Norman Baker MP Member of Parliament for Lewes constituency

2008 press releases

10th Dec: MP slams Environment Agency decision over Cuckmere Haven

The decision by the Environment Agency, announced today, to allow the much-loved meanders at Cuckmere Haven to disappear under water has been slammed by local MP Norman Baker as "hugely controversial and undemocratic".

A question tabled in Parliament earlier this year by the MP revealed that the Agency had already spent a whopping £527,000 on progressing the plan, with more funds expected to be deployed. Yet there has been no external validation of the Agency's plans. Indeed, both Lewes District and Wealden District councils voted instead to approve a planning application that raised the existing defences, the opposite policy to that adopted by the Environment Agency.

Norman Baker says: "The Environment Agency is an unelected body and therefore has no popular mandate for the controversial course of action it wishes to pursue. They may well feel they have a good case, but then experts on the other side of the argument feel likewise. That is why I have long argued that the proposal to allow the estuary to flood must be subject to some sort of external validation by an independent element, perhaps through a public inquiry. It is highly regrettable that the Agency has not accepted the need to do this. Their actions, in ploughing ahead with such a controversial move without such a process, make it less likely local people will simply accept the decision, and more likely that a legal challenge will result.

"Even at this stage, I call upon the Agency to think again. If their case is as strong as they think it is, and they do have a case, then they should be prepared to argue that before an independent decision-making body."

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