Friday 27th March 2026 - Overstrand Coast Community Transition Plan and Feeling Privileged to Live in Overstrand

Together with a neighbour, yesterday afternoon, I went to the Overstrand Coastal Community Transition Plan Launch Event.  Tables were laid out with large bound books of the plans, plus there were wall maps and videos.  There was so much information, contained in the books, I found it impossible to take it all in; I should add I was not the only one to feel this way.  To get a reasonable grasp of the details, I felt I needed to sit down for at least a couple of hours to achieve some idea of the proposals within the plan.  Those attending were invited to take a seat for a formal fifteen-minute presentation during which there was a strong indication that residents need to be involved in taking the plan forward.  The presentation was followed by questions and answers.  In view of the opinion I have expressed above, I asked if the plan was available online for interested residents to peruse and read.  NNDC Officer, Rob Goodliffe, said this could be done and a Parish Councillor said they would arrange for it to be published, or a link to the document, on the Parish Council’s website but that this would not be immediate. (This has now been published - here is the link to the Paish Council's post, Overstrand Community Transition Plan.)

There was an opportunity to express an interest in joining the Overstrand Transition Plan Action Group.  From my understanding, this group will be taking the plan forward in conjunction with NNDC.  Going back to the Transition Plan, these included maps showing the possible and potential loss of coastline by 2105 and re-routing of the coast path.  The predictions, for loss of coastline, can change.  As an example, when we moved to Overstrand the projected life of our property was forty years, this has subsequently been extended and eighteen years later, when we would have been looking at twenty-two years left, we are now in the fifty to a hundred-year line. 

Before I conclude today’s blog, I’ll ask the question; with all the media coverage of a disappearing coastline and transition plans, here in North Norfolk, is this unnecessarily going to blight the property market?  Does anyone, who is thinking of buying here in Overstrand, need to be that worried when the worse-case scenario, as you will see when the plan is published on the Parish Council’s website, isn’t until eighty years-time.  Only the current very youngest village residents could possibly be affected in eighty-years.  As for us, whatever year banding we fall into over the coming years, we have no regrets moving here.  Overstrand is a very special, in fact unique, village.  We feel privileged to live here, as I am sure many other residents do too.

Today’s photo is of forsythia flowering in our garden.  As you will see, it has taken a bit of a beating from the recent rain and winds but overall, the shrub brightens the dullest of days.