Exciting times lie ahead for Llandudno, with the completion of the first phase of a new project to review and develop the Town’s sea defences, which has the potential to protect the area from flooding for the next one hundred years, and enhance the amenity value of both of the Town’s beaches at the same time.
In autumn 2016, after securing funding from Welsh Government, the local Authority in Conwy commissioned a new Beach Management Plan from internationally renowned environmental consultancy firm Aecom, to review the adequacy of the sea defences in Llandudno, and appraise the flood risk of the area. This process of review has included the many detailed ideas put forward by the Llandudno Coastal Forum on behalf of the public, and other stakeholders. The options presented in The Beach Management Plan Document will be submitted to Conwy’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee for consideration in late September, and Cabinet in October, 2017, which if passed, will begin the process to create state of the art flood defences combined with beaches of high tourist value in Llandudno.
Over the last few months, the Llandudno Coastal Forum has been reviewing the draft version of the new Llandudno Beach Management plan, which due to the technical nature, and length of the document, has been a challenging task. Forum Members have been in constant dialogue about the draft Beach Management Plan with officers from Conwy’s Department of Environment, Roads, and Facilities, providing them with feedback, on all sections of the document.
The Coastal Forum was set up in 2014 as a response to the public’s dissatisfaction with the current means of sea defence operating on Llandudno’s north shore, and since then the group has been meeting regularly to push forward a means to develop the Town’s sea defences in such a way that would protect the Town and its residents from future flooding events by the sea, and be beneficial to tourism at the same time. The Beach Management Plan is the first step towards the goal of achieving the Forum’s forward thinking ‘vision’ for Llandudno’s beaches of the future.
The final document will be published for the general public to see, and one aspect of the Forum’s work has been to request a smaller executive summary of the document for people’s easier reading. Alison Shields, Forum Member and Chairwoman of Campaign Group, Restore Our Beach says,
‘ The Beach Management Plan is very technical, and we felt that people would benefit from having something that summarises the key points of the document without having to read all the technical information; it would make it easier for people to access the information they want to know with the main document to refer to as well.’
The new two hundred and sixty page Llandudno Beach Management plan document contains information on various options for sea defences which would be designed to a one hundred year standard of protection as recommended by Welsh Government guidance, an appraisal of flood risk to Llandudno, environmental constraints, west shore cycle path redevelopment, the potential re-introduction of sand dunes to the west shore, a means to address windblown sand on the west shore, coastal heritage assets, likely capital and maintenance costs for the new sea defences, with advantages and disadvantages of each sea defence option presented. And there’s an option for sand to return to the North Shore too!
If the Beach Management Plan gains the support from Conwy’s Scrutiny Committee in September, and Cabinet Committee in October, the next stage of the work for Conwy Council’s Environment, Roads and Facilities Officers will be to seek approval to approach Welsh Government for funding to commission the next stage of the work which is to develop an Outline Business Case for each option presented in the Beach Management Plan; that is to carry out detailed analysis for each option from an economic, strategic, management, commercial, and financial point of view. This phase of the work will hopefully lead to the physical modelling of a preferred option, and finally development.
At this stage of the work, all options for both beaches presented in the Beach Management Plan are open for consideration, and any option selected for consideration will be subjected to full public consultation.
A public consultation on the new Llandudno Beach Management Plan is being arranged for November, 2017.