will be completed in months rather than years. We're looking in a lot more detail."

However, Mr Watson was keen to stress it was unlikely that there would be Government or council funding allocated to halt the erosion - meaning it would potentially be up to the community to find ways of paying for any measures.