Historical Projects

Understanding the Coastal Communities of the North West

In 2009 the Coastal Forum, working with 4NW, undertook research into the socio-economic and environmental issues and opportunities for coastal communities in North West England. The work, part funded by Defra and published as ’Understanding the Coastal Communities of the North West’ was undertaken by a consortium of consultants (Rural Innovation, c4g and Smiths Gore) and involved a detailed analysis of 47 of our coastal communities, selected to provide a representative sample of the types and sizes of communities in the North West. The work was designed to provide part of the evidence base for the then proposed integrated regional strategy and to inform the work of the Coastal Forum going forward as well being of coastal communities is one of the Forum’s key objectives.

The work was ground-breaking in that small and non-resort coastal communities were studied; although there has been a lot of national attention to coastal resorts the other types of community had not received any in detail analysis or consideration of the challenges and opportunities they face going forward. An innovative typology was also developed to assist policy-makers.

As well as a stand-alone executive summary and the full report additional resources were created to provide a snapshot on a local authority by local authority basis. The full data sets used in the analysis are also available. The reports are available to download here.

Coastal Management Challenges and Successes

In 2007 the North West Coastal Forum’s Management Board undertook a review of the region’s achievements in integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) by carrying out an evaluation using the European ICZM Progress Indicator. The results of this work led to the production of a booklet introducing the North West’s coast and explaining, in plain English, what is meant by integrated coastal zone management. The principles of ICZM are illustrated with examples of good practice from around the North West.#

CoPraNet

CoPraNet stands for Coastal Practice Network. It was an EU project running from 2004 – 2006 involving a range of partners under the Interreg IIIC funding  stream. Areas of work included development of a searchable ICZM database incorporating case studies from across Europe, an on-line Beach Management Guide linking to appropriate case studies and a new tourism quality label: QualityCoast which is designed to assist communities develop tourism in a sustainable way or move to a more sustainable form of tourism. Sefton Council and the North West Coastal Forum partnered to provide the lead on the Beach Management work in particular, as well as getting involved in the other areas of work. The project website is at: www.coastalpractice.net

A key project output was a report on integrated coastal zone management:

During the project we ran two workshops in North West England, one on the role of regional parks in sustainable tourism and another on the planning, implementation and monitoring of coastal defences. Reports were produced on both workshops:

For more information about the QualityCoast Awards see: www.qualitycoast.info

North West Fisheries Regeneration Study

This research was commissioned in 2002 by Government Office for the North West and the North West Coastal Forum and was funded by the NWDA as part of the Regeneration Initiative for Fishing Communities. The study focussed on the key issues for the region to maintain viable and sustainable coastal fisheries communities. The final report is available below: