Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many miles of river and waterway bank the Environment Agency has weeded in the last 12 months.

The Environment Agency is responsible for 22,600 miles of main river and carries out conveyance work which includes aquatic weed management. This activity is carried out on a risk based approach which is dependent on local circumstances and associated flood risk.

In 2014/15the Environment Agency allocated around £45 million on conveyance work to control aquatic weed in rivers, dredging rivers and removing shoals and silt, clearing screens and removing obstructions from rivers so that water can flow freely along the channel.