Rivers: Dredging

(asked on 2nd November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of increasing the Environment Agency's funding allocation for de-silting work.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 10th November 2020

Between 2015 and 2020 we committed around £1 billion on the maintenance of flood defence assets. This is a real terms increase in spending compared to the £812 million spent in the previous five years.

De-silting (also referred to as dredging) and clearing channels, are important parts of the Environment Agency’s (EA) river maintenance regime. The EA will undertake these activities where there is evidence that they will reduce flood risk to local properties cost effectively without increasing flooding downstream.

Typically, over each of the past 3 years the EA have spent between £5 million and £11 million on dredging across England. This equates to approximately 100-200km of river channel each year. The EA regularly reviews its river channel maintenance programme to identify where an increase in river channel maintenance, including dredging, will provide a net positive economic benefit by reducing flood risk.

Reticulating Splines