A letter from the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency (EA), Philip Duffy, outlines the approach the agency will take with increasing inspections of water company assets. He highlights that depending on the outcome of the water quality charges consultation, and securing the funding needed, the EA plans to more than quadruple the number of […]

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Forty projects which will use natural processes such as planting trees and creating wetlands to reduce the risk of flooding are set to benefit from a £25 million government programme, Floods Minister Robbie Moore announced today (Friday 23 February). Part of the government’s plan to increase the nation’s flood resilience, natural flood management processes protect, […]

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The government has announced funding awards to improve lowland peat soils, including over £1.3 million to projects across the North. Peatlands are the country’s largest terrestrial carbon store, however, as a result of centuries of drainage for agriculture, just 1% of England’s lowland peatlands remain in a near-natural state, and these drained peatlands account for […]

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The Environment Agency has announced that £730,000 has been made available to support local projects to protect and enhance fishing in local communities through the Fisheries Improvement Programme (FIP). 2024 will be the 10th year of the Fisheries Improvement Programme, investing in English rivers by funding projects to protect and improve fish stocks and habitats, […]

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The WWT (formerly known as the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust) has called for significant investment in natural flood management schemes to increase resilience to future flood risk. It says that the recent impacts of storms Babet, Ciaran and Debi have exposed how unprepared the UK is to the growing risk of flooding caused by climate […]

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DEFRA’s budget for day-to-day spending will fall from £4.7bn in 2022/23 to £4.2bn in 2024/25 when inflation is taken into account, amounting to a real terms budget cut of £500m, according to analysis by the Liberal Democrats. Campaigners have previously said the budget is already cut to the bone, with huge reductions made during the […]

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The Environment Agency (EA) has cut its forecast for the number of additional properties that will be better protected from flooding by 40% since plans were first unveiled in 2020, according to a new report by the National Audit Office. EA estimates that inflation accounts for between a half and two-thirds of this reduction. Resilience […]

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The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Woodland Trust and National Trust have published a set of principles for ensuring ‘nature markets’ truly deliver for nature, climate and people. With an estimated £6 billion annual funding gap for UK nature recovery across land and sea, the UK Government has set an ambitious target to grow annual private investment […]

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