Flood system 'fails to improve'

Flood defences in England have failed to improve significantly despite a 40 per cent increase in funding for the Environment Agency over five years, it was claimed today.

The Public Accounts Committee said the flooding across the Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside in June and in the South West the following month, demonstrated the "vulnerability" of key infrastructure.

More than half the high-risk flood defence systems protecting English towns and cities are not being maintained at their target condition, it added.

South Shropshire MP Philip Dunne, who saw his constituency wrecked by the summer floods, today said: "They brought home the stark significance of the need for proper flood defences in areas of flood risk.

"We established that the Environment Agency has a poor track record in identifying high risks in those areas most likely to be flooded.

"It had only completed six of the 68 Catchment Flood Management Plans by the due date of last April. Where these had been completed, they did not identify all of the structures which failed in the summer floods."

But Shrewsbury has seen a number of defences fitted over the past couple of years, the most recent in Coleham head.