More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
A cliff-top resident who goes to bed every night worried his home will be lost says he is shocked to see sea defence works being carried out elsewhere on Sheppey.
Ed Cane’s bungalow is now just yards away from the edge of the precipice after a huge collapse at Surf Crescent, Eastchurch, swallowed up a family bungalow last year.
Mr Cane, who lives in neighbouring Third Avenue with his wife Lynn, has lost at least 18ft of his garden since then.
With a long-standing policy of non-intervention on the erosion there by the Environment Agency (EA), the 68-year-old, and other residents, hired their own contractors to fill the hole with clay to try and reinforce the new cliff edge towards the end of last year.
They even had an EA licence to carry out the work but, after an inspection, they were told to stop because the agency said the terms had been breached.
However, last week, Mr Cane was told the EA had been carrying out sea defence works in Shellness, near Leysdown.
“I had to go down and take a look for myself,” he said.
“They are putting big rocks right the way along the beach to protect a couple of fields, essentially.
“How can they justify doing it there? It shook me when I saw it, I felt physically sick.
“The area they are doing is much more than our area at Eastchurch Gap, where there are almost 50 houses at risk.
“It is beyond me, considering they say they can’t spend money to save our homes and stop us doing the work ourselves.”
He added: “I go to bed worried about what I will wake up to the next day, especially if the weather is bad and rain is forecast. I work nights too, and I don’t know if I’m going to come home to a bungalow or not.”
An EA spokesman said: "The EA is undertaking coastal defence repair works between Leysdown-on-Sea and the hamlet of Shellness to repair damage to the existing coastal defence embankment caused by the storms of the 2019/20 winter.
“The works involve the extension of the existing rock armour coastal defence by 50 meters. We expect the works to be completed by spring 2021”.
The agency has not yet said how much the Shellness works are costing.
