No replacement seems planned for service that helped UK councils and businesses adapt to effects of climate change, such as flooding, reports the ENDS Report

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Environment Agency’s (EA) advice service, which helped councils and businesses prepare for flooding and other climate change impacts, has closed.

Climate Ready shut in March, just before the Easter break, and no replacement service appears to be planned.

The service helped many small businesses that had been flooded last winter.

Climate Ready also supported the Local Government Association’s (LGA) Climate Local programme which supported and encouraged local authorities to make a formal commitment to take action on climate change and to report on their progress. Since its launch in 2012, 96 English councils have signed up.

It was coordinated by an EA employee, seconded to the LGA, but this person has now returned to the EA.

Mike Peverill, director of the NGO Climate UK which worked with the EA on Climate Local, said it was very disappointed to see the service come to an end.

“These voluntary commitments and support programmes have been a really important mechanism over the last decade for enlightened local authorities to demonstrate public community leadership,” he said.

The EA told ENDS that Climate Ready was designed to deliver objectives in the National Adaptation Programme and was supposed to last for three years, but had been extended for a further year until March 2016.

An EA spokesperson said: “The Environment Agency remains committed to the need to adapt to a changing climate and will continue to drive resilience and action. Climate Ready was always designed as a time limited programme to enable organisations to understand their climate risk and take action to reduce it.”

Defra said it would continue to ensure that it had the best possible plans in place for flood prevention and protection across the whole country.

“The first National Adaptation Programme sets out more than 370 actions to help the UK better prepare for climate change - we continue to deliver on these actions and make sure adaptation is integrated across government policy making,” it said.

The service cost approximately £6m over four years. The EA said that no jobs would be lost as a result of the closure.

The EA has also had to shoulder cuts to vital flood defence research.