Residents of Llanfairfechan slam plans for another coastal wall over fears of flooding

A community in north Wales is concerned about another flooding and damage to their homes after fifty foot waves overtopped the sea wall in April this year.

The residents of Llanfairfechan have raised a major question for people on the Victorian promenade on how can they stop this chaos from happening again.

One resident, Margaret Evans faced months of upheaval after her basement home was flooded. She put a brave face on things and waited for the insurance assessors.

She said: "We were trying to put stuff at the gate to stop it and then it was coming down here. We were putting stuff at the back door and then before, you know, the whole place was flooded."

Before the storm hit, one of the hot topics of contention in the Llanfairfechan community was Conwy Council's plans to spend more than a million pounds heightening the sea wall.

The plan focused on raising it between 200mm and 500mm on top of the existing wall over a 725 metre stretch.

The belief was that will improve the level of flood protection and reduce flood damage to homes and businesses.

But on 9 April, a storm saw huge waves over-top the existing wall and a secondary wall. Sea water swept onto the roads and flooded basement properties.

Conwy Council said they will look at what happened and will review the submitted plans for any possible improvements.

They also recommended that "residents and business owners have their own flood defence measures if they think they are at risk."

This could include what they described as "specifically designed flood prevention products."Llanfairfechan town councillor , Leena Farhat, said "heightening the sea wall is not the only solution."

She said: "So overall heightening the seawall is an answer and it will solve some problems, but it will not solve all problems.

"With the storm that we saw the other day, it would not have solved that problem. It was simply too big a storm and the waves were too big. What we need to see is more localised defense strategies for people on a house basis or a business basis."

Resident Jess Horton, echoed a similar view.

She said: "I'm not against sea defenses in and of itself, but I don't think that specifically will help. Water will still come over the wall. You're still going to have flooding. So I do think whether they increase the seawall or not, that can't be the only thing they do. They have to do something else."

Another resident Gary Hill, who renovated his house to sell it, only to see the basement flooded, was upset with the situation. He said: "'We definitely need flood gates on the promenade. We could save money, never mind wasting money. I feel very strongly that protecting people's homes in a way that would save money in the long term would be far more beneficial than spending millions of pounds on a seawall that is not going to work."

The Welsh government is spending record amounts on flood prevention, trying to keep Welsh homes dry.

But as this small community demonstrated, the threat and the challenge of climate change is such that costs will inevitably rise.

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