I’ve just started reading the blog ‘Inside the Environment Agency‘ and have been both angered and appalled at the catalogue of bad management, wasteful and inefficient practises, overmanning and alleged political corruption, that this blog has revealed.

If you want to get an idea just how crap the Environment Agency is then read the ITEA  blog.

Try this for example:

“In recent news stories, Lord Smith is accusing ministers of playing politics with the floods, but as I pointed out last year in one of my most earliest posts, politics has been a key game played by management at the Environment Agency. There have been numerous occasions where management have discussed strategic drawback from critical projects with the objective of appearing to need more funding and to cause upset among constituents of MPs they don’t like. Management have allowed personal feelings to influence how they handle incidents, and have favoured certain MPs and councillors over others. This is nothing new and is a regular part of doing business inside the Environment Agency.

As for having their hands tied by the Treasury, I presume that the abuse of working, flexitime and annual leave processes is the fault of the Treasury also? Or maybe the £31 million spent on a bird habitat instead of flood maintenance? Or how about the £395 million spent on staff (£592 million including pensions) vs £219 million on capital projects, and just £20 million on maintaining rivers.

Seems the Environment Agency is quick to play foul when the shoe is on the other foot.

Perhaps Lord Smith should air out his own cupboards and expose how management within the Environment Agency have used past incidents to gain favourable political positioning, how they spend significant amounts on political training for management/senior staff, PR staffing and programmes, and how management have used their positions to influence favoured MPs/councillors over others.

Environment Agency bosses spent £2.4million on PR… but refused £1.7million dredging of key Somerset rivers that could have stopped flooding – does that include PR staff salaries and pensions? Does it include the political training given to management and senior staff? Does it include other communications programmes with the aim of influencing public and politicians that the EA have classified under another heading (other than PR)?”

Read the rest of this and even more about the problems with EA at:

http://insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/