Hi, I posted this first sequence of three photos a while ago. As of Monday this week, following months of campaigning, meetings, letters from the Angling Trust and the resultant agreement from the team originally responsible; some pretty good repair works have been completed in time for spawning season.

There has also been a future commitment offered to tackle the fish passage on the 3 weirs in the affected section.

How it was before:
Before:


During - notice coppiced trees and preservation of some cross-sectional channel diversity as well as variation in bed substrate particle sizes - habitat would recover reasonably well fairly quickly


After - Oh dear



Following agreed mitigation works (pictured in high water following Monday and Tuesday's rain):

one of the main problems with the EA is they dont get the different groups working together, ops delivery take a flood risk management view working to a tight budget.

Yep, but it seems that the good result here is intended to lead on to more standardised practices across England and Wales.

The Ops and FRM guys and gals in our region are already working much more closely with Fisheries and Biodiversity (as well as local angling stakeholders). There has been a shift from dredging of bed material to lighter touch coppicing of some trees (but not wholesale removal of root wads and clear felling).

This is progress and I hope it encourages people to write the letters, emails etc. to get a good all round result.

It should even save Ops money (generally having to do less whilst still minimising bottlenecks - as well as getting to realise the benefits of structure (like stable fallen trees) in the channel in spreading and lowering the floodwater peak flows).

Absolute transformation, T