{"id":1231,"date":"2024-09-30T12:19:48","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T11:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dhwnews.com\/?p=1231"},"modified":"2024-10-01T19:20:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T18:20:11","slug":"response-from-national-audit-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dhwnews.com\/?p=1231","title":{"rendered":"Response from National Audit Office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>In response to some questions that I submitted, the following letter (containing interesting links) was received from the National Audit Office.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dear Mr Larcombe,<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for your correspondence to the NAO on 5 September 2024. This was passed to me as Director of value for money audit on Defra and the Environment Agency (EA). You set out two concerns relating to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a lack of maintenance by EA of existing flood defences, particularly a lack of dredging of the Thames; and<\/li>\n<li>the River Thames Flood Defence scheme\u2019s increased cost despite a reduction in project size and concerns over Defra\u2019s partnership funding policy affecting the project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We have not done any work specifically on dredging of the Thames, but as you may be aware we did publish a report on <u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nao.org.uk\/reports\/resilience-to-flooding\/\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Resilience to Flooding<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/u> in November 2023 which examined Defra\u2019s and EA\u2019s approach to the issues you highlight at a system level.<\/p>\n<p>The report found (paragraph 22) that EA is not maintaining its flood defences to a level that optimises value for money, due to a <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>shortfall in its maintenance funding<\/strong><\/span>. EA has assessed that maintaining 98% of high consequence flood assets at their required condition will provide optimal value for money, and this would require additional investment. In summer 2023 only 93.5% of EA\u2019s assets in high consequence systems were being maintained at the required condition, below the 94-95% level agreed with Defra in the 2021 Spending Review settlement. This meant that, as at summer 2023, 203,000 properties were at increased flood risk because more EA assets are below the required condition than planned. We make a recommendation about the maintenance budget at paragraph 27.<\/p>\n<p>Inflation has also affected EA\u2019s flood and coastal defence capital investment programme (2021 to 2027), affecting the cost and viability of projects (paragraph 17 and 2.16). EA\u2019s original assumption for inflation across the six years of the capital investment programme (4% a year) was significantly below EA\u2019s updated flood-specific inflation forecast (as at the time of our report) of an average of 6.3% a year. EA estimates that inflation is the cause of between a half and two-thirds of the reduction in the forecast number of properties better protected by the capital investment programme.<\/p>\n<p>The report also found that partnership funding is one of several risks that could prevent EA better protecting 200,000 properties by 2027 (paragraph 20). This target was already revised down from the original 336,000 properties target for the capital investment programme. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">In July 2023, EA estimated that \u00a3800 million of partnership funding was yet to be secured for the programme.<\/span><\/strong> We make recommendations about the partnership funding policy at paragraph 28.<\/p>\n<p>The NAO monitors how departments are responding to all our recommendations and publishes some information in our <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><u><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nao.org.uk\/recommendations-tracker\/\">recommendations tracker<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nao.org.uk\/recommendations-tracker\/\">.<\/a> You may also be interested to see, if you have not already, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) <strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><u><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/committees.parliament.uk\/publications\/42888\/documents\/213370\/default\/\">report<\/a><\/u> <\/span><\/strong>which resulted from a session based on our 2023 report. The government\u2019s response to, and progress in implementing, PAC recommendations is published in <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><u><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/collections\/treasury-minutes\">HM Treasury<\/a><\/u> <u><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/collections\/treasury-minutes\">Minutes<\/a><\/u>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Resilience to flooding is a subject we return to regularly and monitor on an ongoing basis. Your correspondence is a valuable contribution to our ongoing understanding of the issues relating to this area, and to our follow-up work with Defra and EA in how they are taking forward our recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you again for contacting us.<\/p>\n<p>Yours sincerely<\/p>\n<p>Rich Sullivan-Jones<\/p>\n<p><strong>Director, Defra VFM<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>END<\/p>\n<p>Source document:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dhwnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/GF-2660-24-Reply-Thames-flood-defences.docx\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">GF 2660 24 &#8211; Reply &#8211; Thames flood defences<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">This is the response from one of my readers<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks, Ewan.\u00a0 What a pathetic picture of the EA is painted between the lines of that letter!\u00a0 And, in passing, may I direct you to <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.whatdotheyknow.com\/request\/jubilee_river_and_downstream_wat?fbclid=IwAR1119hOpvAunF7kA_nXJyMSspf9UDc5S6yUbdR4RgclWf_KAOQnQ2xWg5M\">this<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (if you haven&#8217;t seen it already): https:\/\/www.whatdotheyknow.com\/request\/jubilee_river_and_downstream_wat?fbclid=IwAR1119hOpvAunF7kA_nXJyMSspf9UDc5S6yUbdR4RgclWf_KAOQnQ2xWg5M<\/p>\n<p>It is far beyond time to explain to the still-disengaged senior civil servants the desperate and dangerous fiasco that is in the making while government and EA continue to sleep-walk us into disaster.<\/p>\n<p>The EA does admit that global warming is a growing problem for which they should be preparing the nation.\u00a0 But, having accepted that we face a steadily increasing volume and intensity of rainfalls, they only witter on about &#8220;flood defences&#8221;.\u00a0 Meanwhile our fundamental drainage network &#8211; our rivers&#8217; channels to the sea &#8211; is decaying, degrading and everywhere losing the crucial maximum safe discharge capacity.\u00a0 And this is due solely to deliberate EA neglect.<\/p>\n<p>The EA has no &#8220;plan&#8221;.\u00a0 It is run by people who see it as a nice little sinecure, with the public their meal-ticket. There&#8217;s no drive, no motivation, just the casual re-arranging of the deckchairs at public expense.\u00a0 For a brighter future, buy shares in suppliers of yellow hazard jackets.\u00a0 For the EA to talk about &#8220;flood defences&#8221; while ignoring overall riverine drainage issues is mere &#8216;pissing into the wind&#8217;, with the public getting wet feet as a result.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t believe that those in government circles to whom the EA answers have the foggiest about the water (or hydrological) cycle, or how water flows, how channel shapes and dimensions affect this, how natural rivers evolve and how man has systematically re-engineered and tamed them for centuries.\u00a0 I see no understanding that, if all the rain-water that does not actually evaporate can&#8217;t get to the sea by flowing within the usual river channels, then it must overflow the banks and surroundings and then swell to inundate key locations and all within.\u00a0 What we see now will be trivial by comparison with what must happen if the EA&#8217;s Canute-like conduct continues.\u00a0 But the Civil servants, Ministers, and EA top brass, keep their fingers crossed that a) the public is as bloody ignorant and careless as they are and b) that it won&#8217;t happen while they&#8217;re in office.<\/p>\n<p>This has to change.\u00a0 But how to make that happen?<\/p>\n<p>Cheers &#8211; xxxx<\/p>\n<p>[Link to &#8216;<strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/rbwm.moderngov.co.uk\/Data\/Cabinet\/20040527\/Agenda\/040527_frag_appa.pdf\">Mechanisms of Flooding<\/a><\/span><\/strong>&#8216; Report dated 2004]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In response to some questions that I submitted, the following letter (containing interesting links) was received from the National Audit Office. Dear Mr Larcombe, Thank you for your correspondence to the NAO&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Response from National Audit Office - DHWNEWS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dhwnews.com\/?p=1231\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Response from National Audit Office - DHWNEWS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In response to some questions that I submitted, the following letter (containing interesting links) was received from the National Audit Office. 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