A post on the LOSRA (Sunbury) web site produced the following answer
Monday, 10 February 2014 09:38 posted by Chris Wills
I used to live next door to the EA’s Riverside Works in Fordbridge Road. In around 1995 the (then) National Rivers Authority decided to sell the huge bucket dredger based at Sunbury and lay off the staff and tug crews who ran the dredger. When we protested we were told with stunning arrogance by the NRA that the River Thames was “self scouring”. This on Radio 5 this morning, with many local properties flooded, Lord Smith has “said sorry over dredging”. Of course even if the river had been dredged, given the rainfall over the last weeks, the River would have flooded. However, it is clear that the flooding would not have been as severe and extensive as that which we are now experiencing. We have been let down by the successive Governments and successive generations of NRA and EA senior management. END