Agency cuts defence spending

23 January 2007
 
The Environment Agency’s Anglian regional flood-defence committee has criticised the Government’s £5.2M reduction in its budget compared with last year.
Anthony Coe, chair of the committee, said: ‘The east of England still has one of the largest flood defence budgets in the country, but we are disappointed that the funding falls short of what we would have liked.’
The Anglian region has been given £33M of the total £436M available for 2007/08, £5.2M less than for 2006/07.
The reduction means that planned schemes to recharge the beach between Eccles and Winterton in Norfolk, and in Jaywick in north Essex, and a new flood-protection barrier for Ipswich at the mouth of the River Orwell have been put on hold. They would have to be ‘kept under review for funding in the future’, the EA committee said.
Local lobbyist, the Coastal Concern Action Group, warned that the loss of the £2M scheme for the Eccles to Winterton stretch left 6,000ha of the Broads vulnerable to a breach from the sea.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has come under sustained criticism from local authorities over the size of the budget available for council schemes – £67M in 2007/08 – but disapproval from an EA regional committee is new. DEFRA stressed when it announced the £436M national budget for the EA for 2007/08 before Christmas that, at £20M more than last year’s £416M, the funding ‘more than restores the reduction made to the agency’s budget in 2006/07’. But the national budget still had to be prioritised.
A full breakdown of how the £436M will be allocated among the EA regions in England was due to be published next week.

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