Rivers and bogs tamed for centuries at risk of returning to North Sea, MP fears

English rivers and bogs tamed for centuries are at risk of being flooded, an MP fears.

Steff Aquarone said it is time to make water infrastructure maintenance “sexy”, which flooding minister Emma Hardy said she would try her “best” to achieve.

The Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk also called on the Government to join up different agencies which are each responsible for water, drainage and flooding across his county.

During a Westminster Hall debate about flood preparedness in Norfolk, Mr Aquarone said Norfolk’s landscapes are “filled with farmland and floodplains”.

He continued: “While this combination of waterways and low-lying land contributes to Norfolk being the most beautiful county in the country, it presents a perfect storm for flooding problems.

“Hundreds of years ago, the Norfolk Broads were simply a huge estuary. Work over the centuries has tamed these waterways into what they are today, but without continued work, nature would simply return our area to the North Sea.

“In the words of my local water management director, we have to make maintenance sexy. The Romans were the ones who began this work.

“It would be a tragedy for this to be the generation which finally gave up. Not on my watch.”

Mr Aquarone later praised flooding agencies for working “incredibly hard but they can only work with what they’ve got, and a major issue that many of them face is that their funding settlements are rarely delivered more than one year ahead”.

He urged Ms Hardy to give responsible authorities the ability to set longer term budgets and added: “The responsibilities and powers are broken up and siloed across councils and agencies and statutory bodies, all with expertise and experience but unable to easily be shared across them all.”

Turning to cases he had heard from his constituency casework, Mr Aquarone said one farmer lost £100,000 worth of potato crop across 30 acres which were waterlogged, and he asked: “Why are insurers putting or replacing ankle-height plugs in properties they know could flood again when logic would dictate these need to be moved higher up to protect them in the future?”

George Freeman, the Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk, said climate change was driving flooding “compounded by” housebuilding, “plugging in new modern drains to old Victorian village drain infrastructure, and when you get intense rain, the whole lot merges and sewage starts rising through people’s gardens and lavatories”.

Mr Freeman earlier told MPs: “There are 36 organisations in Norfolk – just in Norfolk – tasked with and sharing responsibility for dealing with flooding.

“And basically, none of them are able to take responsibility properly. I’ll be kind, the buck gets passed. People have had enough.”

He suggested Ms Hardy would have “culverts being named after her for decades to come” if she improves data monitoring and accountability.

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley which straddles the Norfolk and Suffolk border, told MPs floodplain, pond and dam restoration is often carried out by “excellent but small charities fighting over pots of money” which need more Government cash across the country.

He called for “no more buck passing and that nature-based solutions get a proper focus and attention”.

Responding, the minister said: “Am I going to make maintenance sexy? Well, I am going to do my best to make maintenance sexy.”

Ms Hardy pointed to a written statement which she made in Parliament earlier this month, which promised a review of the flooding formula and reforms “to ensure that floods funding policy drives close partnership working and brings in wider financial contributions to flood schemes”.

She also said the Environment Agency is working on a “natural flood management (NFM) benefits tool aimed at providing a nationally consistent way of assessing flood risk and wider benefits from NFM projects and this is because in the past, some of the difficulties in getting these flood projects off the ground has been it’s very difficult to calculate the actual benefit that you gain from something when it’s natural flood management”.

She said the Government had allocated £50 million to internal drainage boards and £60 million to storm-affected farmers which could arrive into their bank accounts as soon as Thursday.