Saturday 26th April 2025 - Two Seperate Issues, Fix My Street and Labyrinth Web

We attended the Annual Parish Meeting on Wednesday evening.  Various reports were given but for this blog, I will be focusing on the report relating to the two coastal issues we have, here in Overstrand.  Rob Young from NNDC provided the report regarding the two problems.

• The two issues that need to be dealt with are corroded sheet piling on the sea defences and the cliff slump, below the Sea Marge.

• ·The repair of the sea defences has been estimated at costing £1.28 million.

• ·The Council will be obtaining the funding from various sources as well as seeking match funding.

• Subject to funding and engaging suitable contractors, the work will commence this autumn.

• The work will be going out to tender, with Rob Young indicating there should be no need for major contractors to be involved e.g. Balfour Beatty.  He feels contractors at local level will be capable of completing the works.

• It was down to Health & Safety issues, following the cliff slump below the Sea Marge, that resulted in the closure of access, to this section of the promenade.

• The Council have both the Japanese Knotweed and the spring in the cliff to deal with.

• A budget to £125k has been set aside for these.  The amount is for dealing with both the knotweed and looking into how to reduce the water content in the cliff.

• The removal of the previous slump containing knotweed had proven extremely costly.  (Given his position in NNDC, I was surprised Rob Young was unaware this slump material had first been taken to Peterborough who had turned it away, after which it went to Leicester where it was incinerated.)

• It was suggested to Rob Young that given knotweed is edible for both humans and certain animals, the Council should investigate as to whether it could also be consumed by marine life.  (Rob Young was not aware it was edible.  I was surprised he was unaware, as I have made two members of Coastal Management team aware of this and asked them to look into whether it was also edible by marine life – obviously this has not been progressed by Coastal Management.)

I have one other item to mention which came out of the meeting and this was provided by a member of the Bowls Club, whose name I don’t know.  This is a website called Fix my Street.  Here, anyone can report all sorts of problems in their area.  I have looked at the site, which is a charity, and from what I’ve seen they have achieved good results i.e. problem sorted.  I have reported two problems here in the village and I wait to see if they are resolved.  It doesn’t matter if a problem has already been reported – the more who make a report the more likely it is to be speedily addressed.

Today’s photo is of a spider’s web.  This was one of many which we wouldn’t have seen if they’d not been highlighted by an early morning dew.  The centre has a funnel but fortunately we don’t have the highly poisonous funnel web spiders here in the UK, so no worries there!  This is most probably the web of a labyrinth spider.