Watercourse Management Division (Hansard, 25 October 1996)

§ Mr. Ancram

The watercourse management division of the Department of Agriculture has been established as an executive agency from 1 October 1996. It will be known as the Rivers Agency.

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I have set a number of key performance targets for the agency to achieve in its first six months. These are as follows:

To construct or refurbish 1.4 km of urban flood defences.
To increase the length of designated sea defences having appropriate standards of protection to 27 per cent.
To accommodate increased storm run-off from 448 hectares of development land.
To replace/refurbish 38 per cent. of dangerous culverts identified at 1 October 1996.
To complete maintenance works on 330 km of urban watercourses and 1,020 km of rural watercourses.
To extend or provide new water recreation facilities at 17 sites throughout Northern Ireland.
To issue substantive replies to 75 per cent. of written enquiries within 15 working days of receipt.
To respond to 100 per cent. of schedule 6 applications within three months.
To aim to have all navigation locks operable for at least 90 per cent. of the period.
To maintain expenditure within allocated cash limits.
To achieve at least 4 per cent. efficiency savings in the 1996–97 financial year.
To commission a scoping study on the feasibility of introducing private finance in capital works.
To implement phase 1 of the development of management information systems and databases to establish unit costs for protecting land from flooding and maintaining drainage benefit to agricultural land.

Copies of the framework document which sets out the terms within which the agency will operate, will be placed in the Library, along with its first corporate and business plan.