Why the government mustn’t forget coastal areas in its Spring Statement

Over the past 40 years, the party that has secured the most seats in ‘the sea wall’ has always won the general election. Coastal constituents are electoral bellwethers who traditionally vote Conservative but, as in 1997 and again in 2024, will change their votes if they feel they have reason to.

These reasons can include feeling left behind as a result of insufficient investment and a perceived lack of care for coastal communities within the corridors of Westminster. Fed up with faring worse than the rest of the population on all metrics for prosperity and wellbeing, coastal communities last year voted for a new government, with 69 coastal seats changing hands in total, even more than during Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory.

‘Change’, the central theme of Labour’s manifesto, was exactly what seaside residents were looking for, but as we prepare to hear what is in the Spring Statement, questions remain about whether they are seeing any.

Recent announcements around accelerating offshore wind projects, increasing/extending marine protected areas and increasing funding for maritime clusters to drive investment into coastal locations are positive moves for the blue economy and will hopefully lead to greater economic diversification in areas that are too often reliant on traditional industries such as fishing and tourism.  However, early policy and budget decisions, far from leading to positive change, threaten to make things worse.

The 2024 Autumn Budget, for example, hit businesses in hospitality, leisure and retail – often key employers in coastal regions – with the triple whammy of increased employer National Insurance, lower thresholds for paying it and a reduced discount on business rates, which from next month will nearly double their current cost.

The net impact of this is a squeeze on existing coastal economies, resulting in reduced employment opportunities, failing businesses and weakened high street regeneration. Plans to improve railway and road connectivity to coastal and rural locations were also scrapped, with funds instead being channelled to the likes of HS2 and the TransPennine Route Upgrade, which are important but will only serve to make those coastal communities without sufficient transport infrastructure feel further cut off.

These decisions do not demonstrate a lack of care for our coastal communities but rather a lack of understanding about the challenges they face, the opportunities presenting themselves and how our sea wall can better interact with our mainland and vice versa to the benefit of the whole nation.

That is why the government needs to consider appointing a minister with specific responsibility for our coastal areas, who can work across government to coordinate policies, represent the interests of coastal areas in national debates and secure the business investment Labour wants to bring to the UK’s forgotten places.

This would only be a starting point, but it would be a hugely significant gesture as far as the coastal voters who ticked the Labour box on their election card for the first time are concerned. It would also put the government in the best place to maximise the small window of opportunity to become a world leader in some emerging blue economy sectors, such as renewable energy, marine biotechnology, aquaculture, ocean-based carbon sequestration, marine conservation research and innovation.

Such a minister would help to channel much-needed funding into the regeneration that coastal communities so urgently need, in turn demonstrating a long-term commitment to placemaking and investment and making the 10 million people living along the UK coastline feel like a key part of our national story again.