The row over the Government’s bar on new local authority flood-defence schemes until 2008 was reignited this week, after a Suffolk seawall earmarked for upgrading collapsed.
Suffolk Coastal District Council attacked the Government for withholding funds from a proposed £5M scheme that it had planned to start work on this month to replace derelict 100-year-old groynes. This had put a related £5M Environment Agency scheme to renew the seawall on hold.
The failure to release funds as expected meant the authority would have to waste taxpayers’ money on costly and ineffective ‘sticking plaster’ measures, according to a spokesman. Placing rocks along a 400m-stretch of the seawall to safeguard the beach and wall would have a six-figure pricetag. Further measures would be needed for the winter. ‘These stopgap measures will, at best, provide temporary relief. We must get government funding to proceed with the planned works, as only it will safeguard 1,600 homes and the internationally-important sea port,’ said Cllr Andy Smith, deputy council leader.
The council was poised to issue tenders in order to start work this month when former environment minister, Elliot Morley, told councils in December that no new schemes could go ahead because the £74M budget for local authority schemes in 2006/07 would only cover ongoing schemes, including large projects in Blackpool and Lyme Regis. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said funding was at record levels, and suggested that Suffolk Coastal should have bid earlier. A spokesman said: ‘This year’s record budget is fully allocated to projects which have already made formal applications for funding.
'Suffolk Coastal District Council has not yet made one in respect of Felixstowe. DEFRA will consider any scheme application, alongside all the other worthwhile schemes being proposed when national funding is available.’
Suffolk Coastal hit back, with a spokesman saying there ‘was no point in buying a ticket for a match that you know has been cancelled’. A case for special treatment was submitted in February highlighting how lives would be lost and the port would be inundated if the one-in-100-year surge event experienced in 1953 was repeated without the wall. The scheme had been revised to allow work to start later in the year.
Local Government Association adviser, Tim Woodhouse, said there had always been an understanding that schemes beating DEFRA’s minimum score – such as the Felixstowe project – would be funded. ‘This is a unique situation, and DEFRA acknowledges that.’
• The Government is not expected to review the forward capital programme for defence schemes next month, as we previously reported (Surveyor, 23 March), but in the autumn. Apologies for any confusion caused.
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