New 2020-25 Strategic Plan

At their meeting on the 23^rd September the Commissioners approved the new Strategic Plan which will guide the direction of the harbour for the next five years and beyond.

The new plan was subject to consultation through the Harbour Advisory Group as well as an eight-week public consultation. The Commissioners have given careful consideration to the feedback received and where modifications to the consultation draft should be made. Key feedback themes from the consultation included:-

• The importance of providing value for money;
• The need to enable and support the activities of stakeholders including the encouragement of leisure activities, trade and business in the harbour;
• The need for harbour development to be sustainable and sympathetic to preserving its character;
• The need to strike a ‘commercial balance’ in the river;
• The importance of continuing to monitor salt marsh erosion rates to inform the timing and financial planning for future phases of breakwater construction to protect the harbour;
• The desire to continue to investigate and develop options to beneficially re-use mud dredged from the harbour in order to try and slow down salt marsh erosion;
• Support for LHC’s strategic objective to develop existing and generate new partnerships with local businesses;
• Support for LHC’s communications policies and the importance of being as open and transparent as possible, subject to commercial sensitivities;
• Support for the objective to investigate options to improve the Bath Road slipway in conjunction with the key user groups;
• The importance of keeping abreast of NFDC/Environment Agency work to increase the height of flood defences in response to predicted sea level rises and the associated implications for the harbour;
• Support for the objective to improve the infrastructure for the commercial fishing fleet;
• The need for the harbour to be responsive to changing trends in leisure boating.

We do hope that you will find the Strategic Plan interesting. Looking forward, each year we will report on our progress against the plan objectives in our Annual Report.