We, the people of Walberswick, are sending out an SOS to this Government and calling on DEFRA to save our shingle ridge, save our marshes and save our community by reversing its recent decisions to retreat and let the sea in all around us. We are not going to stand by and let Walberswick beach and beautiful surrounding areas wash away into the sea.

They will try to argue that there is only so much money to go round – but we are not asking for more Government money. We are asking them to spend our money better. It is financial madness not to spend money now on defences and then end up spending 10 or 20 times as much in a few years’ time on raising the A12 at Blythburgh to keep the East Coast open when the road gets washed away.

Its madness that far more money is being spent on habitat for the birds and the water voles than on our threatened communities.

Its madness that bizarre EU rules mean that we cannot even get into the shingle area to rebuild the sea walls to protect ourselves.

The powers that be will try to say that it's inevitable. It is not. There is nothing inevitable about it. Holland wouldn't exist if they had just said the sea coming in was inevitable. This Government needs some Dutch courage to spend our money sensibly. We need some joined-up Government between Transport and the Environment before we don't have a joined-up country.

The only thing that's inevitable is that if we lose the funding for sea and river defences, we lose the beach – and if we lose the beach, we lose the soul of the village. And then everyone loses.

We demand that DEFRA:

Commits to fund maintenance of the shingle ridge between Walberswick and Dunwich
Repairs the breaches to all the floodbank defences on the River Blyth immediately
Commits to fund maintenance and restoration of all Blyth floodbank defences into the future

We are sending this SOS to all the people who know and love Walberswick so that they can join us in sending a message of their own to DEFRA – a message that together we will not retreat, we will fight them on the beaches and we will never surrender.

This is not just an SOS for our village under threat. We are calling on every other community on the coast of Britain which is threatened by the lack of funds for sea defences to send its own SOS to the Government and to keep sending them until they see sense.

Download our letter (PDF) so that you can print it off, sign it and send it to DEFRA