Block Management in Brixham

Brixham harbour is one of the three enclosed harbours inside the statutory harbour of Tor Bay. The shoreline management plan handles Brixham unusually, treating the whole defended town frontage from Churston Cove to Shoalstone Point as a single hold the line unit across all three epochs to 2105, taking in Fishcombe and Oxen Coves, Freshwater Quarry, the harbour, the breakwater and Breakwater and Shoalstone beaches. It carries 182 mapped defence features, by far the most of any unit in Torbay, spanning revetments, sheet piling and brick, masonry and concrete walls. Beyond the town the policy changes completely, and the contrast is severe. Shoalstone Point to Berry Head is no active intervention and is the most stable frontage in Torbay, projected to lose two metres by 2105 even on the highest climate allowance. Immediately round the headland, St Mary's Bay is projected to lose between 6 and 56 metres over the same period, and the plan states in terms that the policy there will lead to loss of some properties due to erosion, with 7 to 10 metres predicted by 2055. A 28-fold difference across a single headland inside one town is about as stark as coastal exposure gets, and the plan has an outstanding action to develop an adaptation plan involving community engagement around potential property loss.

Standards classify a high-salinity coastal atmosphere as C5-M, very high marine, in which unprotected steel loses more than 80 micrometres of thickness in its first year against as little as 1.3 inland. Balustrades, railings, fixings and walkway structures are what that costs a Brixham block, so we survey them on a shorter interval and fund the reserve fund from what the surveys find.

The Brixham Peninsula neighbourhood plan, made in June 2019, carries the policy most likely to reach a block's roof. Dormers are approved only where they sit below the ridge, are set in from the sides and eaves, keep features such as chimney stacks, avoid projecting additions like Juliet balconies and extractor fans, and use traditional materials with subordinate aligned windows. The plan adds that large rooflights and solar panels can be as visually harmful as a poorly designed dormer, which puts a communal solar scheme inside the policy rather than outside it. Under the Torbay Local Plan 2012 to 2030, adopted on 10 December 2015, Brixham's targets are much the smallest of the three towns, at least 2,700 square metres of employment floorspace and 660 new homes, roughly a fourteenth of Torquay's employment target, with seven committed sites against Torquay's 37. Unlike its neighbours it has no adopted masterplan of any kind from the council. Its neighbourhood plan was made on 19 June 2019 following a referendum on 2 May carried by 5,570 votes to 693 on a turnout of 39.3 per cent, the highest of the three by nearly six points, and it is the only one of them prepared by a town council rather than a neighbourhood forum. A named and costed defence scheme has been delivered here: breakwater improvements approved unanimously by council in May 2018 at about 3.853 million pounds, adding rock armour to the outer face and raising the structure by half a metre, with the council recording plainly that the breakwater acts as a sea defence and flood protection structure for the town as well as for the harbour.

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