UK's DEFRA Cuts Environmental Budgets By 200 Million Pounds - Independent

[hatrack]

Environmentalists have reacted with dismay to the news that wildlife protection, waste management, protection of fisheries, canal repairs and flood defence would all have to be scaled back because of massive emergency funding cuts at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). About £200m, or roughly 5 per cent of the department's annual budget, is to be cut nowbecause the budget has seriously overrun.

Defra is in the red because of a number of unforeseen difficulties, not least that of repairing the fiasco earlier this year at the Farm Payments Agency, when the system for distributing a new form of EU subsidy failed to cope with demand and left many farmers struggling. The cuts will impact on delivery of environmental policy in a number of areas, including the new wildlife watchdog, Natural England, which is due to replace English Nature in October.

As revealed in The Independent last week, senior figures in Natural England feel it will be hamstrung by the £12m cuts it faces. The chairman, Sir Martin Doughty, told the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, that the cutbacks risked "the wheels coming off the organisation" even before it was launched.

Yet Natural England is by no means the only body facing the squeeze; spending will also have to be slashed at the Environment Agency, the Sustainable Development Commission, British Waterways and the Rural Development Service. Of these, the Environment Agency cuts will be the heaviest, at nearly £24m.

EDIT

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1211294.ece

[Greeby]

1. So much for green and pleasant land

:eyes:

[SoftUnderbelly]

2. genius

so they overspend, because clearly they arent getting enough money from the exchequer to carry out all the work that needs doing. solution: cut their funding.

i did read that correctly?