Chichester Harbour investment

Friday, 21 November 2025 05:00

By Karen Dunn, Local Democracy Reporter @Karen_Dunn

Chichester District Council is to contribute £350,000 to the Chichester Harbour Investment & Adaptation Plan over the next three years.

The objective of the plan – known as CHIAP – is to help to improve the poor environmental condition of the harbour and protect the businesses and communities around the harbour when it comes to flooding and coastal change over the next 100 years.

The money, which was approved during a meeting of the full council on Tuesday (November 18), will come from reserves and will be made up of £50,000 in 2025/26, £150,000 in 2026/27, and £150,000 in 2027/28.

Jonathan Brown, cabinet member for environmental strategy, said: “This really is an essential scheme, both from an environmental and from a long-term public and community safety protection and resilience perspective.”

Along with money from the government and other sources, the total cost of CHIAP will be around £1.7m. But without it, damages from flooding, habitat loss and the like could cost exponentially more.

A report to the council said that, over the next 100 years, more than £1billion of economic benefits for the harbour could be unlocked.

Mr Brown said: “Both of these parts – the protection of and adaptation by communities and improving the environment – are not merely two attractive goals, let alone competing ones. They are two sides of the same coin. We cannot do one without the other.”

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