MRS DOWN'S DIARY

UNDER the new Entry Level Scheme, which has superseded subsidies for farming, farmers can be paid (although we are still waiting for our 2005 payments) for not cleaning dikes out regularly. This is part of a points award scheme for payment.
By The Newsroom
Published 17th Jul 2007, 13:30 BST
Updated 8th Jun 2018, 03:31 BST

Points mean pounds (or Euros, confusingly). You can cut vegetation back on the dike sides, but only during the winter months, and as a combined result, this will have hindered the flow of water getting away.

Points can also be awarded for not cutting hedges regularly. So, you might also consider that the country lanes you enjoy driving down are becoming more dangerous because the hedges are overgrown and it is difficult to see round corners.

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A friend's daughter's house was flooded because, whilst the water was being pumped out of a nearby market town along their village beck, the banks of the beck, which had not been maintained for several years under ELS, gave way, and as a result, many houses were unnecessarily flooded.

In many instances, it appears that although the rainfall has been heavy, the systems might have coped if the maintenance of ditches, dikes, drains, banks etc. had not been neglected.

A neighbour who had cut a field of grass for hay the night before a torrential rainstorm covered his field in water found to his amazement five days later, when the water receded, that not a blade of grass was left. "I don't know what I thought would happen," he said, "but I thought there might be just a blade or two of grass left to make something of."

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette July 18

Related topics:West Sussex Gazette