While some of you chaps are forming an orderly queue to kick the Environment Agency, this might be worth a read;
Don't blame the Environment Agency for floods. Blame the spending rules | Environment | The Guardian
t'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.
Ah yes; Treasury rules. That would be the same Treaury that wouldn't release funds to put wiring in warships that didn't gas people should it catch fire.