[2023] UKUT 201 (LC)

The Environment Agency, established in 1996, is a non-departmental public body. It has a range of duties: to develop, publish, maintain, apply and monitor a national strategy for flood and coastal risk management (s.7 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010); to co-operate with other Risk Management Authorities in the exercise of its flood risk management functions (s.13); and to maintain and publish the main rivers map (s.193, Water Resources Act 1991).

It also has a range of powers, some of them conferred by the 1991 Act in relation to main rivers (of which the River Colne is one); relevant to this claim is the Agency’s power under s.165, which we refer to below.