RBWM to make fresh plea for Government to pay for flood alleviation scheme

RBWM will make another stab at trying to get the Government to pay for an important flood alleviation scheme in Berkshire.

It has been seeking central financial support for the ill-fated Berkshire arm of the River Thames Scheme - a £550million plan that involves landscaping the river to reduce risk of flooding to thousands of homes.

The River Thames Scheme is set to run through multiple locations, including Runneymede, Spelthorne and Teddington.

Contributions were requested from local authorities to fund stretches of the scheme running through their patches. RBWM was among these, for an arm that would have protected Datchet and Wraysbury.

But RBWM pulled out of the scheme in August 2020 after the previous Conservative administration decided against making a £53million contribution to the project.

Currently, the plan is for the scheme to proceed without the Berkshire Channel, previously known as Channel One.

In March this year, RBWM resolved to push the Government to foot the bill itself for the Berkshire arm, claiming that local authorities are ‘simply not funded to deliver multi-million-pound flood alleviation schemes’.

Having written to Government in April, a spanner in the works came in the form of the General Election.

As a result, RBWM put forward a motion at a full council meeting last week to resend its letter to the new Labour administration.

Proposing this motion, Cllr Ewan Larcombe (National Flood Prevention Party, Datchet, Horton and Wraysbury) said:

“The scheme is no longer coherent. It doesn’t join the previous Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton scheme to the new River Thames scheme.

“It now doesn’t start until you get down below Stains Bridge.

“The Environment Agency have already spent £70million on the development of the River Thames Scheme. They’re due to spend another £20million this year and hey will carry on spending for a long time to come.”

Cabinet member Cllr Richard Coe, who sent the letter to the Government in April, seconded Cllr Larcombe’s motion.

He highlighted the increased intensity of rainfall and higher likelihood of flooding caused by climate change, and stressed again that the council cannot afford the cost of partnership funding – especially now, in light of its current financial difficulties.

Water from further up the country flows through Datchet and Wraysbury on its way to the sea, and as such, transporting that water ‘should be considered as a nationally significant infrastructure project, and should be funded by central government,’ he said.

“We know that the Conservatives nationally wanted this partnership funding and we know that Conservatives locally felt they couldn’t fund it. I don’t think anyone in the room, from any party, thinks we can fund it now,” said Cllr Coe.

The decision to resend the letter to Government passed unanimously.