Whole villages and swathes of agricultural land will be surrendered to the sea because the Government is unwilling to spend billions of pounds on flood defences. Ministers have admitted privately that they are preparing to evacuate settlements on the east coast within the next 30 years because it is not "cost effective" to save them.Thousands of acres of farmland will be allowed to flood, potentially jeopardising food production in areas such as East Anglia.
Parts of the Norfolk and Suffolk coastline will not be given a penny for defences because they have been deemed impossible to save, according to leaked details of the Government's coastal flooding and erosion risk assessment.
The study, which is being conducted by the Environment Agency and will report in June next year, uses a points system to decide which parts of coastline will receive flood defences and which will be abandoned. The plan comes despite warnings that destructive storm surges are becoming more frequent with climate change.
Tens of thousands of householders were put on alert last week for one of the largest tidal surges to strike Britain in 50 years. The threat was so serious that Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, called two meetings of Cobra, the emergency cabinet committee which plans responses to national disasters.
However, a senior government insider told The Sunday Telegraph that the flood assessment under way at present will lead to some areas of Britain being sacrificed. (Sunday Telegraph)
