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This page was updated on 10th July 2026.

Managed Retreat and Managed Retreat are recent cultural terms. Popular with coastal managers, bureaucrats and even the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change). These are terms of public administration. They are NOT terms within coastal and oceanographic physics. These phrases emerged in the 1990s in the East Coast of England. Managed retreat, as an idea, seemed to attract the support of sections of government, possibly because it could save money. How it was supposed to inhibit storm damage was never made clear. Many land owners and indigenous people were unconvinced. The East Coast of England had many areas of low lying land. Those had suffered inundation during the North Sea Floods of 1953.

The cost of maintaining and raising the height of dykes on North Sea coastlines was an unwanted expense for successive governments. Considerable money (£2.4 billion at 2026 prices) had been spent on the Thames barrier by 1981. Another example of public funds being directed towards the Capital City. However, the bright idea of collapsing some dykes and allowing low lying areas, away from London, to flood became popular in areas of government. Creating "wetlands" appealed to special interest groups, particularly those advocating sites for visiting birds.

What appeared to be of less concern to coastal managers, was that encouraging sea water to flood low lying areas forced the change of freshwater habitats to marine, or brackish water, habitats. How many worms, frogs, toads, were killed? How was the soil bacteria altered? How much farmland was lost? Coastal Research made these points in the Home Planet programme in February 2003 on BBC radio 4.

Clearly, there have been economic benefits for government, but is it a practical strategy for the future? It is curious that the "managed retreat" policy has provided impetus for certain areas of the selective ecology movement. One area of contention that has been side stepped: compensation for land and property that will be impacted by government inspired coastal flooding.

Sea level has been rising incrementally for many centuries, somewhere between 1 and 2 mm each year, depending on geographical location. Isostasy (ups and downs of land) cause relative mean sea level rise to vary. The annual rise of relative mean sea level is slightly greater in South East England than South West England. Much of Scotland has experienced isostatic rebound from the melting of the last glaciation. Thus their relative sea level has neen near static.

Global sea level rise is a significant threat to Man's built environment, but the impact of storm intensity on sea level is much more significant than annual sea level rise, sometimes by three orders of magnitude. The questions that government needs to address are fundamentally social and economic. Why are new buildings still being granted planning permisssion on low lying coastal sites? Why are nuclear power stations being built on low lying coastlines?

As for Slapton Shingle Ridge why is the "holding the line until 2055" policy still being promoted. More and more local people in South Devon are aware that future storms are going to exact substantial damage. At Torcross storms that can dislodge and bend steel piling are clear evidence that the Shingle Risge is a highly vulnerable coastal location. That vulnerability is due to unsuitable decisions to "hold the line". The rigidity of the A379 road is hindering natural coastal processes to maintain the Shingle Ridge. It's reminiscent of King Cnut (994-1035), also known as King Canute, insisting that he was going to hold back the tide! Was King Cnut an early adopter of "holding the line"?

The focus of Coastal Research is the basic physics of the processes affecting the Shingle Ridge, but there are, almost certainly, individuals and even groups, who are keeping a tally of the amounts of money, public money, being spent on patch up repairs and top-down strategies to "hold the line". Many thousands of residents in South Devon are being thoroughly inconvenienced by the loss of the A379 road. £18.9 million is now (March 2026) being allocated by government to place rock armour (boulders) in front of Torcross properties, supposedly to protect them from further storm damage. There are about 50 properties involved. Is that a reasonable decision? Could the money be better spent? That sum of money does not appear to include any solution for the loss of the A379 road.

The February 2026 breach in the A379 road, near the Tank and Toilet Car Park at Torcross, is the most severe the area has experienced. Apart from some tidying by the Council, and the tipping of some boulders into the breach (February/March 2026), the public are waiting to hear of a clear plan to replace the A class road.

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