Paston  and the Parish Council now have a new modern smartphone/tablet friendly website (set up by Wayne Beauchamp) to replace that with which we had been provided by the Norfolk Association of Local Councils.  That website had restrictions preventing us from making any changes to the way it looked and worked, and was not smartphone friendly.

The new website is “under development” There are several things we would like to do slightly differently. We think  however it’s now far enough on in its development that we are happy for people to visit it.

The re-direction to the new website of searches for “Paston Parish Council  is currently not  working, which is something that Norfolk ALC need to do and we are trying to sort out.   Hence the  notice on the board.

 

 

 

During July and August the big hopper dredger Ham 813 became a familiar sight off shore, with the pipe spewing out sand at amazing speed and the bulldozers spreading it around.

Everyone is now waiting to see how the sand behaves as time goes on.

Though the project was dramatic, what got most publicity nationally were the sand martins which come from Africa each year and raise broods in holes burrowed into the cliffs.  Nets were to be over any holes that would be covered by the 7 m of sand so that no birds would become trapped .  But the contractors initially  put nets on all the holes right up to the cliff top at Bacton, which were swiftly removed but not before an understandable national outcry,   The sand martins seem to be fine and second broods have been seen, and a new colony in the cliffs towards Mundesley.

The sandscaping project is now finally “set up and ready to roll” – nearly 2 million cubic meters of sand at a cost of some £20m, funded by the Gas terminal companies, the Council, the Government and even in part by the EU (a commitment we’re told that would be safe from a no deal Brexit)

The contract has been signed with Van Oord, a Dutch company who have been doing other sand engineering on a smaller scale in the UK

The project is to start in May and June with decommissioning and replacement of the gas terminal drainage outfalls (which would have been under the sand).

This is to be followed (as already described below) in July and August by 1.8 million cubic metres of sand being placed on 5.7 km of beach, from just north of the gas terminal past Bacton to the southern end of Walcott.

 

Great news – the installation of the new playground equipment got underway on Monday 21 May and it should take between 3-4 weeks to complete. Do talk a walk up to the Playground and you’ll see the first items being installed.

None of this would have been possible without the help of our village community in various fundraising activities for which we thank you.

We are including one or two items from our original playground and on Monday one of the youngest members of our community got stuck in and helped clean the turtle springer. What a superstar!

April 2019 there is to be a barge just off shore loaded with sand dredged from further out to sea being pumped onto the beach and then spread by bulldozer.  This will be the first time this coastal protection system, pioneered over recent years by our Dutch friends, will be applied in the UK on the scale proposed.

The beach is continually on the move down towards Yarmouth which causes cliff erosion and collapse. This was generally stopped abut 60 years by the installation of the wooden groynes and revetments, but the beach is still slowly sinking, which is exposing more defences which then get damaged and may eventually be left on top of the beach and destroyed. Sandscaping (as it’s called) is intended to stop that happening

The sandscaping will stretch from Walcott to to a few 100m short of the Holiday Village.  So it will cover over half of Paston’s coastline.   It’s maximum depth will be at the Bacton end of the Gas Terminal then reducing either way.  The work is planned at the moment to take place April to July 2019, but there are a lot of licences and consents still to be obtained.

There will be nearly 2 m cubic metres of sand, the cost will be around £20m of which about 2/3rds is to be paid by the Gas Terminal operators and the remaining 1/3^rd partly by central and local government.

The overall policy for our coast is one of “managed re-alignment”.  However policy is to protect the gas terminal through which passes about a third (some people will tell you half and others a quarter) of Britain’s gas.  The expected life of the terminal currently about four decades. This is extending as Shell have been finding further small gas fields out at sea from which they are bringing gas on shore.  And according to National Grid for the first time for some years gas will be flowing from the UK to continental Europe,  during the summer when (broadly speaking) our neighbours who have gas storage facilities can buy it more cheaply.