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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to reinstate dredging to increase river capacity.

Where watercourse maintenance is the responsibility of the Environment Agency (EA), it focuses its efforts on those activities which will achieve the greatest benefit in terms of protecting people and property from flooding. This includes dredging, which the EA will undertake an assessment of, working in close consultation with local communities.

For many locations, there are more effective ways to protect land and communities from floods as part of a catchment-based approach.