House of Commons - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence

Supplementary memorandum submitted by the Environment Agency (J 24(a))

WFD STAFFING AND BUDGETING REQUIREMENTS, INCLUDING A PROJECT PLAN

1. The Agency began its WFD project in November 2000 immediately preceding the signing of the Directive. No funds had been allocated or committed specifically for the WFD before that date. However the Agency, through its general role of giving specialist technical advice to Government, made a substantial input to assist the development of the UK position including during the UK Presidency.

2. The role of the Agency to date has been to continue to assist Defra in preparation for the Directive. Following the proposal in the first Government consultation document that the Agency should be the Competent Authority in England and Wales, a Programme Plan has been developed, funds allocated and staff appointed to fulfil that role. The Agency Programme Team has been supported by bought-in consultancy resources and this is expected to continue, certainly for the first phase, that is up to the delivery of the initial basin characterisation at the end of 2004. In the statistics that follow no distinction is made between in-house and consultant FTEs (full time equivalents) since they will be deployed flexibly as the programme progresses.

3. The Programme Plan budget requirements, initially estimated for the Agency to be Competent Authority for full implementation of the Directive in England and Wales, are set out in Table 1 below.

Table 1

FUNDING BID

	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Total (£k)	638	2,307	4,525	4,525	6,100	6,100

These are the Agency's set up and implementation costs including staff, support systems monitoring and preparation and consultation on river basin management plans under the Directive. They take account of and do not duplicate existing Agency monitoring, regulation and liaison activities.

The figures in Table 2 below represent the expected increased staffing levels in FTE (full time equivalents) both Agency staff and consultants required by the Programme to deliver the requirements of the Directive.

Table 2

STAFF RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Staff FTE	12	46	70	70	112	112

4. Current staffing levels at November 2002, including Programme Team, consultants and business support outside the project team is 40 FTE.

5. Increasing the scale of effort in line with the project plan is dependent upon the outcome of the Agency's resource bid as part of Spending Review 2002 in which we submitted bids in line with Table 1. Current indications from Defra are that this bid will not be met. We are currently reviewing the critical programme components and the potential implications of changes across the Agency to consider how the scale and scope of the work to be done can be modified in the light of the likely funding shortfall. This will include the following strategies:

— departing from the published timetable for the catchment abstraction management strategies (CAMS) so that elements of the work can be completed for the whole country by the end of 2004;

— significantly reducing the amount of additional monitoring data available for characterisation; and

— curtailing database development which will reduce ease of access of partners and stakeholders to complementary datasets.

6. Even so, we consider that we cannot do the work to sufficient standard to meet Directive requirements without increasing the existing programme budget for the implementation of the Directive. We will therefore need to discuss with Government which other activities we can delay or reduce in scope, to provide the additional necessary resource of approximately £1.5 million in both 2003-04 and 2004-05. Table 3 shows the minimum additional resource that the Agency needs, either as new resource or reallocation of existing resources, to implement the Directive to an acceptable level.

Table 3

MINIMUM FUNDING REQUIREMENT