Farmer needs a boat to leave his flooded house
A LANDOWNER whose farm has been accessible only by boat for six months after a river burst its banks has warned that taxpayers’ millions are being wasted on short-term repairs.
Henry Ward, 33, lost £35,000 overnight last October, when the Barlings Eau river flooded in two places during Storm Babet, destroying his high-value wheat, rapeseed and vining pea crops.
Six months on, his fields, near Lincoln, remain submerged and his land has been rendered “worthless”.
Mr Ward, whose wife Emma is heavily pregnant with their first child, said that when his land was last flooded in 2019, the Environment Agency spent £3.5million plugging the breach in the riverbank.
This year, it has had to spend another £450,000 carrying out further temporary repairs, which Mr Ward said have just a three-year lifespan.
“I cannot risk planting crops on this land again,” he told The Telegraph. “There is a mile of riverbank that is substandard.
“We need to look at the bigger picture. Clearly, this is unsustainable and a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. It’s just going to keep happening and it’s going to get worse. Climate change isn’t going away.”
Mr Ward acknowledged that farmland had to be sacrificed to protect people’s houses but he added: “We can’t keep just allowing it to happen for free.
“I’ve lost a full year’s income from this most recent flooding. It has been horrendous, I’m not going to have a harvest this year – it’s obviously a huge worry.
“But we have to adapt. I’m not an old-fashioned farmer who will only plant potatoes. We need to work together for the common good.”
Mr Ward suggested that his land could be used as a floodplain by the Environment Agency, allowing it to be flooded in a controlled manner.
That would entail compensating Mr Ward for his lack of farming income and purchasing a £1 million farmhouse and farmyard from him which would be rendered “worthless” if the land were used as a flood storage area. His tenant had to evacuate after the house was isolated by floodwater.
“We can make a nature reserve, turn it into wetlands,” he said. “I am willing to do that, but it is about long-term investment. It will cost less in the long term than constantly fixing the riverbank.”