The Land and Environment Court of Appeal grants permission for 18 km of flood protection on the Falsterbo Peninsula

On 17 June 2022, the Land and Environment Court of Appeal granted the Municipality of Vellinge a permit to construct approximately 18 km of flood protection against the sea on the Falsterbo isthmus.

The flood protection is designed to protect the buildings from high sea levels and will take the form of an embankment or wall. The intention is to place the protection mainly adjacent to the buildings, without encroaching on cultivated plots of land where it could be avoided, and also to restrict the impact on land in the protected area to an equivalent extent.

The judgment is interesting mainly with regard to the balance of interests to which more extensive flood protection necessarily gives rise. The court considered that the measures included in the municipality’s permit application were, in the main, well balanced and the court examined several related questions including conditions, compensatory measures and compensation for encroachment, etc. Overall, the permit granted by the Land and Environment Court in Växjö was therefore largely determined by the Land and Environment Court of Appeal.

The representatives for the applicant were Mikael Wärnsby, Sara Andersson and Tor Pöpke from the Lindahl environmental law practice group in Malmö.