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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much the Environment Agency spent on the navigable waterways in the Anglian region in each of the last five years.

The Environment Agency reports the condition of the essential navigation assets such as locks, landing stages and canoe portages on a quarterly basis. Assets are considered to be at a required condition if they do not have any defects that significantly reduce the performance of the asset, or adversely increase the safety risk to the public or Environment Agency staff.

The Environment Agency regularly inspects all navigation assets. If there is a safety risk to members of the public then repairs will be undertaken to remove the risk or the asset will be closed.

The information in the table below relates only to expenditure associated with navigation assets within Anglian Region. The Environment Agency also invests money on other assets and in-river works that provide benefit to navigation, for example in-river weed cutting for Flood and Coastal Risk Management purposes, and investment to weirs and sluices that maintain a water level for navigation.

Over the next three years the Environment Agency will continue to invest the income it receives from registration charges collected from the users on the Anglian waterways. From March 2017 this is expected to be £2,265m per annum. The Environment Agency also secures funding from within the organisation which is negotiated on an annual basis.

As part of the 2015 Spending Review the Environment Agency’s capital settlement from Defra was £3m pa over the next three years to be spent across all our waterways. Funding will be allocated to assets which will benefit the most from investment. Anglian waterways will receive a proportion of this funding.