MAIN FEATURE
Sewerage treatment process. Courtesy Thames Water
further £2.65 billion in funding to build or maintain up to 1,000 flood defences, protecting more than 66,000 properties, with 52,000 of those properties set to benefit by March 2026. Although this is reputed to be a record-breaking investment, the Government has said it inherited flood assets in their poorest condition on record, after years of under- investment and storm damage left 3,000 of the Environment Agency’s assets below the required condition.
Courtesy Brett Martin
So, for the biggest caretaker of our water, let’s look at the Environment Agency.
The Environment Agency’s work
The Environment Agency operates and maintains approximately 78,000 flood and coast defence assets in England with a value of £26 billion. This includes: 7,000km of linear river and coast defences such as flood walls, embankments, channels and culverts - twice the length of the UK’s motorway network.
The Environment Agency is a non-
departmental public body, established in 1996 and sponsored by the UK Government’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Its role is to protect and improve/enhance the environment. Based in Bristol, it is responsible for flood management, waste management, regulating land and water pollution, and conservation. That’s a massive remit, even for a smallish country like the UK. It covers the whole of England, some 1.3 million hectares of land, some 22,000 miles of rivers and 3100 miles of coastline to the three-mile limit which includes 2 million hectares of coastal waters. Wales and Scotland have slightly different arrangements with their own environment agencies.
England’s Environment Agency work includes:
1. Developing long-term approaches to flood and coastal erosion risk management.
2. Allocating national government funding to projects.
3. Delivering projects to manage flood risks from main rivers and the sea.
4. Working with others to prepare and deliver Flood Risk Management Plans (FRMPs).
5. Providing evidence and advice to support others.
6 | March 2025 |
draintraderltd.com
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