Our Future Coast

Working with Nature to Safeguard Coastal Communities

Around England's coastline there's an underappreciated ecosystem that provides a home for many native flora and fauna, it might not look pretty, but it stores carbon and crucially it also is a valuable natural flood defence.

In 2021, DEFRA provided £150 million through the Flood and Coastal Resilience & Innovation Programme (FCRIP) to fund 25 projects supporting local areas in becoming more resilient to flooding and erosion. The Our Future Coast project, one of the 25 projects, offers the chance to test a new long-term vision for how we will work with nature to safeguard coastal communities from climate change across the northwest. There are 14 sites across the North West coastline, Hest Bank has been selected as one of these sites.

Here at Lancaster we will be looking at implementing community led designs to regenerate the salt marsh at Hest Bank. Lancaster will be working with a range of partners over this 5 year project, including Morecambe Bay Partnership and Lancaster University. The project will look to provide lessons learned regarding nature-based solutions and their effectiveness at reducing coastal erosion and flooding risk.

Our in person design sessions for 23/24 at both sites have now finished, all updates are published on our website here, if you wish to submit an idea, please use the "Ideas" tab below

Summer Workshops

We will be looking to hold another workshop with Ray from Siskin Asset Management, a specialist in Nature Based Solutions, in September. If you have signed up to our construction mailing list you will be notified, if you haven't and would like to please see our sign ups at the bottom of the page, if not keep an eye on Upcoming events | Morecambe Bay Partnership. We will be looking to install the mechanisms after this workshop!

What does the coastline of Morecambe Bay mean to you?

As part of the Our Future Coast project we are inviting local craft and art groups (individuals are also most welcome!) across the Lancaster and Morecambe District to create art which represents what Morecambe Bay means to them.

What do you admire most about the coastline? What is interesting about it? How does it make you feel? From sunsets to the views, wildlife and life beside it, we are interested in it all!

Paintings, tactile pieces, dance videos, poetry and music pieces, digital- all mediums are welcome and there's no limit to the number of pieces your group sends. Don't worry, there's plenty of time to start creating, we will be looking to collate early 2025 ready for display come March 2025.

Please fill in the the survey in the links below to let us know how to contact you, what and how much you would be planning to contribute to the exhibition. If you have any questions please email ofc@lancaster.gov.uk

Newsletter

The Winter 23/24 newsletter can be found here, please note if you sign up to our newsletter that they are only biannual and are only emailed out when published

This project is funded by Defra as part of the £150 million Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme which is managed by the Environment Agency to develop and test new approaches to resilience tailored to local communities.