Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs)

Introduction

The UK’s coastal regions are some of the most beautiful and environmentally diverse parts of our landscape. They are also some of the most vulnerable, with factors like erosion, landslip, flooding, and shifting sediment causing lasting damage.

Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) with a coastline or estuary margin have the difficult task of balancing the need to build more homes, with the increasing risk of coastal erosion and flooding. So, as part of the National Planning Policy Framework, councils are required to identify the areas where the shoreline is likely to change significantly over the next 100 years. These specially designated areas, or ‘Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs)‘, will inform planning and management decisions, and demonstrate that authorities fully understand the threats that these areas are at risk of.

Prof. Gerd Masselink, Dr Tim Poate, and Dr Kit Stokes from the SWEEP team are leading this project. Based at the University of Plymouth Coastal Processes Research Group, they will bring their experience of coastal management, wave forecasting, and the effects of climate change on our shoreline. Previous work as part of the NERC-funded BLUECoast project is an early example of the group’s expertise in making coastal research relevant to policy and planning.

Find out more about this project at https://sweep.ac.uk/portfolios/coastal-change/

Click the icon below to link directly to the project site to download resources on CCMA.