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Hedge work near the Thames or a watercourse in Gravesend: when the Environment Agency, the council or the drainage board needs to be involved.

Gravesend is a riverside town, and many gardens and fields in the borough back onto the tidal Thames, a stream or a drainage ditch. Ordinary hedge trimming does not need a permit, but work that could damage a bank, block a channel or disturb a flood defence can. Which body you deal with depends on what kind of watercourse it is.

What the law says

The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 regulate "flood risk activities" on or near a main river. The River Thames is a tidal main river. Under Schedule 25 the regulated activities include building structures in, over or under a main river, dredging, and any activity within 8 metres of the bank of a non-tidal main river (16 metres if the river is tidal) that is likely to damage or endanger the stability of the bank, or of a flood defence or culvert, or to interfere with access to it. The Environment Agency's guidance gives the same distances, and says you do not need a permit if the work qualifies as an exempt activity and you register it before you start (registration is free).

Schedule 25 does not list hedge trimming or cutting vegetation as a flood risk activity in itself, and the Environment Agency's list of excluded activities does not mention it either. What matters is the effect of the work: lopping a hedge on a garden boundary is very unlikely to endanger a bank, but grubbing out roots, digging near the bank, burning or heaping cuttings on it, or working on or near a sea wall or flood defence could. If the work might go beyond routine trimming near a main river, contact the Environment Agency before you start and ask whether a permit or exemption is needed.

Operating a flood risk activity without a permit or a registered exemption is an offence, and the Environment Agency can serve enforcement notices and prosecute. The offence is the unpermitted activity, not the size of the job.

A quick check before hedge work near water

1. Is it a main river? Use the Environment Agency's main river map. The tidal Thames is one. Whether a smaller stream near you is a main river is something to confirm on the map or with the Environment Agency, not to assume.
2. Is the work routine trimming, or something more? Trimming a hedge from your own side, with the cuttings taken away, is ordinary maintenance. Digging, removing roots or stumps, regrading the bank or working on a wall or defence is not, and needs the Environment Agency first.
3. Is it an ordinary watercourse instead? Streams, field ditches and drainage channels that are not main rivers are ordinary watercourses. The Environment Agency's flood risk permit does not apply to them, but the Land Drainage Act 1991 does. Section 23 needs written consent from the lead local flood authority (Kent County Council) or the internal drainage board before anyone erects or alters a culvert, weir or other obstruction to the flow, and hedge cuttings or roots dumped in a channel can amount to an obstruction.
4. Is the land in an internal drainage district? The North Kent Marshes Internal Drainage Board covers low-lying land in the eastern part of the borough, and its byelaws can add duties for landowners next to its watercourses. Contact the board directly if your land is in its district.
5. Is the land designated? Parts of the Thames estuary and the marshes carry wildlife designations such as SSSIs, which need Natural England's consent for some operations even where no Environment Agency permit is required. Check the Natural England Magic map before any work near them.

These checks run alongside, not instead of, the Hedgerow Regulations 1997, Tree Preservation Order and conservation area rules, and the nesting-season law.

Keep the bank and the channel clear

Anyone whose land adjoins a watercourse is a riparian owner, with responsibilities to let water flow past freely and not to let their land, or what grows on it, obstruct it. Letting a bankside hedge grow into and over a ditch, or leaving cuttings where they can wash in, can cause blockages and flooding for neighbours downstream. Keeping bankside hedges trimmed back from the edge of the channel is a sensible part of that responsibility.

Sources: Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/1154), Schedule 25 (legislation.gov.uk); GOV.UK, "Flood risk activities: environmental permits" and "Excluded flood risk activities: environmental permits"; Land Drainage Act 1991, section 23; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1; North Kent Marshes Internal Drainage Board.