Supporting coastal communities – insights and opportunities

In early December, Professor Sheela Agarwal, Professor Sheena Asthana and Dr Alex Gibson from the University of Plymouth’s Centre for Coastal Communities presented an online session entitled ‘Supporting coastal communities – Insights and opportunities’ to representatives from local authorities and Health Determinants Research Collaboration groups (HDRCs) across the country.

Professor Agarwal spoke about why coastal communities matter, the structural disadvantages experienced by the UK’s coastal communities which are often tied to geography and history and how centralised governance in the UK works against communities on the periphery and the spending bias on infrastructure and innovation in and around London and the South East.

Professor Asthana discussed how the issues facing coastal communities challenge mental maps of deprivation (traditionally seen as a problem in inner cities or the North). She spoke about specific issues such as the low educational capital amongst children and young people in coastal communities, the normalisation of health risk behaviours as well as the acute problems with housing availability and affordability in coastal areas and the role of housing as a social determinant of health.

Dr Gibson introduced the Coastal England Small Area Data (CESA) Portal that he is developing as part of an ESRC funded project that aims to understand the research and policy needs of English coastal communities. The portal aims to make data that would be useful to coastal local authorities easier to find, access and map. It is hoped that the portal, and the discovery tools within it, will make it easier to identify areas across England which face, and are tackling, similar challenges but have hitherto had no administrative or political link meaning that opportunities for knowledge transfer and sharing have been missed. In time, the portal should help users identify and link up with successful projects and initiatives that could be replicated elsewhere in the country.

Watch a recording of the discussion and access the CESA data portal