The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published plans to give the Environment Agency a stronger role in sea defence – just as a financial crisis at the ministry has plunged the future of flood and coastal protection into doubt and uncertainty.
DEFRA’s new Making space for water consultation suggests the agency should have the same coast-protection powers as councils ‘allowing the best-placed authority to deliver works’ and take the lead on shoreline-management plans and funding priorities.
However, DEFRA is believed to be facing a £200M shortfall in its budget for 2006-7, and poised to make major cuts to spending by quangos and executive agencies such as the Environment Agency.
The Local Government Association issued a warning about likely cuts to council sea defence funding even before the present budget crisis came to light. Environment spokesperson, David Sparks, said: ‘The current annual budget of around £75M is woefully inadequate with such important works needed as a matter of urgency.’
And Martin Wright, chairman of the Technical Advisers Group’s coastal and fluvial management committee, said: ‘There is a definite problem that’s starting to become apparent. It’s moving down the funding chain – and TAG is concerned.’
The Environment Agency claims it faces only a £23.7M cut – with some £14.9M falling on flood risk-management schemes – although a spokeswoman said: ‘It doesn’t impact on capital schemes, but might slow up maintenance or flood mapping.’
Estimates of the cuts have grown rapidly. In July, the agency forecast cuts of just £4.4M, but its suggestion that the final figure was now £23.7M was not shared by DEFRA, which is struggling to cope with the cost of a range of problems, from avian flu to farm payments and a plainly-unsympathetic Treasury.
‘It hasn’t been finalised,’ said a DEFRA spokesman. ‘We have to work within a tight fiscal regime and we have been talking to our delivery partners about their budgets this year.’
• For details of the consultation on coast protection: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/msw-eaoverview/index.htm