In Hemsby, people are watching their houses fall into the sea, while insurers refuse to pay out – and the authorities do nothing to help
On a grey, bitterly cold March day, a large yellow digger is smashing its bucket into a small bungalow on the dunes. There is a wrenching tear. Within the time it takes to make a cup of tea, the house is flattened. An hour later, it’s gone, all traces loaded on to a truck, including the splintered wooden walls on which was written a goodbye message from the owners who spent their life savings on it.
The couple, who lived with their two terriers beside the sea in the Norfolk village of Hemsby, became Britain’s latest climate-crisis refugees early last month. North-easterly winds whipped up high spring tides that dispatched waves into the soft sand dunes of this holiday resort, whose population of 3,200 swells to 25,000 in high summer. Four metres of land vanished, leaving five homes teetering on the brink. Nine permanent residents were evacuated, their pretty 1930s seaside chalets deemed unsafe and demolished by the council before the next storm tipped them into the sea.
