Flood Risk
Above all else, our main concern with maintenance of watercourses is to ensure that risk to properties from flooding is minimised wherever possible. One of our roles as the Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA) for Suffolk is to manage the flood risk from ordinary watercourses and surface water. Ordinary watercourses are all watercourses which are not designated as 'main river', and you can find out whether a watercourse is a main river on the Environment Agency website.
Ownership
Although most watercourses in Suffolk are privately owned, we do own a small number of ditches and channels across the county. Often these are part of a roadside verge, for example. If we need to maintain a watercourse and have not already done so you can report the issue to us.
However, the Highways Act (1980) gives us powers to drain roads into private ditches providing that we do not cause any damage to private land or property. This does not mean that we are responsible for the maintenance of the watercourse. This responsibility is still the landowner's. In the past we may have cleared some private watercourses as a gesture of goodwill, but we are no longer able to continue with this practice.
Enforcement
If a watercourse is blocked and the landowner refuses to remove the blockage, we may begin legal action against the landowner to ensure that a flow is maintained in the channel. You can find more details on legal enforcement on our riparian ownership page.