A holiday park is applying to rollback from the clifftops in East Yorkshire claiming coastal erosion represents a “clear and present danger”.

MB Goodwin Skipsea operates two caravan parks, the larger of which, Cliff Top Caravan Park, is as its name suggests on the clifftops close to Atwick.

Some of its pitches have already disappeared into the sea.

Although erosion rates vary, recent records suggest parts of the East Riding coastline are eroding at up to 4.5 metres per year.

File pic: Seaside Lane in Tunstall, East Yorkshire which has fallen into the sea due to coastal erosion. Photograph by Tony Johnson. 5th December 2025. The Holderness coastline is the fastest eroding stretch in Europe, with almost five metres disappearing every year at the worst parts.

placeholder image — File pic: Seaside Lane in Tunstall, East Yorkshire which has fallen into the sea due to coastal erosion. Photograph by Tony Johnson. 5th December 2025. The Holderness coastline is the fastest eroding stretch in Europe, with almost five metres disappearing every year at the worst parts.

MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee, were told in November that 66 homes had been lost on undefended stretches in the last decade.

The owners want to move inland, vacating the clifftop, and to increase the number of statics (from 30 to 80), which will be there all year round, and reducing the number of seasonal touring pitches (from 175 to 120).

Explaining the switch, the agents for the owners say electric cars are "not equipped to tow touring caravans".

The plans include a new road off the B1242 to serve Cliff Top Caravan Park and Hill Top/Welford Caravan Park.

There will also be two ponds, two amenity blocks including washrooms and a laundry store and 44 new parking spaces with a planting scheme "to soften and screen" the proposals.

The plans submitted to East Riding Council says the key objective is "to move the caravan park out of the Coastal Change Management Area" so that the caravans, their occupants and the business are no longer at risk from coastal erosion."

The Environment Agency produced a new map last year showing that coastal erosion would extend further inland than previously thought and the application says the site layout has been adjusted accordingly, with the pitches being moved further west.

The owners, the agent's report says, are "understandably" concerned about the erosion risk, adding: "The business they have invested in is under threat.

"They must do something about it.

"There would simply be no value in investing in a planning application...if coastal erosion was not a clear and present danger."

According to a report released last December, around 1,100 properties along the East Yorkshire coast could be lost to erosion by 2055. The Environment Agency said that if defences were not built, the figure could be five times greater.

The Victorians put in timber groynes which helped build up beaches at places like Hornsea and Withernsea before hard defences went in. Bridlington is also protected as are the Mappleton and Dimlington gas terminals.

The consensus is that installing new stretches of concrete defences fronted by Norwegian rock armour would cost billions. It would also stop the natural flow of sediment into the Humber, which helps build up low-lying areas, protecting them from flooding. However the impact on on clifftop dwellers on undefended stretches has been hard.

Richard Jackson, East Riding Council’s coastal change manager, told the Efra committee the loss of “roads, businesses, properties, community assets, heritage assets, landscapes and farmland that people have grown up with” was “death by a thousand cuts.”