Financial Pressures

Future investment in flood defences will require greater contributions from communities and businesses, said Environment Agency Chief Executive Dr Paul Leinster on 5th July 2010 at the Defra/Environment Agency Flood and Coastal Risk Management conference in Telford.

Dr Leinster continued that local contributions to the funding of flood defences will have to play a greater role in reducing the risk of flood and coastal erosion. His comments echo calls made by Sir Michael Pitt in his independent review of the summer 2007 floods.

Environment Agency spending on flood and coastal risk management is currently at record levels (£629m for 2010-11). However, other sources of funding will need to be found to protect communities from increasing risk of flooding and coastal erosion including from changes in climate in future.

Some communities have already adopted this approach and, with the assistance of the Environment Agency and Defra, increased levels of protection against flooding and coastal erosion. These include:

• Hereford (Midlands region): Asda contributed £2m as part of the planning conditions for a supermarket in the town, in addition to constructing 440m of flood defence. The total cost of the scheme was £7.5m and it provides protection to 196 properties including 25 listed buildings.
• East Hanney (Thames region): Volunteers cleared weeds from a local brook, increasing the brook’s capacity, and also constructed a flood defence bank and footpath. The Environment Agency provided soil, the hire of two mini-excavators and two dump trucks. The local authority paid for coir rolls used to help stabilise the new bank.
• Bawdsey (Anglian region): In 2007 a group of local landowners and residents formed the East Lane Trust to raise £2.2m to implement a coastal protection and flood defence scheme for a 250m section of coast. The money was raised by selling plots of land in nearby villages. In 2007, the government granted special permission to allow 26 homes to be built on the plots which were not previously available for residential development. The money raised was given to the District Council to commission a sustainable coast protection scheme which was completed in summer 2009.

Dr Paul Leinster said:

“The Environment Agency has been given £629m by Defra to reduce flood and coastal risk this year, £21m more than last year. We are on track to reduce flood risk to 160,000 properties in England between April 2008 and March 2011 – exceeding our Government target for the period by 15,000.

“Whilst continued government investment in managing the risk of flooding is important, we must now also look at alternative funding streams, including increased contributions from those who will benefit from future defence schemes.”

It formed part of the national Defra £500k Pilot Flood Resilience project where local authorities and the Environment Agency were encouraged to work together in different ways to promote a resilience scheme. £90k and £80k of grant money was received by Eden and South Lakeland Councils respectively, directly from Defra. This arrangement meant that the Councils could use their grant distribution powers to fund individual property protection schemes.
The level of grant was apportioned on property threshold level and a higher amount of grant was available to residential properties than commercial.

The average amount of grant issued to the 46 properties that took part was approximately £1300. The property owners were expected to fund any work in excess of the grant available for their particular property. It was noticeable that this level of private excess funding was greater in the relatively more affluent location of Sandside.
Approximately 26 of the properties that took part in the Appleby scheme benefited from their defences in the November 2009 flooding. They would have flooded if their resilience scheme funded defences had not been in place.

Local contributions
East Lane, Bawdsey Coastal Protection
In 1997 a major storm led to the already vulnerable coastline at East Lane, Bawdsey in Suffolk to erode severely. This retreating coastline posed an immediate threat to three coastal properties, including a Grade I listed Martello Tower. Due to insufficient priority, Suffolk Coastal District Council struggled to justify grant aid to fund a complete scheme at East Lane. This led to a series of emergency works along the District Council and Environment Agency frontages to limit the damage caused primarily from winter storms.

In 2007 a group of local landowners and residents formed East Lane Trust, a “not-for-profit” charitable organisation to raise £2.2m to implement a coastal protection and flood defence scheme for the 250m section of coast. The money was raised by selling plots of land in nearby villages. In 2007, the government granted special permission to allow 26 homes to be built on the plots which were not in the Local Plan as being available for residential development. The money raised was given to the District Council to commission a sustainable coast protection scheme which was completed in summer 2009. It is thought to be the first privately funded coastal protection scheme since the enactment of the Coast Protection Act in 1949. The scheme highlights that, through effective co-operation between local communities and the responsible authorities, common goals can be achieved.