Out now: Somerset Rivers Authority Annual Report 2024-25
Hundreds of places across Somerset are included in the newly published Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA) Annual Report 2024-25.
The report describes how the SRA spent £2.8 million on a wide range of schemes and activities designed to reduce the risks and impacts of flooding.
Somerset has the only Rivers Authority in the country: it’s a partnership of Somerset Council, the Parrett and Axe Brue Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs), the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Wessex Regional Flood & Coastal Committee and Wessex Water.
The SRA is funded through council tax and contributions from the Parrett and Axe Brue IDBs.
It’s 10 years since the SRA was set up in the wake of the devastating floods of 2013-14, estimated to have cost Somerset up to £147.5 million.
SRA Chair Cllr Mike Stanton says there is “much continuity between the SRA ten years ago and now”, through activities such as dredging and flood defence improvements, but he also notes that “flash flooding has become much more of an issue across Somerset”.
He says: “In January 2025, for example, more than 120 properties were flash-flooded in Chard, Ilminster and South Petherton. I know from listening to victims of flooding across Somerset that climate change has sometimes frighteningly intensified downpours.”
The report describes how in 2024-25, therefore, the SRA funded moves to incentivise people to hold more water back as close as possible to where it lands, and slow its flow down to vulnerable areas.
Measures included: completing 24 natural flood management schemes, planting ‘trees for water’ at 20 sites, inspecting 37 Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) on new housing developments, distributing 506 water butts in Chard, and drawing up climate adaptation plans in the city of Wells and several towns and villages.
Cllr Stanton notes: “There are increasingly tight financial constraints on what the SRA as a partnership can achieve. We are privileged to have ringfenced funding, but it is tied to the levels it was in 2016-17 so has not kept pace with inflation, and just over £3million a year goes considerably less far than it used to.”
Aiming still to achieve as much as possible through working together, SRA partners have increased their efforts to help people themselves deal with water as close as can safely be to where it affects them. Hence the report describes 2024-25 SRA investment in localised flood warning systems, grants for training and equipment, workshops about responsibilities and plans, and the popular new Community Flood Action Fund.
Cllr Stanton concludes: “We are still achieving a lot, and we are determined to keep doing so.”
You can read the entire text of the Somerset Rivers Authority Annual Report 2024-25 on the SRA website. It’s split up into manageable sections.
You can get an illustrated 48-page PDF of the Somerset Rivers Authority Annual Report 2024-25 (6MB).
Or a 40-page TEXT ONLY version Somerset Rivers Authority Annual Report 2024-25 (0.3MB).