HILARY BENN, the environment secretary, is facing questions over why flood defences outside his family’s Essex home were repaired last autumn while a historic harbour on the same coastline is being abandoned to the waves.

In October the Environment Agency replaced 100 concrete tiles on a sea wall outside Stansgate Abbey farm, which belongs to Benn’s father Tony, after they were ripped off by the tide.

At the same time the agency, under directions from Benn’s department, decided to abandon to the sea the harbour at South-wold and the nearby village of Walberswick, 70 miles up the coast on the Blyth estuary in Suffolk.

More than 1,000 residents are expected to mount a protest on the beach today, including Simon Mayo, the BBC radio presenter, Richard Curtis, the screenwriter responsible for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, and Paul Greengrass, director of the film The Bourne Supremacy, live locally and are understood to be supportive of the protest. The protesters will form a human chain spelling “SOS”.

The row comes after ramblers complained last week that the Benns’ family seat on the Blackwater estuary has no public right of way across it, despite Hilary Benn masterminding moves towards opening up all of England’s coastline to walkers.

Karen Solloway, of the campaign group Walberswick SOS, said: “The only conclusion that anyone can make is that it’s preferential treatment. Why should the Stansgate coast be more important or valuable than ours? Because of this decision hundreds of thousands of acres of marshland and a beautiful beach will be lost.

“It’s not fair. It doesn’t seem right. Hilary Benn’s son comes and plays cricket here. They should be well aware of what a beautiful place it is.

“The agency is saying, ‘We can’t afford to pay.’ We think existing flood defences could be repaired with clay and a shingle ridge. It would cost a couple of hundred thousand pounds.

“We are in danger of losing hundreds of thousands of acres of marshland and a beautiful beach.”

Charles Beardall, eastern region manager for the Environment Agency, said that while he sympathised with the protesters, “difficult decisions” had to be made: “We’ve got a very small wall based on very poor foundations, so to build anything that will sustain the estuary for the next 50-100 years . . . would need £34m. These walls only protect a small handful of properties so we wouldn’t be able to justify spending public money maintaining these.

“We sympathise. These are really difficult decisions to make, and we don’t take them lightly. We have been through a three-year consultation process.”

He rejected claims that the Essex sea defences had been given preferential treatment because Benn’s father lived there, adding that the wall around the farm protected 300 properties and cost only a few thousand pounds to fix. He added that his staff assessed all the sea walls around Essex and Suffolk and wouldn’t know who lived where.

“What we’re trying to face up to is that this is one of the fastest-eroding coasts in the UK,” Beardall said. “In the face of climate change the sea level will rise faster and erosion will be much greater. We have to adapt.

“The amount spent on replacing the tiles was significantly less than what is spent every year on maintenance of the sea walls around the Blyth estuary,” he added.

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