Environment, Food and Rural AffairsWritten evidence submitted by the Association of Drainage Authorities regarding recent decisions about funding for flood defence schemes

1. Executive Summary

1.1 The Association of Drainage Authorities (ADA) is concerned by the reduction in investment in flood risk management for the present Spending Review (SR10) period. ADA considers that investment in maintenance delivered by the Environment Agency on Main River and associated assets has reached unsustainably low levels to an extent that a lack of maintenance has contributed to the flooding that occurred in England during 2012.

1.2 England faces a number of pressures on flood risk management delivery in the future, including:

a growing and aging asset list,

a broadening array of responsible authorities,

climate change,

the prevailing economic/investment climate, and

increasing public expectations.

1.3 ADA sees an urgent need for increased revenue funding for the Environment Agency in order to significantly increase the Environment Agency’s maintenance operations: on watercourses, for existing assets, and to facilitate the transfer of some watercourses to more local risk management authorities, such as Internal Drainage Boards.

2. Background

2.1 In 2009 the Environment Agency published its long term investment strategy for flood and coastal risk management (FCRM) in England. The report identified that investment in FCRM would need to reach £1,040 million per annum plus inflation by 2035 in order to build and maintain new and existing FCRM assets to deliver the protection levels as they were then. In 2010–11 a total of £570 million was spent on constructing and maintaining FCRM assets, the report recommended an increase in investment of around £20 million plus inflation each and every year.

2.2 However, Government investment in Flood Defence Grant in Aid (FDGiA) has been reduced during the current Spending Review period (See Figure 1). FDGiA is made up of two aspects, capital (primarily for the construction of new assets) and revenue (for staff, offices and for on-going works including maintenance of existing assets). It is the revenue budget that most concerns ADA at present.

3. Revenue Funding Pressure

3.1 The FDGiA Revenue budget is steadily decreasing throughout the current Spending Review period from £275 million in 2010–11 to £226 million in 2014–15 (See Figure 1). The major concern of the Association’s members has for many years been the under investment in the maintenance of England’s watercourses, particularly those designated as Main River. The Environment Agency has been reducing its Main River maintenance for many years but the revenue cuts brought in during the current Spending Review Period have accelerated the process markedly. Maintenance funding for the Environment Agency is predominantly derived from the FDGiA revenue budget, with further contributions from local authorities through local levies and from IDBs via a precept which have either broadly risen with inflation or remained static.

3.2 In 2010–11, the Environment Agency’s annual regional revenue maintenance budget was just over £100 million. This was widely considered to be significantly short of the investment required to keep up with even the most essential works to keep our rivers flowing. A decreasing amount of work is being conducted on medium and low priority parts of the network and whilst it is to be expected that these areas would receive less work, if they are never maintained these parts of the system may no longer function as intended. De-silting work on rivers in areas such as the Somerset Levels having all but ceased, the Rivers Tone and Parrett are considered to be between a third and two third of their capacity, exacerbating the extent and duration of the current flooding. The EA’s maintenance budget for 2013–14, beginning in April, is just under £70 million and for 2014–15 it is set to be £60.7 million. In short, the Environment Agency’s maintenance budget will have nearly halved since the turn of the decade (See Figure 2). Yet this budget will have to stretch ever further with new defences being built under capital investment.

3.3 An example of the pressure being felt is the maintenance funding settlement for the Environment Agency’s Anglian Central Region for 2013–14. Here the Regional EA bid for a maintenance budget of £6 million but received an offer of only £2 million. The bid was focused almost solely on the most essential high priority areas to be maintained. The shortfall means that even high priority watercourses fall further and further into a state of disrepair thus requiring either: more costly maintenance works, a capital project to rebuild the asset or increased flood risk. The picture is one that typifies the situation nationwide (Appendix 1 provides a summary of other cases of reduced main river maintenance and how it is affecting the functioning of IDBs).

4. Increasing Costs

4.1 ADA considers that many of the difficulties in delivering main river maintenance stem in part from the inflexibility of a nationalised structure within the Environment Agency that prevents pragmatic local decision-making and increases costs.

4.2 Procurement is one such area. ADA is concerned that the Environment Agency’s existing, and proposed, procurement frameworks ties the Agency’s operational teams to choosing services only from a nationally approved list of contractors and suppliers. For the delivery of a whole range of operations the Environment Agency’s nationalised procurement approach is proving significantly more costly and is a contributing factor to reducing the Agency’s ability to deliver timely and sufficient Main River maintenance. In some instances this is proving to act as barrier to partnership working with other more local risk management authorities such as Internal Drainage Boards, which in many cases are keen to assist the Agency with maintaining sections of main river which fall within the catchment of their Internal Drainage District.

5. Withdrawal of Maintenance and Transferring Functions

5.1 Owing to the reducing maintenance budget and increasing costs of work the Environment Agency is pursuing a policy of withdrawing from maintenance of lower priority Main River systems under its Asset Maintenance Protocol. It is also seeking to withdraw from its responsibilities of acting as the Internal Drainage Board for 10 Internal Drainage Districts in the South East of England.

5.2 In these circumstances the Environment Agency is either seeking to pass maintenance on to other interested parties, revert to riparian owners/occupiers powers and duties or seek interested parties to form IDBs. On the Solway Plain and in the Lyth Valley in Cumbria and in the Lower Alt and Crossen Catchment in Lancashire new IDBs have been proposed to take over some main river maintenance operations from the Environment Agency. However, to progress such proposals the administrative arrangements for setting up a new IDB will need to be supported by the Environment Agency in the short term before the body can levy its own drainage charges.

5.3 ADA in principle would welcome some main river being transferred to new and existing IDBs, especially where this was previously maintained effectively by an IDB prior to becoming Main River in the mid-2000s. However, it is concerned that unless the Environment Agency and Defra are able to financially support the transition of responsibility the management of many sections of our main river network will become piecemeal and disjointed.

5.4 A number of the lower priority sections being proposed are in lowland rural areas. Flooding of these areas can, as shown in Somerset, be devastating to the communities affected and the other infrastructure that criss-crosses such areas, particularly as once water is on the land it is difficult and costly to move and can leave areas flooded for months at a time. ADA believes that where the Environment Agency seeks to withdraw maintenance in order to realise long term savings, sufficient funding should be provided in the short term to ensure assets and systems are transferred in a good operating condition and that there is sufficient funding to make a structured transition.

5.5 ADA is also aware of sections within the Water Resources Act that enables the Environment Agency to levy drainage charges themselves to support maintenance operations that benefit land drainage and thus reduce fluvial flooding. At present these powers are only used in the Anglian Region which levies a General Drainage Charge across the whole region. ADA considers that the Environment Agency should explore applying more local special drainage charges in areas in order to help fund maintenance operations.

6. Organisational Arrangements

6.1 The merger of the Environment Agency Wales, Forestry Commission Wales and Countryside Council for Wales to form a new single environmental body called Natural Resources Wales is of concern to ADA. Much investment and resource is being directed by the Welsh Government and the constituent bodies into forming the new single body and there appears to be a reduced focus on flood risk management within the proposed new body.

6.2 In England, Defra have commenced the Triennial Review of the Environment Agency and Natural England. Defra’s consultation document offers two scenarios, one of which would result in a merger of these two bodies. ADA believes that a merger in England would be complicated and leave strategic weaknesses in environmental management, especially within the delivery of flood risk management.

6.3 ADA considers that if the functions of the Environment Agency and Natural England are to be reformed, the long term delivery of flood and coastal risk management, especially on the functioning of England’s main river network must be assured.

6.4 In recognising that the Environment Agency and Natural England have distinct synergies between their environmental, waste, and pollution regulatory functions, ADA considers that these functions could be merged into a single body or transferred to other related authorities such as the Department of Energy and Climate Change or the Marine Management Organisation.

6.5 This would leave the Environment Agency’s operational flood and coastal erosion risk management functions. ADA considers that these functions may be better served via catchment focused flood risk bodies based on existing Environment Agency Regions. This would ensure flood risk management in England continues to be managed on a catchment basis, whilst ensuring sufficient focus is placed on local delivery. This would support closer working with local authorities and internal drainage boards and allow them to re-focus their efforts on maintaining their present systems and defences and focus the building of new defences on local priorities and the needs of the catchments.

6.6 Those functions performed by the Environment Agency’s National Office should either be transferred into a strengthened Flood Forecasting Centre or subsumed within the Department (Defra). This could produce an additional benefit, providing Defra with much needed technical and engineering skills. Such skills are presently lacking within Defra, which has increasingly become reliant upon the Environment Agency’s expertise in flood risk management following the loss of Defra’s Regional and National Engineers in the mid-2000s.

7. Recommendations for Action

7.1 Further investment is needed to increase the contribution to revenue funding of the Environment Agency in order to significantly increase main river maintenance operations.

7.2 The managed transition of lower priority sections of main river from the Environment Agency to new or existing IDBs or other organisations should be undertaken. Such transitions need to be adequately funded and supported in order to realise longer term savings to the Environment Agency.

7.3 The Environment Agency should explore the use of special drainage charges as enabled by the Water Resources Act in order to help fund its own maintenance operations where revenue funding from FDGiA alone is insufficient.

7.4 Through the Triennial Review of the Environment Agency and Natural England, Defra should explore the creation of catchment focused flood risk management bodies based on existing Environment Agency Regions.

8. Figures Referred to in the text

8.1

Figure 1

FLOOD DEFENCE GRANT IN AID (FDGIA) BETWEEN 2005 AND 2015

8.2

Figure 2

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY’S PROJECTED REGIONAL REVENUE MAINTENANCE PROGRAMME SPEND BETWEEN 2011 AND 2015

January 2013

APPENDIX 1

SUMMARY OF COMMENTS RECEIVED FROM INTERNAL DRAINAGE BOARDS REGARDING REDUCED MAIN RIVER MAINTENANCE AND HOW IT IS AFFECTING THE FUNCTIONING OF INTERNAL DRAINAGE DISTRICTS

Internal Drainage Board	Main River	Concerns/main issues		Actions desired/undertaken
Swale & Ure IDB	Swale, Cod Beck, Wiske + Tributaries	—	Damage to River Swale floodbanks owing to burrowing animals contributed to breaches on 6 occasions to date.	—	IDB wishes to take back responsibility of previously en-mained sections.
		—	Gravel shoals in rivers and tree growth both contribute to higher river levels, greater pressure on floodbanks.	—	IDB developing relationship with EA staff locally to undertake some main river works, but feel restricted by bureaucracy at present.
		—	Cod Beck, River Wiske and tributaries en-mained in 2006 after floods in Northallerton and Thirsk in 2000.
		—	Standard of protection from the river flooding has deteriorated.
		—	Too many decisions need to be approved nationally by EA.
Lower Severn IDB	Severn, Leadon, Longdon Brook, Little Avon	—	“Low risk” main rivers currently receive no scheduled maintenance and only a “best endeavours” response to blockage removal.	—	If the EA through the RFCC simply removed all low risk main rivers and deemed them to be ordinary watercourses then IDBs and Local Authorities could act if they choose to. At the moment they are powerless and the EA is not motivated.
		—	Effectiveness of IDB operations being reduced by a lack of maintenance on Main River.	—	Financial cost a concern to board/ratepayers, would seek reduced precept.
		—	EA only act in times of flood risk.
		—	Greater water-logging of land and more prolonged flooding.
		—	A lost flap valve still not replaced after many years.
Rea IDB	Rea Brook	—	Maintenance is limited to weed cutting with the emphasis on the upper length of the Rea Brook.	—	Silt removal and dredging activity by EA.
		—	Works not undertaken at all in 2011.
		—	Works delayed until Autumn in 2012 owing to July flooding.
		—	Flooding exacerbated by siltation and weed growth.
Black Sluice IDB	Horbling New Cut Swaton Eau Becks		Flooding from Horbling New Cut and Swaton Eau including high levels in village.		EA staff reluctant on IDB taking over their assets.
			If IDB maintained they would cut July & November: This year EA cut in November.		De-maining should be an option, however:
			Becks: IDB channels discharge by gravity into “low risk” main rivers, which are not maintained.		—	Some IDB Members reluctant to spend IDB rates & levies on maintaining EA watercourses. Many still believe EA should be pushed into undertaking the work themselves.
					—	Financial cost a concern to board and ratepayers, would seek reduced precept.
Upper Witham IDB	Upper Withham, Foston Neck, Shire Dyke, River Till, River Brant	—	Reduced maintenance on Upper Witham has caused at least one issue where a floodbank was overtopped and properties flooded.	—	Had initial discussion with local EA two years ago over transferring responsibility to the Upper Witham IDB however no impetus from the EA to transfer.
		—	Lack of maintenance on Main River length is restricting flow rates and keeping levels higher for longer upstream.
		—	Specifically, lack of regular winter maintenance has allowed seeded plants to establish themselves restricting access for the regular summer work. Establishment of bushes and trees on flood banks, compromising their stability and attracting vermin.
Witham First District IDB	Lower Witham, Timberland Delph, Branston Delph, Digby Beck	—	On Timberland Delph, un-even and narrow bank top to raised earth flood defence embankment resulted in prolonged overtopping during the recent high flow event (December 2012). Site of overtopping is demarcated by presence of large willow trees that have resulted in localised low spots and extensive root system.	—	The EA need to talk to local IDBs, along with Local Authorities to discuss the impacts a de-maining exercise would have upon the funding/budgets of the IDBs.
		—	Water overtopped directly into a pumped IDB system. Pumping station 2–3 km downstream was at risk of being overwhelmed. Emergency work was necessary and warnings were sent to 130 residential properties.	—	There should be a clear decision making process for transferring main river maintenance.
		—	Poor maintenance of raised earth embankment over many years has resulted in extensive seepage from Branston Delph into the adjacent agricultural land and has adversely affected local residential properties.	—	A programme should be agreed by all parties so that any channels being de-mained are put into an acceptable condition before being handed over, or funding provided to allow the IDB to undertake the recovery work that would no doubt be required.
		—	Digby Beck is poorly maintained. The overhanging branches from adjacent hedgerow have reduced the Becks ability to pass the recent high flows through and away from the village. A number of residential properties in the village suffered internal flooding in June and November 2012.	—	Major capital works are needed to raised earth embankments that have been poorly maintained for many years.
		—	Flooding occurred in the village after at least two high rainfall events in June and November 2012.
			EA/Defra scoring system for FDGiA does not recognise the importance of agriculture.
Witham Third District IDB	Lower Witham, Barlings Eau, Gaultby & Minting Beck, Tilehouse Beck, Apley & Bullington Beck, Buslingthorpe Beck, Sudbrooke Beck	—	Watercourses that outfall into EA main river that serve predominantly agricultural areas are considered low risk and receive little maintenance to their embankments, batter or beds. This results in free flowing water passing down the IDB gravity system hitting a main river channel blocked by dense vegetation.	—	The EA need to talk to local IDBs, along with DCs to discuss the impacts a de-maining exercise would have upon the funding/budgets of the IDBs.
		—	Barlings Eau’s embanked channels recently overtopped flooding large areas of agricultural land.	—	There should be a clear decision making process, with a consensus agreeing to the maintenance of a channel by the IDB.
		—	EA/Defra justification scoring system does not recognise the importance of the agricultural industry.	—	A programme should also be agreed by all parties so that the channel is put into an acceptable condition before it is handed over, or funding provided to allow the IDB to undertake the recovery work that would no doubt be required.
				—	Major capital works are needed to raised earth embankments that have been poorly maintained for many years.
Ouse & Humber DB	River Foulness	—	Recently the Board accepted the transfer of 15km of river from the EA.	—	Board will be increasing the weed cutting and introducing a prioritised and environmentally sympathetic tree management regime.
		—	Increased tree and willow growth presented some issues during the heavy rains of 2012 with regards to impeding essential maintenance and reducing flow velocities.	—	Works will be funded by the Board through its rates/levies and include a significant investment in specialist equipment in order to undertake the works cost effectively.
		—	Limitations in revenue budget have, over many years eroded the capability of the EA to undertake large scale preventative desilting of estuarine outfalls. Instead too much reliance has been placed upon cheaper and more frequent “flushing”.	—	Board did not receive a reduction in Precept but as the watercourse drains over 40% of the drainage district (13000ha) it felt it had no other option than to accept the situation.
Ainsty (2008) IDB Foss (2008) IDB	Old Fleet Foss, Bielby Beck	—	Previously IDB maintained ditches, both have deteriorated over time with a lack of maintenance by the EA since being en-mained.	—	The Board has carried out works on the Old Fleet Foss at the Agency’s instruction and funding over a period of time to try to improve its condition.
		—	Both are the main drainage system for large portions of the Boards drainage districts.
		—	Both Boards receive numerous complaints about land flooding and lack of functionality of both drainage systems.
Beverley and North Holderness IDB	River Hull + Tributaries	—	Reducing levels of maintenance over many years.	—	IDB wishes to see main river de-mained.
		—	River Hull Strategy has created a high level of uncertainty on investment in existing systems which has delayed appropriate capital investment in maintenance works such as significant bank repair works in the upper catchment.
		—	Three pumping stations considered economically unviable and thus could be abandoned. These stations, following increased ground water levels, are currently running to capacity.
		—	No reports on how precept to EA from IDBs is being spent.
		—	Barriers to de-maining relate to the board taking on additional unfunded burdens, e.g bridges, culverts, pumping stations. Also since maintenance has been low recently, costs will be high to re-establish well maintained state.
South Holderness Consortium of Drainage Boards (6 Drainage Boards)	Fleet Drain, Burstwick Drain, Thorngumbald Drain, Keyingham Drain, Winestead Drain, Skeffling Drain	—	EA not maintaining the watercourses to the standard that the IDB would do so. With the exception of Burstwick Drain they have not taken any silt out of the watercourses. This is leading to good agricultural land being flooded. EA doesn’t accept that agricultural land drainage is a priority.	—	Their boards are in the process of carrying out a partnership scheme to clear out the tidal sections of Keyingham Drain and Burstwick Drain to assist the main rivers in discharging into the Humber Estuary. EA would not carry out the work but have contributed to the costs.
		—	De-maining appears to be the main barrier to transfer responsibility from the EA to IDBs but of course the funding of these costs must also be looked at.	—	Keyingham IDB has offered to take over the maintenance of Keyingham Drain provided funding can be put in place. Winestead IDB has offered to make available funds to the EA for the de-silting of Winestead Drain.
				—	South Holderness Consortium believes that to get the maintenance that protects agricultural land, IDBs need to take over. They are mindful to either extend our IDB areas to include all the catchment or to have greater finance from the EA/Central Government.