Evaluating the Performance, Cost and Amenity Value of Timber & Rock Groyne Beach Management Structures: Deriving a Coastal Management Scheme for Central Felixstowe

Introduction

Timber groynes have been used in UK beach management schemes for centuries whilst

building groynes with quarried rock only began in the early 1980s. The capital costs of

schemes using rock groynes are usually greater than for equivalent timber groynes. However,

the current UK policy of appraising coastal protection schemes on the basis of whole life cost,

i.e. including maintenance expenditure, means that rock groyne schemes can often be

economically favourable over a 100 year period. As part of the Central Felixstowe Project

Appraisal Report, a study to identify an appropriate long-term scheme to protect a 1.3km

section of seafront, Suffolk Coastal District Council (SCDC) commissioned a review to