EVEN before the arrival of storm Christoph it’s been a bit wet here in my little corner of Northamptonshire. We’ve had almost constant heavy rain or freezing fog and even a light dusting or two of snow.  

At Billing Aquadrome, a huge static caravan park sited among lakes that feed the young river Nene, flood levels reached 5ft (1.5m) on Christmas Eve. Many people had chosen to spend Christmas and New Year in their holiday caravans and the park was almost full.  

When water levels rose and flooded many of the holiday homes over a thousand people had to find emergency accommodation in local hotels or with friends. 

The Billing disaster made national news. Thousands donated food and useful items for the flood victims. Local Sikhs delivered 500 hot meals. 

Have you noticed that in flood reports from all over Britain when disaster strikes local Sikh communities are quick to arrive on the scene, often with hot food and other aid?

My wife Ann and I took a short drive just before the latest lockdown.

We found many fields under water and many small rivers and brooks swollen well past bank-bursting levels. It was certainly a watery landscape.

Living close to the geographical centre of England the high ground near Daventry is the source of a number of England’s major rivers.

Here rise the hundred-mile-long Nene and its tributary the Brampton Nene. Here too the Stratford Avon, the 143-mile Great Ouse and the shorter Leam, Tove and Ise.

These waterways flow off in all directions. The rivers Nene and Great Ouse both head north across the Fens to finally drain into the Wash. The Welland that rises a bit further north in Northamptonshire becomes a major river of the Norfolk Broads. The Tove flows east towards Bedfordshire briefly making itself at home in that most modern city Milton Keynes. 

The Avon – the word in old English and Welsh means river, so River Avon translates as river river. It flows west into Shakespeare’s Warwickshire to the theatres of Stratford-upon-what? On those stages King Lear offered his daughters “plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads.”

Most of the rivers and streams that rise in Northamptonshire have been engineered or managed to some extent, either for modern flood defences, or historically for milling, navigation and during canal and railway construction.

Today their main purpose is drainage and water level control and ultimately flood control. Like most of our 350 rivers they are looked after by the Environment Agency (EA). However in some recent cases it seems the EA aren’t as conscientious as they ought to be. 

Back in early December last year I wrote about a local potato farmer, John Price, who ordered a bulldozer to strip the banks and straighten the beautiful Herefordshire river Lugg.

Vandal Price destroyed a stretch of approximately 1.5km (1 mile) of the river and caused much additional damage downstream of his actual vandalism. This is already having a significant impact on wildlife at the site and downstream. It will do so for many years to come.
 
The bulldozing released a huge amount of soil into the water, where it smothered gravel beds where fish including salmon and trout spawn. The lack of vegetation will mean that every flood this winter will result in more soil being lost into the water. The Lugg is flooding right now.

The river Lugg is such an important home for wildlife that it is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).      

Farmer Price claimed he had broken no laws and that he had wide community support. President Trump said he won the election.

The Environment Agency said categorically he had no such permission but it seems there have been no prosecutions so far. To be fair the agency has been busy with all this flooding.

The ability of statutory bodies such as the Environment Agency, Forestry England and Natural England to respond to this kind of deliberate attack on our countryside is dependent not just on policy but also on their resources and funding.

We know that Natural England has suffered significant budget cuts. Its funding is down by £165 million since 2008. Yet Natural England is supposed to be playing a leading role in the development and delivery of the Nature Recovery Network, the latest countryside environmental policy from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Defra minister George Eustice.

Regular readers will know that Eustice is himself a farmer. His family own a large Cornish fruit farm.  They always did well from previous EU-funded agricultural subsidies despite George standing for Ukip in elections before he joined the Tories.  

The Tories’ new policy promises that existing designated sites, the so-called jewels in the crown, will be restored and protected, and connected by 500,000 hectares of new wildlife habitat. 

Sites like Lugg Meadow, a beautiful flower-bejewelled water meadow beside the vandalised river, should be at the heart of the network, with surrounding landowners working to make the wider countryside more hospitable to wildlife, not bringing in the bulldozers. 

We certainly need to return rivers closer to their natural state. Slowing the flow can help to reduce flood risk. This can be done by good traditional management or by more radical actions like reintroducing our native beavers. Beavers are already proving successful slowing and protecting some British rivers.

Slowing our rivers can also benefit wildlife and store carbon if trees are maintained, encouraged and planted along the banks. 

However, at present only four out of 10 of our Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), can be described as in Favourable Condition. In 2019, only 54 per cent of them had been monitored in the previous six years. It seems the jewels in the crown are looking a bit tarnished and in dire need of a polish.

The Environment Agency is another body struggling with a lack of capacity. Last Year Greenpeace reported that teams tasked with responding to environment emergencies have been cut in size by 15 per cent. 

Not harming the environment is not something we should have to reward landowners, farmers and developers for. They already profit enough from what they do to their secure landholding investments.

What we need is an independent environmental watchdog. Where countryside laws are being ignored, as in the river Lugg case, such a strong and independent body would be vital to enforce the law and, in some cases, to hold the government’s own agencies to account. 

However, the government’s recent amendments to the Environment Bill further weaken what was already looking more like a tame toothless lapdog than a really useful rottweiler. 

Having the capacity to monitor the condition of the country’s most important nature sites, and to act to restore them, is essential if we are really serious about looking after our countryside. 

The new Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) must be independence of the government. Its funding and staffing cannot depend on government approval for its actions otherwise the body supposed to police the government risks become just a puppet with ministers pulling its strings.

Neither many existing farmers and landowners nor our Tory government can be trusted to protect our green and pleasant land. We need rigorous laws and agencies powerful enough to make sure they are obeyed.

It will need a real fight to get them. The other side has bulldozers.