AS head of the army, his job is to defend the realm against any incursion. Now General Sir Richard Dannatt has taken up arms against a new invader - the North Sea, which under a bureaucratic plan may be allowed to take over swathes of his beloved Norfolk Broads.

Dannatt, chief of the general staff, has warned of the “tragedy” threatening the area if the scheme is put into effect. It would see the defences holding back the sea retreat four miles from a stretch of East Anglian coast, surrendering 25 square miles of territory - including five villages - to rising sea levels.

The project is being overseen by Natural England, the environment quango. It is part of a national review of the effect of climate change on the landscape.

The possibility of losing wide stretches of land to the sea has sparked controversy around threatened areas such as the Cuckmere estuary in East Sussex and the Wash in Lincolnshire.

Dannatt, who owns a farmhouse south of Norwich, said it would be “counter-intuitive” to allow the sea to take over “without a fight”.

Since his appointment in 2006, the 57-year-old general, a devout Christian, has gained a reputation for forthright public expression of his views.

Two months after taking the job, he caused controversy when he said that the presence of Britain in Iraq “exacerbates the security problems”. He said the British “should get ourselves out sometime soon”.

At the same time, he called for a return to Judaeo-Christian values in Britain as a way of combating “the Islamist threat”.

Under the plans for the coast, one of four options put forward by Natural England, nine miles of sea defences near the village of Horsey north of Great Yarmouth would only be maintained to a level sufficient to keep out the water for the next 50 years. After that breaches would be opened in the walls and the water would flood in.

About 1,000 homes would be lost, with no right to compensation under existing law, and thousands of acres of farmland and other countryside would also go.

Dannatt, who has lived in Norfolk for 35 years, outlined his fears in an interview with the Eastern Daily Press. He said: “To give up a great chunk of Norfolk to the sea without a fight is something I find quite counter-intuitive and quite difficult to do.

“So I really think that we should continue to invest in the sea defences around there.

“I think it would be a tragedy to lose a wonderful area of the county by allowing the sea in without a fight. After all, the Dutch managed to achieve this perfectly well . . . why can't we do it on our side of the North Sea?”

The scheme emerged in a policy document last month outlining possible responses to the threat of climate change, which could result in sea levels rising 55in over the next few decades century, according to the United Nation’s climate change panel.

Under the new proposal, a fallback line against the sea would be built four miles inland near the villages of Potter Heigham and Stalham.

The first three options laid out in the paper involve doing nothing and letting the sea spread in naturally; moving the sea walls slightly inland, and holding the current line.

The quango’s paper, however, says there is a case for the fourth option, moving inland: “It can be argued that by selecting a radical option now, the right message about the scale and severity of the impact of climate change is delivered to the public.”

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, said Natural England’s proposals had created turmoil in the area.

He said: “I am horrified by this option. Scientists and policy makers can speculate about options for the future in an academic way but they often don’t realise it has an immediate impact on those communities.”

A Natural England spokesman said no decision had been taken on which option to pursue, but that it was committed to maintaining the Norfolk coast for the next 50 years.

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