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What are Shoreline Management Plans and who is involved?

Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) are detailed technical documents that consider how to manage the influence of coastal processes on the natural and human environment. They focus on how to manage the risk from flooding and erosion.

The National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy sets out how risk management authorities, partners and communities can help ensure we are ready for, and resilient to, flooding and coastal change now and throughout the 21st century. Shoreline Management Plans help to deliver the ambitions of the National Strategy by setting out a planned approach to managing flood and coastal erosion risk around the coast of England to 2105.

SMPs were developed by coastal groups using guidance developed by Defra in 2006. They were approved and adopted by local authorities and the Environment Agency between 2006 and 2012. Supplementary guidance was produced by the Environment Agency in 2020 to ‘refresh’ the SMPs to ensure they are up to date.

Defra Guidance on developing Shoreline Management Plans (2006)

Environment Agency Guidance on refreshing Shoreline management Plans (2020)

Twenty SMPs cover the entire coast of England. They provide

  • Evidence on how the shoreline has changed and may change in future
  • Information on the risks from flooding and erosion to people and the developed, historic and natural environment within the SMP area.

SMPs then identify

  • Sustainable options for managing risks from floods and erosion over the next century, including approaches that work with nature and improve the environment
  • How any potential impacts which might result from the chosen approach, for example on marine and coastal protected areas, heritage features, or on properties elsewhere, might be addressed.

Local Planning Authorities can use Shoreline Management Plans to guide where they plan and permit development, including the designation of Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs). More information can be found on the Shoreline Management Plans and local development planning page.

Why develop an SMP?

Shorelines constantly change due to waves and tides. The changing coastline has also been influenced by people's actions, particularly in attempts to stop erosion or flooding. In some cases, this activity has affected other places along the coast. For example, defending one place from erosion can interrupt the movement of sediment down the coast, starving other places of material for beaches that help manage their own flood or erosion risk.

Social, economic, and environmental pressures are increasing in the coastal area. People enjoy living by and visiting the coast, and there is a demand for housing and regeneration. Climate change, rising sea levels and more intense storms are accelerating the changes to our coast. Communities are already being affected by sea flooding and loss of land due to coastal erosion, including cliff falls. These events are expected to become more frequent. Wildlife can also be affected by flooding and erosion, but wildlife habitats can also be damaged by measures to prevent flooding and erosion.

SMPs allow us to focus on the future so we can work out how to manage changing coasts. It is important that the management choices of today allow coastal settlements to thrive in a way that is resilient to this change. Our actions now should not restrict the opportunity for change later or raise expectations that current management will always continue.

SMP Management Approaches

SMPs divide the coast up into units. Using local evidence, a generic management approach is decided for each unit over three broad planning horizons within a 100-year period, starting from 2005. These are:

Hold the Line (HL), maintain or upgrade protection from flooding or erosion by holding the shoreline in broadly the same position

No active intervention (NI), maintain or encourage a more natural coastline. This may involve discussing adaptation to the risk from flooding or erosion

Managed re-alignment (MR), change the position of the shoreline in a controlled way, such as by slowing erosion or creating areas of habitat to help manage flooding

Advance the Line (AL), actively move shoreline defences significantly seawards.

These management approaches within SMPs have been developed with local partners, and communities were consulted. The supplementary guidance on SMPs produced in 2020 added new sub-categories for each of these generic approaches that clarify what they mean in a particular location. These are set out in the SMPs and development planning page.

The management approaches in SMPs have been adopted by local councils and are therefore considered local policy. The units are often called 'policy units' and the management approaches referred to as 'policies' in SMP documents and associated guidance. A set of sub-categories for each of these broad approaches has now been developed to make the approach clearer in each location, and these can be viewed on SMP Explorer.

The actions needed to achieve these management approaches (such as building any coastal defences) depend upon approvals such as planning permission and environmental assessments. They also require funding from government or others, which is not guaranteed by the SMP. If with time an agreed management approach is considered unsustainable, it can be changed using a clear procedure. More information on this procedure can be found on the Updating and changing Shoreline Management Plans page.

Who is involved in SMPs?

People and organisations affected by activities planned in the SMP can have a say in how things are done. Local communities were consulted on SMP development for their area. Any proposed change to SMP management approaches will identify the need for public consultation and engagement. Look out for consultations on local coastal strategies and projects that will take SMP delivery forward in your local area. Information will generally be found on your local authority website.

Flood and Erosion Risk Management Authorities including the Environment Agency and coastal local authorities led the development of SMPs. They worked together within coastal groups on SMPs using guidance provided by Defra under the co-ordination of a lead authority.

Regulators and major stakeholders such as Natural England, the Marine Management Organisation, English Heritage, ports authorities, the Ministry of Defence, The Crown Estate and the National Trust are involved. The relevant organisations for each area come together within coastal groups.

Coastal groups continue to maintain each plan, manage any changes, share experiences and report progress. Where a coastal group contains more than one SMP, smaller SMP Management Groups have been formed to report progress back to the coastal group. These groups are not themselves responsible for the delivery of SMP Action Plans. Different actions will be led and delivered by different parties, depending on the type and location of the action.

Different technical consultants were commissioned to develop SMPs around England, so the full SMP documents are often presented and organised slightly differently to each other.

Further information

SMP Action Plans are included on SMP Explorer. Some actions are relevant to the whole SMP area, or to the maintenance of the Plan itself. These SMP-wide actions are shown with the map displaying the whole SMP. More localised actions are shown at the more local map level.

You can find out more about coastal erosion and flood risk in your area by visiting the sites below. All of this information is being comprehensively updated in 2024, and new coastal flood and erosion risk will be shown on this site when these updates are complete.

Check coastal erosion management in your area – this site will be replaced in summer 2024

Flooding – find out more about risk in your area and how to prepare

Local strategies, monitoring and other initiatives can be found using the ‘Related Links’ tab. These are often needed to take an SMP’s management approaches forward. SMPs are long-term plans each covering large areas of coast, so they focus on setting the direction of management rather than the full detail of how that direction will be implemented. Specific investment options are developed locally, sometimes using a focussed coastal strategy for a particular stretch of coast.

Coastal Group websites with further local information on coastal management can also be found using the ‘Related Links’ tab.

Viewing the full SMP document

You can find the full, originally adopted SMP under the ‘Downloads’ tab on this website. It includes

  • a non-technical summary
  • the full main report with much more detail on the management options for each location
  • appendices that include information on stakeholder consultation, environmental assessments and economic appraisal.

The SMP documents reflect government policy and available evidence at the time of development. Since this time, SMPs have been 'refreshed' using the supplementary guidance provided to authorities in 2020. SMPs are now kept up to date on this website, so that users can have confidence that they are always viewing the most current version of the plan.