EA river maintenance withdrawal over scrutiny comments

Top figures in the government “don’t understand” the impact of withdrawing river maintenance in low-lying Somerset, councillors have been told.

The Environment Agency announced in August that it would stop or cut back its maintenance of main rivers due to budget cutbacks.

The government agency, which was not statutorily required to undertake the work, received only 60% of the budget it requested from the treasury and says it now has to strip back its river maintenance to the highest-risk areas.

But the plan has sparked concern across the Somerset area.

Addressing a North Somerset Council scrutiny committee looking into the impacts of the change on November 6, Iain Sturdy of the Somerset Drainage Boards Consortium said the South West Association of Drainage Authorities had challenged the Environment Agency decision.

He said: “Our request to the agency, both regionally and nationally, was to pause this withdrawal of maintenance and to reinstate the maintenance until such as time as a proper impact assessment had been done.”

But he warned: “Certainly when we speak to water and flooding minister Emma Hardy and some of the other senior people around the industry, they don’t understand the context.

They understand the numbers and they understand balancing budgets and they understand the message that they get from the Environment Agency across the country around: ‘Your money is going in those areas that protect the greatest number of people and properties. End of discussion.’”

But he said: “What about all those other places that therefore are inadequately protected?”

North Somerset Council has not been formally notified of rivers which will cease to be maintained — but the Environment Agency has told the council that, due to savings in other areas, it has been able to do some work on the Land Yeo. North Somerset MP Sadik Al-Hassan had been among the people to urge the agency not to stop maintenance on the river, which flows through Clevedon along the back of some homes’ gardens.

Simon Bunn, North Somerset Council’s flood risk manager, told the committee: “The Environment Agency have stressed to me both in writing and verbally that that is only just for this year and it was a decision based on risk and it wasn’t a decision based on either public opinion or from pressure from MPs and councillors and myself.”

But committee member Peter Burden (Portishead South, Conservative) said the decision to continue maintenance on the Land Yeo while it was being withdrawn from other rivers “rattles my cage.”

He said: “The only justification for work on that river — dear Mr MP — is to make it look nice, as it solves no drainage purposes at all.” He said: “There are … things needing doing in North Somerset that are far more important for land drainage purposes than the Land Yeo.”

But Clevedon councillor Michael Pryke (Clevedon Walton, Conservative) said: “The Friends of the Land Yeo has been a great group in terms of managing to lobby both North Somerset Council and central government, and our MP to actually finally get something moving on this — and my encouragement to councillors is go form your own.

“If you’ve got a yeo, and peat, and waterways within your own wards, go set up friends groups and start getting together, having a meeting, start putting pressure on North Somerset Council. I can only hope more people come together and keep telling us where the issues are.”

Mr Burden said: “I’m in total agreement with you. My problem with the Environment Agency at the moment is they have just withdrawn without any discussion.”

The committee resolved to endorse intensifying lobbing of the government to continue funding river maintenance, and to work with other organisations on a strategic plan to maintain watercourses.

The Environment Agency’s withdrawal of river maintenance leaves the responsibility of keeping rivers clean in the hands of people who own land with a watercourse (known as riparian owners). As North Somerset Council owns land containing and alongside watercourses, this responsibility has fallen on the council too.

A report which went before the committee warned: “NSC will have to fulfil responsibilities that it has never had to in the past. There is no budget for this additional burden or the internal capacity to deliver a programme of work.”

It added: “North Somerset Council does not have an identified revenue budget for the maintenance of watercourses and the Environment Agency are unable to provide us with the funds to do the work.” It is not known how much the Environment Agency currently spends maintaining rivers in North Somerset.

It is yet another cost the cash-strapped council will have to deal with. North Somerset Council is already planning to close several libraries to limit spending amid a major increase in the demand for social care. The council warned in October that it could not balance its budget next year without government help — which could mean increasing council tax beyond the 5% cap.

The report warned: “With no dedicated budget for main river maintenance, any spend would displace other priorities.”

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