Are we getting a fair share of the pot?

[Deleted]

Via the fishing licences issued to various parts of the country it should be possible to work out the concentrations of anglers in each area.
That said.
Does the spend by the EA on angling in each area of the country match the angling concentrations or is there an unequal North/South divide similar to what we see in other government distributions of capital resources?
*This question is not intended to be inflamatory but to simply ask as to whether we anglers and the Yorkshire E A are being allocated a fair pro-rata share of the pot based on our financial imput and not based on some obscure data like the miles of river we have in the area.

Secondly.
Does the region decide how best to use the monies allocated or are you directed nationally as to how to use the budget and could anglers get an opportunity to have imput into how portions of the budget (designed to improve rivers and ponds specifically for angling) are to be spent?

[envagencyyorkshire]

Q. Via the fishing licences issued to various parts of the country it should be possible to work out the concentrations of anglers in each area.
That said.
Does the spend by the EA on angling in each area of the country match the angling concentrations or is there an unequal North/South divide similar to what we see in other government distributions of capital resources?
*This question is not intended to be inflamatory but to simply ask as to whether we anglers and the Yorkshire E A are being allocated a fair pro-rata share of the pot based on our financial imput and not based on some obscure data like the miles of river we have in the area.

Secondly.
Does the region decide how best to use the monies allocated or are you directed nationally as to how to use the budget and could anglers get an opportunity to have imput into how portions of the budget (designed to improve rivers and ponds specifically for angling) are to be spent?

A. I’ve asked Garry Jones, one of our National management team, to help me answer this.

Rod licence sales and income are managed centrally, rather than on a regional basis. Some of the income is used to pay for the ‘behind the scenes’ support services that are needed to keep the Fisheries part of the Environment Agency running.

Remaining money, and other sources of funding, then get sent out to regions on the basis of need in that region. For rod licence income this decision is heavily influenced by rod licence sales.

In North-East region (Yorkshire, North Derbyshire, Northumberland) we get back about 67% of what we raise, with about 16% of this being allocated specifically for project work. For the percentage not allocated to project work, Regions are free to decide how to divide this up (between things like enforcement, or angling participation) in order to do what we’ve said we’ll do in our Corporate Strategy .

Our projects are almost all partnership projects, and usually need to be ‘match funded’ from another source. Our newsletter (available elsewhere on this website) gives a brief summary of the projects we are working on. If you, or anyone else reading this, has an idea for a project, please let us know and we’ll see what we can do to help. Similarly, don’t forget that we offer free fisheries management advice, so get in touch with us if you’d like our help.

We want to get your views on the work that we do, and how we go about doing it, and are using our evening meetings as well as this webchat to do this. Our next evening meeting (‘Fisheries Forum’) is in York on the 15th.

You can see further information on how your rod licence money is spent here

In case those shortcuts didn’t paste in properly the two websites I’ve referred to are:

Corporate Strategy www.environment-agency.gov.uk/aboutus/112323.aspx
Where Your Money Goes www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/recreation/fishing/106684.aspx

Pete Turner