If you ask most farmers in the UK what last year was like I think they would probably all use the word ‘wet’. Not just in terms of the amount of annual rainfall, but the patterns are showing more concentration. This was evidenced for 2023 in the State of the Climate report as follows: ‘March, July, October and December 2023 were all top ten wettest months in the UK monthly rainfall series from 1836; the first year this has happened for four separate months’.
This has created more pressure to stop flooding and various initiatives to control water flows. The Environment Agency published research on 12 February 2025 in which the section on rivers and flood plains contained examples of using rivers in the landscape to create control over water flow and to store water while at the same time creating good habitat.
For farmers and landowners this comes at a cost, and there are various ways that this can be funded. Some examples of the ways the land works can be funded are listed below.
Here is my article on Croner which discusses some aspects of this.