Lincolnshire landowners who ‘neglect’ their rivers are making flooding worse - claim

Some landowners are making flooding worse by ‘neglecting’ their rivers and streams, a councillor has claimed.

Anyone who owns land next to a watercourse has a legal duty to maintain it and stop it from becoming blocked – a concept known as ‘riparian ownership’.

However, Lincolnshire County Council, which acts as the county’s lead flooding authority, has no power to force this work to happen.

There are fears that poorly-maintained rivers could lead to future problems following the devastating Storm Babet and Henk, as well as widespread flooding in January 2025.

There were calls for action at a meeting at West Lindsey District Council on Tuesday (April 15).

Deputy leader Lesley Rollings (Lib Dem) said: “The best of the farming community take their duties in clearing watercourses really seriously.

“But it’s clear that in some districts, the watercourses have been neglected over the decades.

“There is a lot of neglect, and some riparian owners are not doing their jobs at all.”

Matthew Harrison, the council’s flood and water manager, explained the authority’s approach to dealing with riparian owners.

“Our starting point is always to engage and try to resolve matters amicably. However, that doesn’t always work,” he told the meeting.

“Taking legal action can be time consuming and expensive. We can’t force anyone, but we can use our role to speak to the right people and work with partners.”

He said it was clear ‘extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, and we need to adapt and respond to them’.

The flooding in Storm Babet (October 2023) and Storm Henk (January 2024) was ‘off the scale, and affected the whole county’, he added

“The flooding earlier this year in January was also quite significant, and showed that these events weren’t a one-off.

“We had learnt some hard lessons from Babet and Henk, as we have never dealt with that scale before.

“A lot of improvements were made to reporting systems such as Fix My Street, and they worked much better in January 2025.”