Coastal Communities

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing the debate. Although I no longer represent a coastal community, my constituency borders such communities and many of my constituents work in them and rely on their economic, cultural and social success. I also wrote a chapter called “Coastal Communities in the 21st Century” in the 2019 book “Britain Beyond Brexit”, edited by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman).

My first point is that coastal communities are diverse in population and economy size, and there is no one size fits all. Communities in Cornwall and North Devon are very different from those in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Member for Hastings and Rye and for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell). However, they do have one thing in common: the Government’s productivity drivers and initiatives on skills, innovation, competition, enterprise and investment work less well in coastal communities. That is largely due to the hub-and-spoke nature of the UK’s infrastructure, as resources are focused on the major arterial routes out of large conurbations.

Since the book was published, we have had the covid pandemic. That has meant that digital connectivity has been an issue in many areas, not least remote coastal communities where the problems are not only with broadband but with mobile coverage, as many people on holiday in Cornwall—including myself—have found. However, working from home has increased dramatically, so improving digital connectivity is one of the most cost-effective ways of providing incentives for businesses and people to move out of central conurbations and into coastal communities.

I believe that transport is the largest barrier for coastal communities. Those communities are often at the end of the line, meaning that cars are the only way to get around. It takes the same amount of time as in the Victorian era to get a train from London to many coastal communities, which is not good enough. Even to places such as Portsmouth, it still takes one hour and 40 minutes to travel 70 miles by train. The fastest time from London to Great Yarmouth is two hours and 38 minutes to travel just 136 miles, and Newquay in Cornwall—only 256 miles away—is just under five hours by train. By contrast, it takes two hours to travel the 200 miles between Manchester and London, and from Birmingham, it takes one hour and 29 minutes to go 126 miles. Members can imagine how galling it is to hear about HS2 train times if you live by the sea.

It is just as bad to travel between coastal communities, too. It takes two hours and 40 minutes to travel the 58 miles between Great Yarmouth and Felixstowe; sometimes, it is possible to cycle those routes faster. That is the crux of it—poor transport links and poor digital connectivity are two very negative forces pushing down on our coastal communities. One is, sadly, very expensive to fix; one is much cheaper, so I hope that Government policy is directed towards digital connectivity and bringing coastal communities into the 21st century. That would at least take one negative away while longer-term transport solutions are found.