As part of the Future Coast Dorset project, funded by the Coastal Transition Accelerator Programme (CTAP), Dorset Council is developing Adaptation Plans for Charmouth and North Swanage communities.
What is an Adaptation Plan?
An Adaptation Plan is a strategy for managing the impacts of climate change, sea level rise and coastal erosion.
- It identifies risk through a Baseline Assessment which defines the locations and scale of future landslides and cliff retreat.
- It guides action by providing clear, practical measures for adaptation.
- It defines Adaptation Pathways which comprise triggers to initiate actions, such as landslide events and actions, such as monitoring and rollback.
- A structured approach to strategic decisions that help communities manage the impacts of coastal change.
- They are specific to the hazards present.
- They are developed considering the Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) policy and Future Coast Dorset adaptation, resilience and mitigation options.
Thresholds or events that determine when a management action is required, e.g. a landslide, storm, damage to property.
An activity to either prevent future hazards or to respond to the consequences of hazards, e.g. cliff drainage, Citizen Science or Planning and building control mapping and advice.
Why we need the knowledge and expertise of the Swanage community?
While the Future Coast North Swanage project team and our consultants, Jacobs, have identified broad triggers and actions for the area, local insight is essential to make the Adaptation Plan realistic, detailed, and genuinely meaningful. Following recent monitoring of North Swanage by Jacobs, you can view the full range of Technical Reports here
The people who live, work, and spend time in Swanage hold invaluable knowledge about how the coast is changing, how the community is affected, and what matters most to local life. Your experiences, observations, and ideas can highlight issues we may not yet know about and can help refine and improve the proposed actions.
Community engagement is a core part of Future Coast North Swanage. By working together, we can ensure the Adaptation Plan is shaped by local voices, grounded in lived experience, and supportive of the community’s long-term needs.
Previous community engagement
To ensure local voices shape the Adaptation Plan, we hosted a well-attended event on Wednesday 4th February in the Studio event space at the Mowlem, Swanage. In the first part of the event, local community representatives and wider stakeholders were invited to a workshop to focus on the potential triggers and resulting actions to build into the Adaptation Plan. Following the workshop there was then an open to all drop-in session for all members of the community to view the outcomes of the earlier workshop and provide further comments and feedback. You can view a recording of the presentation by Ross Fitzgerald here and the presentation slides here
