Centralised flood prevention and drainage has left us vulnerable - Paul Andrews

They were locally accountable semi-democratic bodies. The river boards regularly dredged rivers and cut down water weeds. They also built flood defences, like the extensive flood bank network in the Vale of Pickering.

However, in 1974 River Boards were merged into the new Water Authorities, and, when the Water Authorities were privatised, river maintenance was nationalised and centralised. So now the Environment Agency is the responsible authority. This Agency is not subject to local democratic control, although it precepts on the local drainage authorities for funds – a classic example of taxation without representation.

Once under national control, river management became subject to national government policy, including cost-cutting policies, and as a result, for example, the River Derwent has not been dredged since 1985. It would appear that dredging of most rivers nationwide stopped at about the same time.

Fast forward to 2003 when I was first elected, and I entered a room of farmers who were haranguing Environment Agency officials for not maintaining the rivers. Few public service officials welcome challenge or accept responsibility for their own mistakes. No surprise then that the officials roundly denied that failure to maintain the rivers had contributed at all to the floods of a few years before, and blamed the farmers for increasing run off, which they had had to do to improve farm viability and is also in the interest of national food security.

In view of the expected impact of climate change, one might have expected the Agency to come forward with new plans and schemes to prevent the inevitable consequences of extreme weather.

However, instead of producing draft ‘flood prevention’ schemes, they drafted ‘flood management’ schemes with recommendations for rivers ‘to be allowed to return to their natural flood plain’. They suggested that good agricultural land should be sacrificed to reduce the ‘flood risk’ to conurbations downstream, although this had never been considered necessary before.

So, instead of reinforcing and improving existing flood defences, they were going to abandon their repair and take parts of them down. Instead of restoring good river management, they have neglected it. Instead of taking responsibility for flooding, they blame farmers for improving the irrigation of their land. They believe habitats will be preserved by their own neglect, when the same animal and fish life has continued to thrive through decades of previous good river management. And then they allow the water companies to discharge gallons of untreated sewage and industrial effluent into the very same rivers which they have failed to maintain for alleged biodiversity reasons.

Meanwhile, the government decided to rationalise the local Drainage Boards, allegedly to enable resources to be shared with improved efficiencies of scale. Like all mergers of democratically elected authorities, the more remote the decision making, the less the power and influence of the people affected, and the more autocratic and less accountable the unelected officials become.

In 2014 the Somerset Levels flooded as never before. True to form the Environment Agency blamed the extreme weather and the farmers, but on this occasion they had to admit that flooding would not have been so bad if the rivers had been properly dredged and the weeds cut back. Unfortunately, this has not stopped them from claiming that failing to maintain rivers has an insignificant impact on flooding in other parts of the country.

In my view, politicians fail in their duty if they do not robustly challenge official advice which defies common sense. This kind of failure resulted in the prosecution of nearly 1,000 innocent postmasters, while ministers watched from the side-lines with indifference, relying blindly on what the officials told them.

That scandal ruined the businesses and careers of many postmasters. The Environment Agency’s record on flooding has not only damaged thousands of businesses, particularly farms, but has also brought no end of misery on ordinary people who live in areas which should have been protected. Yet nobody has been brought to account, and no heads have rolled.

Climate change is happening and one result is increased flooding risk. If we value food security, our first priority should be to improve land drainage, flood defences and river maintenance.

Paul Andrews is a former Ryedale District councillor, a former Mayor of Malton and an honorary alderman of North Yorkshire Council.