Campaign First Meeting on 29 November

Dear Resident, Southsea Seafront Campaign Meeting at St Simon's Church, Waverley Rd,Southsea Wednesday 29 November 2017 from 19.00 - 20.30. If you want to make sure Portsmouth residents have a choice of designs to protect our precious seafront from rising sea levels and storm surges - and that we are properly engaged in a collaborative design process from the beginning, we invite you to come to the Southsea Seafront Campaign meeting on Wednesday 29 November at St Simon's Church, Waverley Road Southsea from 19.00 to 20.30. As local residents we are determined to make our voices heard early in the design process rather than waiting for the East Solent Coastal Partnership engineers to come up with one design - which may not be acceptable… As you know, more than 3.5k people have signed the Change.org e-petition asking for a choice of designs to protect Southsea's precious seafront = and the numbers of mostly local people signing are growing every day. If you have not yet signed, please sign. For those who have already signed please make sure you have added your postcode, so the politicians who commission the design can see that we are local voters and how many of us want to contribute our local knowledge and expertise, so that our precious beach is not replaced by concrete and high barriers. We would like to invite you to our meeting to plan our campaign In October you may have attended the East Southsea or Old Portsmouth Neighbourhood forums to hear about the alternatives for proposed Southsea sea defences - or you signed the e-petition. Whilst we agree that it is essential that our sea defences are improved, we are concerned that the East Solent Coastal Partnership's preferred option is not the right solution for our glorious seafront. We were particularly concerned that there has been misleading information published and distributed e.g. Lib Dem campaigner, Richard Adair, who stated 'that a vote held at the East Southsea Neighbourhood forum showed there was a 50/50 split on wanting to have a choice of proposals'. This was untrue, as confirmed by the chairman: more than 90% raised their hands in support of choice. As local residents we have formed the Southsea Seafront Campaign to raise awareness of the proposed sea defences and to ensure residents are properly informed and engaged in the future design. We have also requested that the leader of the council arranges community planning events we can all take part in, but this has been rejected for now by the city planning officer. If you would like to know more and get involved in planning the campaign, then please come along on 29/11/17 and let your friends and neighbours know about the meeting and campaign. We look forward to seeing you Wednesday 29 November 2017 at 19.00 - and to planning our campaign! Please spread the word! Lynn Nicholls, Celia Clark, Colin Merrin