Racing Against the Tide: How the Chichester Harbour Conservancy is Fighting to Preserve England’s Most Beautiful and Busiest Leisure Harbour
Chichester Harbour is one of England’s most beautiful natural treasures; a stunning expanse of coastal water, salt marshes and wildlife that draws thousands of visitors each year. Yet beneath its picturesque surface lies a troubling reality: the harbour is in decline and the organisation tasked with saving it is fighting an uphill battle against climate change, pollution and unchecked development.
The Chichester Society invited Matt Briers, the Chief Executive Officer of Chichester Harbour Conservancy to speak at one of our Coffee Mornings. Matt doesn’t mince words about the challenge ahead. “The harbour is rated as unfavourable and declining,” he says bluntly, citing a 2021 review by Natural England that assessed the harbour’s overall condition with those stark terms. Having spent a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, most recently as director of the Carrier Strike Programme, overseeing a £26 billion defence initiative, Matt has traded military strategy for environmental conservation.
A Unique Organisation with Conflicting Mandates
What makes Chichester Harbour Conservancy unique is that it was established by its own Act of Parliament in 1971, making it the only organisation of its kind in the UK. This legal foundation grants it statutory authority over the harbour’s 30 square miles, but it also sets the organisation with an apparently contradictory mandate: to facilitate leisure and recreation while simultaneously protecting nature.
The Conservancy manages an impressive portfolio. Within its remit are 10,500 vessels, 5,200 moorings and berths, 14 sailing clubs, and 63 miles of footpaths. It’s arguably Europe’s busiest leisure harbour, yet it’s also home to internationally important bird populations and habitats of critical ecological significance. The organisation employs just 31 permanent staff, of which only 13 are full-time, supplemented by seasonal workers and volunteers who form the backbone of its conservation efforts.
“We are a very taut organisation,” Briers explains. “We’re probably under-resourced by 10 to 15 percent in human terms, but that’s the way we are.”
The Environmental Crisis
The core problem facing the Conservancy is environmental degradation occurring at an alarming rate. Since 1946, the harbour has lost 58 percent of its salt marsh, a decline so gradual that most people haven’t noticed, yet so profound that it fundamentally threatens the ecosystem.
Salt marshes are ecological powerhouses. They sequester carbon at a rate of 7.97 tons per hectare per year, more than 50 times faster than tropical rainforests. They provide crucial habitat for fish, invertebrates, and birds and they act as natural barriers against tidal surges and coastal erosion. Yet they’re disappearing due to a phenomenon called “coastal squeeze.”
When sea levels rise naturally, salt marshes migrate inland to maintain their ecological niche. But the harbour’s 19th-century sea walls prevent this migration. Trapped between rising water and immovable barriers, the marshes simply die out. Climate change is accelerating the problem, with projections showing catastrophic sea-level rise that could render areas like Thorney Island entirely submerged by century’s end.
The Conservancy is attempting to address this through projects like the Fishbourne Footpath to Nature Recovery Project, which involves strategically removing a decaying seawall to allow natural salt marsh regeneration. It’s a small intervention in a much larger crisis, but it demonstrates the kind of proactive thinking the organisation brings to environmental management.
Water Quality: A Multifaceted Nightmare
Protection of the environment is the Conservancy’s primary concern, with water quality a key element of this. The harbour faces pollution from multiple sources: nitrates from agricultural runoff, sewage from inadequate infrastructure, pharmaceuticals that pass through wastewater treatment unchanged and microplastics from synthetic clothing and vehicle tyres.
The pharmaceutical problem is particularly insidious. When someone takes a paracetamol and then goes to the toilet, it flushes into the harbour within 48 hours. Synthetic hormones in HRT and contraceptive devices have left the water so saturated with oestrogen that shellfish are changing sex and fish sperm counts are reducing. There’s no technical solution at present short of distilling the contaminated water, which would be prohibitively expensive and ecologically catastrophic if simply reintroduced to the harbour.
Briers recently wrote to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Water and Flooding proposing ten national policy changes to address these issues, ranging from mandating microfibre filters on all washing machines (already standard in the Falkland Islands) to regulating pharmaceutical companies more strictly. He has yet to receive a response. He’s also advocating for a catchment-wide approach to reducing nitrates, working with South Downs National Park to engage farmers upstream of the harbour.
Southern Water’s £8.5 billion infrastructure investment programme offers hope, but Briers worries that new housing developments will consume the additional capacity before environmental improvements materialise. This concern points to a broader challenge: planning and development.
The Development Dilemma
The Conservancy is not a statutory consultee in planning matters, a significant handicap given the scale of proposed development around the harbour. There are currently plans for nearly 1,000 new dwellings in the surrounding area, threatening both the visual integrity of this nationally important landscape and the already-strained sewage infrastructure.
Briers has attempted twice to gain statutory consultee status, only to be rebuffed by governments focused on housing targets. The current administration, he notes, is “very much in the space of building houses. That’s their main focus.”
This creates a frustrating dynamic where the Conservancy must spend significant funds challenging planning applications through formal processes, despite having no guaranteed influence on decisions. Yet Briers remains committed to what he calls “elevating” environmental concerns—a more measured approach than simply shouting, though some in the audience have suggested the time for polite advocacy may have passed.
Education and Community Engagement
Not everything at the Conservancy is defensive. The Dell Quay Education Centre, which has welcomed nearly 200,000 children since opening in 1999, represents what Briers calls “one of the jewels in the crown” of the organisation. Many of these children come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
By connecting young people to the harbour through field trips and hands-on learning, the Conservancy is building a constituency of environmentally aware citizens who will inherit the challenges of protecting this landscape.
Looking Forward
Briers’ final message is one of determination. The job is difficult, but not impossible. The Conservancy will continue pursuing local successes while advocating for national policy changes. Upcoming local government reorganisation and the introduction of a mayor present new opportunities to amplify the conservation message.
Implicit in this is the need for difficult decisions to be made. Here, the Conservancy’s role will be to make challenging (and at times unpopular) decisions for the benefit of the environment and the wider harbour. He added, that “if the Conservancy doesn’t take a stand, then who will?”
The harbour’s future will ultimately depend on whether society makes the right choices to responsibly balance its requirements with the needs of the environment. The Conservancy contend that the conservation and restoration of nature isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. For Briers, who traded the certainty of military hierarchy for the messy complexity of environmental stewardship, it’s a challenge worth fighting for.
Recorded by Ben Williams, ChiSoc Executive Committee member – with a little help from AI