The £30 million Broomhill Sands Coastal Defense Project was officially opened on Friday, 13 May, by Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency.
This coastal scheme, which took two years to complete, will provide improved protection from flooding for around 1,400 homes and 100 businesses along a 2.5 km stretch of the East Sussex coastline from The Suttons to Lydd Ranges.
The project has increased the standard of protection to the area from 1 in 20 years to 1 in 200 years. This means that the risk of flooding in any one year has reduced from 5% to 0.5%.
In addition to representatives from the Environment Agency and Team Van Oord, other attendees included Damian Collins, MP for Folkestone and Hythe, representatives from the local community, the Ministry of Defense, Camber Parish Council, the Defend Our Coast Association and the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee.
The works at Broomhill Sands extended across 2.5 km of beach and included: a 1.8 km length of rock revetment requiring 265,000 tonne of rock armor and a new concrete wave wall; recharging 700 m of shingle beach and replacing the existing timber groynes.
The scheme also involved widening and improving the existing access way along the top of the sea defenses, including pedestrian access steps and ramps down to the beach.
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