There is no doubt that the EA has been starved of funds, and it
is now time for an urgent review of need with this present
Government.
It is also true to say that there is much evidence of waste by
the Government and many Government bodies – the EA is no exception.
We as a nation are taxed to the hilt and probably higher overall,
than other country in Europe.
What are the most urgent needs for examination?
Dredging, and river bank reinforcement. I had a somewhat
depressing exchange of views with Elliot Morley MP who announced
that’ dredging does not improve the risk of flooding’. By some
simple ‘o’ level Physics experiments involving two x two gallon
buckets, a half bucket of sand, and four gallons of water to be
carried out on his best carpet – he and his successor have gone very
quiet!
The Jubilee River (JR) was, as you know, an unmitigated disaster
in 2003. I am, and others too, are heartily fed up with the constant
cry from the EA that the JR was n’t at fault it was the rainfall.
The rainfall in recent weeks, according to the Met office, far and
away exceeded that of 2003. It WAS THE OPERATION and some faulty
design elements of the JR that fouled things up in this part of the
River Thames.
You can be congratulated on the way the recent levels were
handled and of course we know that the JR was only partially used
and nowhere near designed capacity.
The consequence of the 2003 debacle is that many homes were
flooded, some irreparably damaged – at least one in this road had to
be demolished, the owner died of a hart attack resulting from the
stress of the terrible situation. So Insurers like lemmings fled
from anything in the flood plain.
All planning proposals for development in the flood plain should
now be cancelled, and the Government should be told that such
developments that have been undertaken so far in flood plains have
exacerbated the recent flooding. There are plenty of brown field
sites available and they must be utilised first.
Homeowners find that flood insurance cover is either not
available or not affordable. They, the householders, are in breach
of their mortgage contracts by not insuring for’ All Risks’ when
patently they cannot. At one stage the Insurers believed that we
might be moving towards a 1 in 75 year ratio. If climate change is
actually happening then we appear to be looking at 1 in every 3
years based on recent experience.
I do not believe that the EA can expect individuals to pay more
for what has been such a poor service over the years. The Government
should be lobbied by every means available, after all it IS OUR
MONEY (see the distribution list at the end of this letter).
Your boat licence fees have exceeded inflation and appear to
continue at increases well above inflation for years to come.
Your own statistics will indicate the effect of that in relation
to the number of vessels leaving the Thames. Two neighbours are
examples – one has taken his vessel to France where the facilities
are way above anything here. One has sold his boat and just given up
– a tragedy for a pensioner who has worked damned hard all his
working life.
Many boat owners are buying their vessels either by Bank
Overdraft or Marine Mortgage, or by releasing equity in their homes,
so increasing their mortgage liabilities. I don’t have to tell you
about the swingeing increases in interest rates over the last year.
And now the price of red diesel will include a heavier rate of duty
to fall in line with European pricing. All of this eats in to a
retired person’s pension, or net income after tax, quite heavily.
Please no more.
Your cause is not helped by your senior executives awarding
themselves five figure bonuses at a time when tens of thousands of
home owners are suffering as a result of negligence on the part of
the EA. Baroness Young, by the way has just received a large five
figure bonus – is she banging the drum loudly enough in the
corridors of power? – I fear not. Perhaps she should be replaced by
some one more determined, and vociferous.
What is desperately frustrating to me is that you have no
competition. You do not have the discipline of shareholders. I
retired as the senior executive of an International plc. If I
behaved the way the EA behaves I would have been sacked. My company
would have been taken over, and if I had performed as badly I would
have been sued. Senior executives have unlimited liability, just
remember that!
