A PLAN to safeguard our coastline from rising sea levels was approved by councillors.

The Shoreline Management Plan is expected to last 100 years and ensure industry and homes are protected.

North East Lincolnshire Council cabinet members welcomed the plan.

Members heard £750,000 from an Environment Agency grant was already being spent strengthening gabion defences on the front embankment at Humberston Fitties. They are expected to last for a further 50 years.

Recommending approval of the plan, portfolio holder for the environment Councillor Peter Burgess said: "With this plan, sea defences are going to be protected for 100 years and for 50 years at The Fitties."

He said the campaign to attract investment to protect defences would continue, along with monitoring of the sea's impact on defences.

The plan is part of the a wider management plan for the coastline stretching from Flamborough Head in Yorkshire to Gibraltar Point south of Skegness.

A report to members described the solid defences protecting Immingham, Grimsby and Cleethorpes, but there is continual destruction of the cliffs at Holderness in Yorkshire.

That mass of sediment is deposited by tides in the estuary of the River Humber and along the Lincolnshire coastline, much of it on the flats at Donna Nook. These have developed into saltmarsh, providing ideal feeding and breeding grounds for birds and wildlife, especially seals.

Temperatures have increased between the periods 1850-1899 and 2001-2005 by 0.76 degrees Centigrade.

Sea levels have risen 3.1mm per year between 1993 and 2003. Over the previous century, it was 17mm.

Experts estimated a sea level rise of just under 1m by 2105.