Langstone Mill Pond: Protestors march to highlight risks of crumbling sea wall

Hundreds of residents from Havant borough met to raise awareness of the tumbledown sea walls.

Further erosion to the Victorian sea defences, which collapsed in March last year, could cause ecological harm to the freshwater pond while making the coastal path inaccessible to the public.

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Campaigner Margaret Tait, who co-organised the protest on Sunday, started an online petition nine months ago to repair the sea walls – to date, it has over 2,800 signatures.

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She said: ‘There’s a great deal of feeling and support for the repair of the walls and to save the pond because if the walls go the pond will go.

‘We did a headcount over several days over the summer and it extrapolated to about 100,000 people a year using that path so it’s very important.

‘I don’t think it’s a money problem, I think it’s more about getting permission and interpreting the various acts – they say that to rebuild the wall would break the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

‘We need the people that have the power to have the permission to rebuild the walls – that’s it.’

Another co-organiser Sue Tinney added: ‘In talking to people when I walk around the area, people come from miles around to walk along this shore and its special ecological environment. The number of people here today illustrates that passion for our local environment.’

Local resident Ruben Mychaleckyj was the first to place sandbags up against the damaged parts of the sea wall.

He said he was motivated to do so following a residents’ meeting at which he learned the walls could potentially be coming down by winter this year.

He added: ‘All of that got presented to us at the meeting and that spurred me on the very next day to go down to Wickes, bought all of the sandbags I could get and started filling them. Luckily word got out and a few neighbours came down to help.

‘It’s SSI protected, the amount of wildlife that was presented to us was insane. It’s fed by a chalk stream so it’s such a valuable habitat.’

The leader of Havant Borough Council Cllr Alex Rennie attended the march, equipped with a ‘protect our pond’ placard.

He said: ‘We are absolutely in favour of protecting this piece of land, we all know one of the biggest challenges we always face with coastal defences is that the government is always looking at protecting homes and property over the landscape.

‘We’ve got a really big multi-agency challenge that we’re facing here because there are so many interested parties who want to protect the land and the environment.

‘We as a council have said that we’re going to put the money in for a temporary solution for now – and that will allow longer discussions on a multi-agency level to get a long-term solution to protect an important part of the borough.’