A History of Shoreline Management Planning: Lessons for Governing the Shoreface

Coastal areas face unique challenges, with climate change impacts such as sea level rise exacerbating coastal hazards that put people, infrastructure, and habitats at risk. This study evaluates three generations of Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) in the UK (1993–2024). The study considers whether the system of governance is encouraging sustainable solutions. Policy analysis identifies a range of sustainability principles which have become dominant for SMPs. Findings show that shoreline management planning has evolved considerably over the last 30 years. It has transformed governance from a reactive, engineering-focused, administratively based approach to a risk-based, geostrategic, technically informed approach. SMPs have slowed the increase of coastal vulnerability. In the most recent phase, they have increased consideration of adaptation to the impacts of climatic change. However, strategic goals are not always translated into locally implemented action, because of problems with criteria, collaboration, costs, cultural attitudes, competing priorities for coastal landuse, and contentious decisions, especially those which set public interest against individual interests. So, governing the shoreface will need to evolve further to deal with the tensions between ‘working with nature’, ‘working in partnership with people’, and ‘adapting to future climates’.