APPENDIX 45
Letter to David Taylor
MP from Mr Andrew Heaton (F71)
I understand that the House of Commons Select
Committee is holding an inquiry into flood and coastal defence.
I don't know whether you are involved with that committee, but
if not, perhaps you could relay the following concerns a colleague
who is.
Flood defence and land drainage is the responsibility
of the Environment Agency on main rivers, Internal Drainage Boards
in "areas of special drainage need", and local authorities
elsewhere. It is the Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs) that are
of such concern to myself and many other people.
The IDBs are archaic organisations, essentially
self-perpetuating and undemocratic "clubs" of large
landowners. They were mainly established many decades ago and
are quite unsuited to the needs of modern society. They allow
small groups of, mainly, farmers to raise funds through a drainage
levy to undertake schemes that benefit only themselves. Although
they are supposed to have electoral systems to allow people to
join their boards, they are often rigged so as to maintain a core
of self-interested people—in the Somerset Levels, for example,
the RSPB, despite being the largest landowners in the district,
were for long unable to get onto their local IDB.
It is this disregard for environmental matters
that is a great source of concern. A major problem is that the
"areas of special drainage need" that the IDBs cover
often, because of their geography, contain important wetland wildlife
habitats—which can easily be damaged by land drainage. The
IDBs, like the Environment Agency, have statutory conservation
duties, to "further conservation", but very often they
take little regard of them, and carry out works that are detrimental
to wildlife. Even when their conservation duties are pointed out
to them, they complain that they do not have enough money to take
heed of them! There is in several areas the ridiculous situation
of conservation bodies which are trying to protect wetlands having
to pay drainage rates to IDBs which are trying to drain them!
Fortunately, we do not have any IDBs in Leicestershire
(the Kingston Brook IDB is in the Soar catchment, but it is just
over the border in south Nottinghamshire). However, in many other
parts of the country, such as Lincolnshire and East Anglia, these
archaic bodies wield a great influence over rural land use. The
needs of society have changed since they were set up—there
is now a much greater need for conservation of remaining wildlife
habitats, rather than drainage of agricultural land to produce
more food surpluses. Surely now is the time to wind up these unnecessary
quangos.
23 May 1998
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