Should Lord Smith jump or be pushed?

[alfaman155]

Obviously its not his fault that it has rained rather a lot lately because of Atlantic depressions and an implacable jetstream but this complacent fool is surely not the man for the job.
According to Freddie Forsythe in the Express yesterday the EA took a £33m hit when Smith's predecessor Baroness Young spent that much on a bird sanctuary. Her previous job? Chair of the RSPB. (A Brown/Blair appointment.)
We are told that the Somerset Levels dredging has not been carried out due to lack of funds in the EA or a wilful refusal to spend that money.
I recall that our Thames licences shot up in successive years to offset the losses incurred by DEFRA after the farmers compensation fiasco following Blair's mishandling of the foot and mouth disaster.
Cameron Cuts have also hit the EA hard and perhaps none of the foregoing is Smiths fault but his arrogant refusal to apologise to flood victims leads me to my original proposition.

I have always regarded Lord Beeching as a monumental **** and 45 years later I have been proved right.
If he hadnt closed the old LSWR arm from Exeter to Plymouth via Okehampton, National Rail would now have a decent alternative route to the far west now that the railway is severed at Dawlish.

Rant over and I stand to be corrected by those better informed and I apologise for going slightly off topic for a Thames forum.

 

[boatone]

Rant over and I stand to be corrected by those better informed and I apologise for going slightly off topic for a Thames forum.

Don't think your comments are at all off topic for the Thames Forum. The present manifestation of a very unsatisfactory state of affairs happens to be flooding but the root cause of our discontent with matters on the Thames, in my opinion, is the same - funding is woefully inadequate to provide for all the demands that are placed on it.

Lets not forget that the EA is a department within DEFRA and DEFRA Itself is dependant on central government for its budget. The EA has to manage its responsibilities within the budget handed down to it - it is not their fault if they do not have adequate funds to cover all demands.

My involvement with the EA through the TMBA has left me painfully aware that just screaming "do something" will not miraculously produce extra money out of some bottomless pit. EA Thames are really struggling to meet all the demands of the river with totally inadequate resources - and it is going to get even worse as this years cuts start to bite.
Want to do some dredging ? It costs. Want full time assisted passage through locks? It costs. Want better flood defences? It costs.

In my opinion, the EA front line staff may not be perfect but they are doing a pretty good job juggling all the priorities with woefully inadequate resources - which, basically, means funding.

Should Lord Smith jump or be pushed? My first question would be "Has Lord Smith and his team really fought their corner to ensure the best possible budget for the EA" If they have not done that then they have let us down.
My second question would be "Has Lord Smith and his team done the best possible job of allocating their budge to prioritised resources and made sure their organisation is efficient in its delivery? If the answer is yes then he has done his job.

He is going anyway, not because he has been pushed but because he is coming to the end of his permitted 2 terms in the job.
As for his successor - at just over £60k for a 3 day week appointment would you want the job?

 

[534l4rk]

In my opinion, the EA front line staff may not be perfect but they are doing a pretty good job juggling all the priorities with woefully inadequate resources -/QUOTE]

Whilst I agree with this comment I do wonder why we have so much difficulty managing when thinking about the problems encountered by the Dutch. Altho' they too have suffered from the January floods they surely have a far greater task with much of the country being below sea level ?

 

[elton]

Lord Grand Sir Highness Smith is just the fall guy. The PM has read my thought on the matter, so he knows dredging wouldn't have prevented the floods. As a socialist, Smith makes fine cannon fodder.

 

[oldgit]

In my opinion, the EA front line staff may not be perfect but they are doing a pretty good job juggling all the priorities with woefully inadequate resources -/QUOTE]

Whilst I agree with this comment I do wonder why we have so much difficulty managing when thinking about the problems encountered by the Dutch. Altho' they too have suffered from the January floods they surely have a far greater task with much of the country being below sea level ?

Am going to take a wild guess at this but when we are prepared to spend the same percentage of GDP on flood defences as the Netherlands and have invested as much on infrastructure as they have,we may be better prepared.
All you have to do is persuade the owners of the 23 million other dwellings in the UK that 5000 houses on known flood plains would like some extra money ..... please.

 

[TrueBlue]

Interesting thread here in Another Place:-

Looky
actually from some folks affected (after page 2 it gets silly)
To my mind everything went belly up after EA said they won't going to protect coastlines and I guess low lying areas inland. The initial poster said that the Levels weren't below sea level.
Part of my gripe is that it's daft that if EA do any serious dredging they have to pay tax on the dredge AND on the disposal EVEN if it's on their land. With a limited budget, the double whammy discourages then from doing anything.


The whole World has gone to Pot.

 

[TT_WO]

Am going to take a wild guess at this but when we are prepared to spend the same percentage of GDP on flood defences as the Netherlands and have invested as much on infrastructure as they have,we may be better prepared.
All you have to do is persuade the owners of the 23 million other dwellings in the UK that 5000 houses on known flood plains would like some extra money ..... please.

According to government statistics more than 5 million houses are at risk of flooding in England or 1 in 6. More than 15,000 houses between Datchet and Teddington are at risk according to the EA. Perhaps the spending needed to reduce the risks may be more popular than the £50 billion needed for HS2.

 

[ianc1200]

They're rounding up on him & he won't last a week. I think the EA will be broken up pretty quickly as well.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26106290

The Government apologising (for not dredging) & saying it relied too much on EA advice doesn't look good for the EA.

 

[boatone]

The Government apologising (for not dredging) & saying it relied too much on EA advice doesn't look good for the EA.

I've just been watching the Andrew Maher/Eric Pickles interview on iPlayer. If you didn't see it its worth watching - but only because its so cringe making. Pickles is not the Environment Minister, thats Owen Paterson and I suspect that, at least in private, he will be fuming with the Pickles apology and inference that the EA got it wrong and badly advised the government.

There was a proposal to break up the EA, and transfer its responsibilities directly inside DEFRA, in the last spending review but they decided to keep it as it was.

 

[LittleSister]

Lord Smith is reported to be spitting feathers at the comments from Ministers and has published the following statement, said to be all the more significant as has never previously criticised Ministers or Government during his term of office:

"Over the past two and a half months, Britain has faced the most extreme series of weather events we have ever experienced. The surge down the east coast of England in early December was the biggest in 60 years, and in some cases even higher than in the tragedy of 1953.

The storms over Christmas and new year were unprecedented, and they have since been followed by the wettest January in the south since records began.

Last week the highest waves ever recorded in Britain were crashing against the south-west coast. Serious flooding has resulted, in many different parts of the country.

My heart goes out to those people whose homes, businesses and land have been flooded during this period. Flooding can be one of the most distressing experiences anyone can ever have.

During the past 10 weeks, about 5,000 houses have been flooded, in many different parts of the country.

At the same time, it's important to realise that some 1.3 million homes – that would otherwise have flooded – have been protected by Environment Agency defences and the dedicated work of EA staff.

There's always more that we can do, of course. We have a forward programme of work, investing in new flood defences, in town and country, all over England.

And the substantial new funding announced this week by the government is really welcome – it will enable us to repair the damage that the winter storms have caused without eating into the money for new schemes to provide better protection for the future.

It's important, though, to realise a fundamental constraint on us. It's not only the overall allocation for flood defence work that limits what we can do. There is also a limit on the amount we can contribute to any individual scheme, determined by a benefit-to-cost rule imposed on us by the Treasury.

Take, for example, the highly visible issue of the dredging of the rivers on the Somerset Levels.

Last year, after the 2012 floods, we recognised the local view that taking silt out of the two main rivers would help to carry water away faster after a flood.

The Environment Agency put £400,000 on the table to help with that work – the maximum amount the Treasury rules allowed us to do. The additional funds from other sources that would be needed didn't come in.

So when politicians start saying it's Environment Agency advice or decisions that are to blame, they need to realise that it's in fact government rules – laid down by successive governments, Labour and Tory – that are at the heart of the problem.

That problem has now, this week, been solved by two things. The first was the announcement of £10m for Somerset, made by the prime minister.

The other, probably even more important, was the statement by the secretary of state, Owen Paterson, that the Somerset Levels are such a unique landscape – reclaimed land largely below sea level, with the Severn estuary at its back – that the normal rules shouldn't apply.

That decision really does free up the chance to find a longer-term solution to the future of the Levels.

It will certainly involve dredging, and the EA will play its full part in that.

But it also has to involve changing land use higher up the river catchments, renewing pumps and stopping the Severn tides backing up the rivers from the estuary.

What really saddens me, though, is seeing the Environment Agency's work and expertise in flood-risk management, internationally respected and locally praised in many parts of the country, being used as a political football for a good media story.

In a lifetime in public life, I've never seen the same sort of storm of background briefing, personal sniping and media frenzy getting in the way of decent people doing a valiant job trying to cope with unprecedented natural forces.

Our staff have worked their hearts out in order to protect as many people as possible in the face of extreme weather.

They'll carry on doing so. But there's no place for playing politics in the serious business of flood protection."

 

[Alan ashore]

I 'm with Smith. I think Pickles' comments "...we thought we were dealing with experts" were absolutely disgraceful, without very precise explanation of the supposed bad advice given by whoever he was "dealing with".

Did someone tell the Government "it's fine, reduce funding and make arbitrary value rules - that won't affect at all our ability to make continuous improvements in flood protection, everywhere."? I very much doubt it.

A.

 

[oldgit]

I 'm with Smith. I think Pickles' comments "...we thought we were dealing with experts" were absolutely disgraceful, without very precise explanation of the supposed bad advice given by whoever he was "dealing with".

Did someone tell the Government "it's fine, reduce funding and make arbitrary value rules - that won't affect at all our ability to make continuous improvements in flood protection, everywhere."? I very much doubt it.

A.

+1
Could not believe my loudspeaker when (more use as a sandbag) Pickles had that intemperate go at the EA and all its fast diminishing staff.
Suspect "Bunter Pickles" may wish he had been more measured in his comments ?
Still going to cut 1700 staff Dave ..........?

 

[boatone]

I am absolutely delighted with Lord Smiths robust defence of the EA and its staff. The article quoted earlier is in the Guardian and he was also giving it to 'em straight on the Radio 4 news this morning. Cameron should be bl**dy ashamed of himself for putting Pickles in charge, albeit temporarily, whilst Paterson is recovering from an eye operation. Pickles should be dismissed. How he ever became a minister defeats me but he clearly knows nothing about colleagues standing together in times of trouble and his statements on the Andrew Maher show yesterday morning were the most blatant example of back stabbing I can remember since the tories rounded on Thatcher.

 

[sailorman]

+1
Could not believe my loudspeaker when (more use as a sandbag) Pickles had that intemperate go at the EA and all its fast diminshing staff.
Suspect "Bunter Pickles" may wish he had been more measured in his comments ?
Still going to cut 1700 staff Dave ..........?

Typical of the UK
bean counters telling the engineers what to do

 

[bedouin]

I 'm with Smith. I think Pickles' comments "...we thought we were dealing with experts" were absolutely disgraceful, without very precise explanation of the supposed bad advice given by whoever he was "dealing with".

Did someone tell the Government "it's fine, reduce funding and make arbitrary value rules - that won't affect at all our ability to make continuous improvements in flood protection, everywhere."? I very much doubt it.

A.

I think it is not unreasonable to assume that if the EA can afford to spend £33M on a nature reserve then either it is getting its priorities wrong or there is slack in the budget.

Seems to me the reason for lack of dredging must be down to decisions taken by EA rather than any Government cuts.

 

[Dave_Seager]

The Environment Agency has argued for years that dredging does not stop flooding. Now Lord Smith is claiming that they wanted to dredge but the government would not provide the money. He even apologised for not fighting hard enough for the money. Slippery as an eel!

This leaflet sets out the EA policy although it does not seem to be available from their web site.

 

[oldgit]

I think it is not unreasonable to assume that if the EA can afford to spend £33M on a nature reserve then either it is getting its priorities wrong or there is slack in the budget.

Seems to me the reason for lack of dredging must be down to decisions taken by EA rather than any Government cuts.

Be very interested in link to that and how it would have prevented floods on the Thames ?
Can only find a plan for the West Country to conserve soils and water quality involving that sort of money.
Personally would have saved the money wasted on the Thames barrier and spent that elsewhere.

 

[boatone]

I think it is not unreasonable to assume that if the EA can afford to spend £33M on a nature reserve ........

Not just a nature reserve but also flood relief scheme:

The Environment Agency spotted an opportunity to manage coastal change to protect Steart Village and create a huge new area of intertidal habitat. They presented the options to the communities in and around Steart and asked what they would like to happen. The local community came out in support of managing the change and taking the opportunity to create habitat.

More here: http://steart.wwt.org.uk/background/

 

[TT_WO]

Since the EA took over responsibility for the Thames in 1996 we have been told that dredging is both expensive and unnecessary because the Thames is self-scourging. This was of course contrary to all the previous experts from the previous navigation authorities who carried out a continuous capitol dredging program since 1949.
I do not remember being told that governments would no longer fund Thames dredging.

In 2002/3 the EA opened the alternative flood alleviation scheme for the lower Thames costing £100 million+ presumably the government authorised this expenditure.

In 2009 the EA proposed the LTFRS, costed it and proved that it met the Government cost benefit guidelines. The Government effectively denied the expenditure in the 2010 spending review.

Leaving the biggest undefended flood plain in England undefended is just not an option.

Neither the EA nor the Government are without fault.

 

[alfaman155]

Neither the EA nor the Government are without fault.

I am sure upon that we can all agree - unlike the main protagonists.
Amazing to watch how Minister has turned upon Minister upon Chairman etc.
Moving away from my original contention that it must all be down to Smithy - lets here it for the Treasury and their spokesman George Osbourne. He who holds the purse strings etc.

The important thing must be to assist those whose homes and businesses and being destroyed right now and to quote Basil Fawlty, "deal with the sackings later."