Self-help Groups – a New Paradigm for Managing Shoreline Structures?

This paper addresses the issue of local community involvement in the actual management of UK shoreline structures via self-help groups. The paper first reflects on how such an approach fits within the context of both historical approaches and more recent government policies. The paper then discusses motivations for such activity including catalytic flood events, sense of place and community solidarity. The activities of the self-help groups are then discussed within a Plan-Do-Check-Act framework and are related to the roles of environmental and land management. Positive and negative professional attitudes towards self-help activity are identified. The role and future of self-help groups is then synthesised within a trinitarian group of communities of place, meaning and practice. The paper concludes with recommendations for future nuture and development of self-help activity.