Coastal Communities

Siân Berry Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I am pleased to speak in the debate and I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing it.

In 2019, a House of Lords report on the future of coastal communities called Brighton

“probably the UK’s most successful seaside community,”

and we are. I am very pleased that the city council has recently set up a new seafront development board, and I have already had a positive meeting with its chair to discuss how we continue to make our seafront better, to support and grow our city’s wonderful reputation for heritage, music, the arts, shopping, amusement, community action, diversity, nature and wellbeing.

As others have said, there are currently no Government funding schemes specifically for coastal areas, and there is no ministerial focus; I echo the comments of everybody in this House on that. We need focus on the specific challenges that our coastal communities face, because austerity and Brexit have bitten Brighton’s communities too. Our people have big problems with housing costs, holiday lets, employment, health, transport and health inequality, which all need dealing with.

[Seamus Logan]

Does the hon. Member agree that Brexit has done immense harm to places such as Brighton and other coastal communities?

[Siân Berry]

I could not agree more. The amount of different sectors of the economy in Brighton and Hove that have remarked to me on the impact of Brexit is huge, not least the cultural industries.

I will echo others and talk a little about the regularly appalling state of our sea water, which is a genuine threat to our success. Southern Water has been taken to court and found guilty of criminal behaviour and lying, yet we still have sewage overflows off the south coast on a regular basis. I have met sea-swimming groups and individual constituents who have been very sick after swimming in the waters around Brighton, and the only way to get that properly under control is public ownership. My Green colleagues and I will continue to push for that in this Parliament.

I will very quickly shout out Lucy Davies, the brilliant and enthusiastic new director of Brighton Dome. When I met her recently, she told me about the excellent collaboration happening between cultural institutions along the Sussex coast. The coastal catalyst programme will support creativity and culture for young people from Bognor Regis to Bexhill, and it is exactly the kind of co-operative work that needs to happen.

There is no single solution to the challenges that impact on our coastal communities, but we need ambition, vision, a dedicated Minister and a proper package of strategic initiatives and funding. As MPs we can help by working together and with local leaders to build on the ideas, build up new initiatives that we all agree our communities need because of their very special natures, and put on the pressure for that to happen.