Lord Chris Smith, chairman of the Environment Agency says that the UK now faces difficult choices on flood defence investment.

Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Lord Smith said that the UK must now make difficult choices about where and what the country wants to protect.  He told the newspaper that the “there is no bottomless purse” and that Britain needed to decide whether to protect “town or country, front rooms or farmland” because it can’t afford to do both.

The Environment Agency has been strongly criticised in recent weeks for a long-term decision not to dredge the rivers Parrett and Tone which has been directly flagged up as a key contributory factor to ongoing flooding in the Somerset Levels.

Lord Smith said decisions would now have to be taken on “the tricky issues of policy and priority: town or country, front rooms or farmland, commenting:

 “There’s no bottomless purse of money, and we need to make difficult but sensible choices about where and what we try to protect.”

More storms are now expected this week with the Environment Agency once again warning that all of southern England is at heightened risk of flooding. 

The whole of the south of England is at an increased risk of flooding both today and Wednesday, as high tides as and large waves threaten the south coast, while further rain from Tuesday on already saturated ground could lead to river flooding.

On the Somerset Levels Environment Agency teams are continuing to operate up to 62 pumps, 24-hours a day, to drain an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of water off an area of the Levels spanning 65 square kilometres – the biggest pumping operation ever undertaken in the county.

The agency said that currently around 40 properties have flooded on the Levels, while defences have protected over 3,500 properties and 200 square kilometres of land within the Parrett and Tone, and Brue and Axe catchments.

There are currently 3 severe flood warnings, 99 flood warnings and 230 flood alerts in place across England and Wales.