What is clear from the photos is that the steel piling has failed. Not only does it cause reflection of wave energy, but the scour effect causes sediment (the shingle) to be transported to the nearshore and offshore zones, beyond the Low Water Mark. The last 25 years since the 2001 storm have seen attempts at coastal defence that have become an expensive failure.
Coastal defence structures at Torcross look tidy in the first instance and probably praised by Summer visitors, but they cannot last because they have no firm foundation. They are just resting on a mobile sediment which is activated by water and wave energy. Winter storms eventually break up concrete walls and dislodge and bend steel piling.
For many years physical scientists have been studying wave energy arriving from oceans. It is a numerical discipline rather than purely descriptive. It is easy for a casual observer to accept that bigger waves are more destructive than smaller waves. Another parameter is the period between one wave crest and the next. Measured in seconds it is responsible for the steepness of waves. Surfers know that ocean waves approaching beaches feel the sea bed. That causes them to steepen and eventually break.
Much work has been put into analysing the dynamics of waves, particularly when they reach a reflective surface such as the outside of a harbour wall or a coastline defence structure. Some of the received energy is directed back to sea but edge waves are also generated which cause energy to move in longshore directions. This is a major cause of scour; high energy, hence high velocity, fluid dynamics which move sediments away from the base of walls or steel piling.
Torcross wave damage has provided excellent examples of why hard defensive structures cause scour. In the last 25 years the volume of beach sediments along the Slapton Line has been decreasing alarmingly.

To digress a little. It is a curious irony that less than 10 km from Torcross is the origins of a scientific instrumentation company that pioeered elecromagnetic sensors which have developed a world wide reputation. Some of the company's equipment was developed in collaboration with Plymouth Polytechnic, later University of Plymouth. Those sensors are a key part of research equipment to measure fluid velocities at high frequency; millisecond intervals. Fundamental for determining how waves on beaches and around hard structures can explain why sediment movement occurs. Initialy located in Dartmouth, the firm is now based in larger premises at Totnes.

So how come we have a text book example at Torcross of how NOT to manage a coastline?
The local MP, Caroline Voaden, put a question to the Prime Minister on 11th February 2026, "so I ask the Prime Minister if he will ensure that the myriad government agencies and departments needed will work together, with experts, to find and fund a sustainable and long term solution to the coastal erosion".
Does that mean that the government has not been working with experts up to this point in time?
Clearly errors have been made. The loss of beach volume is catastrophic in that it has allowed storm waves to wreak havoc with the unsuitable hard structures built upon mobile sediments. Is this a problem of human interference, or has Torcross and the A379 road just been unlucky, and we should just throw more boulders on the beach?
There is some humour in Caroline Voaden's choice of language. Anyone familiar with Parliament will know that "agencies and departments" rarely work together.
Will we see rationale decisions being made to resolve the problems of destructive waves at Torcross?
Many will be watching, intently.

Beaches with their accumulated sediments, shingle or sand, are the best form of coastline defence from wave action. Every wave throws some sediment up the beach and drags some sediment back down the beach. Those processes absorb wave energy, lessening the damage that wave action can do at the top of the beach. Rigid structures on coastlines cause wave reflection which can lead to scour which can lead to sediments being dragged seaward into the nearshore zone. That leads to loss of beach volume which reduces the potential of the beach to absorb wave energy.

Extreme Waves