14 November 2025 – by Yumna Kamel
Hemsby’s battle with coastal erosion has long symbolised the growing struggle faced by communities along England’s eastern seaboard.
Our original article, published on 15 October 2025, outlines the compounding crises faced by Hemsby’s residents: rapid coastal erosion, and clashes with the local council.
Now, new information has revealed that the village is being used as a national test case for a policy that could set the template for how the UK government handles coastal loss across the country.
According to documents from a recent Great Yarmouth Borough Council (GYBC) Cabinet meeting, the local plan for Hemsby will become the model for a national strategy if deemed successful. What happens here will not remain local; Hemsby has effectively become the country’s testing ground for managed retreat.
At the centre of the plan is a proposal for homeowners to sign away their planning rights in exchange for a small payment before their homes are demolished. Those rights would then be transferred to a separate parcel of land elsewhere. Officials describe this as a form of relocation support, but many residents see it as rollback under another name, providing no meaningful benefit to those who are losing their homes.
The figures are stark. A total of £90,000 has been set aside for 30 properties (an average of just £3,000 each). Some households have reportedly been offered up to £5,000, a figure that, if applied across the board, would deplete the entire fund before all residents receive help. The Environment Agency has allocated £1.6 million to the wider scheme, of which £90,000 is what remains, but this money will not be available until the next financial year, likely March or April 2026. With another storm season approaching, residents say that even this minimal support will come too late.
Confusion over who qualifies for help has compounded the frustration. Only 12 of the 30 earmarked households have been contacted so far, including several identified as highly vulnerable. Residents describe distressing experiences with council representatives, including long, pressured phone calls and emails with copies of draft letters. Simon Measures, chairman of the Save Hemsby Coastline campaign shared that one elderly woman believed she had received a formal demolition notice in one such email attachment. She was understandably extremely distressed, and almost in a state of panic. Simon has filed a complaint with the council’s democratic services team, alleging coercive and insensitive behaviour towards vulnerable individuals.
The community says it has been left abandoned and demoralised. Many feel decisions are being made about them rather than with them. “They are taking a community and smashing it to pieces,” Simon told me on a recent video call.
Meanwhile, residents themselves have taken to issuing press releases in response to what they describe as the Council’s repeated failures to act. The first, published earlier this autumn, challenged the Council’s removal of defences under health and safety concerns. The second, released on 7 November 2025, focused on the lack of practical support for those at risk. It followed an official warning that some residents faced imminent relocation due to danger. Yet, more than three weeks later no action has been taken – a delay that residents argue exposes the relocation warnings as less about immediate risk and more about administrative convenience for the Council.
What is unfolding in Hemsby has implications far beyond this small Norfolk village. The approach being tested here could form the basis for how other coastal communities in the UK are managed as erosion accelerates. For residents, the issue is not just about compensation or planning rights but about fairness and the right to remain part of the place they call home.
We will be raising the issue of Hemsby at COP30 in Brazil, where discussions of climate justice are focused on the notion of loss and damage funding for vulnerable communities. It is shocking that such a situation is unfolding in a small, predominantly white, working-class village in the United Kingdom. That it can happen here: quietly, administratively, and with so little public scrutiny makes it all the more urgent that Hemsby’s story is platformed internationally. This is not only a local tragedy, but a warning of how governments may begin to manage climate loss everywhere.