SENIOR executives at the Environment Agency face new controversy after it emerged last night that they received five-figure “performance bonuses” shortly before the recent floods hit Britain.

Baroness Young, the quango’s chief executive, got a bonus of about £24,000 on top of her £163,000 salary. A further eight executives, including the director of water management, shared in the bonus handout last month. The average paid to each executive was equivalent to 10% of their salaries, although Young received 15%.

Details of the bonuses were to be revealed in the agency’s annual report, which was expected to be released last week but publication has been delayed due to the floods.

Board minutes also show that the agency’s top executives privately expressed strong concerns last September about the country’s preparedness for serious floods.

At a meeting on September 20 the board “expressed concern over the inadequacy of evacuation plans in some areas of England and Wales and believed that there may be a serious risk of loss of life in significant flood events”.

Gloucestershire, where thousands of homes have been flooded and at least three people have died, was one of the local authorities that did not have an evacuation plan. Tewkesbury borough council, which covers one of the worst-hit towns, had also failed to make full preparations.

Young, a 59-year-old Labour peer, has warned that water bills will have to rise to cover the costs of increasing Britain’s protection against flooding. Her comments came as residents in the affected areas were braced for heavy rainfall last night. Police urged people to stay at home and not to travel because of fears of further flooding. Severe flood warnings were issued for the Severn and Avon and 20,000 sandbags were distributed yesterday.

In Tewkesbury, firemen recovered a body, the third known victim of the Gloucestershire floods. It was feared to be that of Mitchell Taylor, 19, a local barman missing since last weekend.

The flooding of the Mythe waterworks near Tewkesbury has left 340,000 people without running water and the situation is likely to last for days. There are fears floodwaters are becoming dangerously contaminated because sewers are not flood-proof. Tests have shown high levels of the deadly E coli bug and other bacteria in floodwater, sparking fears of disease.

The disclosure of the bonuses will add to anger over the crisis. Professor Dieter Helm, a flood expert at Oxford University, said: “The management of flood defences in recent years has been a sorry tale of budget cuts, failure to act on planning policies and inadequate precautionary measures. At the centre lies the Environment Agency.”

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman, said: “I very much hope they are not trying to sneak through large bonuses at a time when they would be very much in the firing line over some of the work that was not done in the run-up to the floods.

“It is rather worrying the Environment Agency board signed off the accounts in perfectly good time to present them to parliament before the recess on Thursday, yet there seems to have been an unaccountable delay.”

The bonuses are based on performance targets. On July 11 a board meeting of the agency, which also has responsibility for fighting pollution and protecting wildlife, was told it had met 42 key targets and had missed only three of its objectives – including the failure to “secure funding”. This had allowed the executives to get their bonuses in June.

Most of the targets set for the agency are unconnected to floods or environmental emergencies. For example, executives had to put in place plans to tackle the decline in eels and “increase focus on a performance management culture through developing our scorecard”.

Board minutes show that throughout 2006 and 2007 senior executives expressed concern over the state of Britain’s flood defences. On July 12, 2006, it was recorded that “urban drainage was an urgent area for action”.

By September 2006 the board had been warned that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs intended to cut its funding by £14m. Sir John Harman, the agency’s chairman, wrote to David Miliband, then the environment secretary, to “express concern”.

Executives said the budgetary cuts represented “a significant threat to effective business management”. The minutes continue: “It is unclear how adequate flood emergency plans are and how often they are being reviewed; some local authorities indicated their evacuation plans do not cover the risk of flooding, even though the area may be at risk of flooding.”

In November 2006 the chairman wrote to Miliband to highlight “priority” projects that would not be delivered because of the budget cut. These included a programme to map areas at risk of flooding; cuts in channel clearing and maintenance; and reductions in studies and data collection that would “impact on future ability to warn and protect the right properties”.

On March 21, 2007 the board accepted it had not got enough money to respond adequately to floods: “We are still a long way short of where all the studies tell us we need to be to meet real needs for warning and protection against floods.”

A spokeswoman for the Environment Agency defended the bonuses yesterday “The flood planning worked well but some areas were just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of water. The bonuses were rewarded to reflect success and performance across a range of targets. They are modest compared to other parts of the public sector and private sector,” she said. Brian Jennings, 49, who turned up at a flooded road in full uniform and driving a car with flashing blue lights, has been accused of impersonating a firefighter in Tewkesbury. He has been charged with obstructing an emergency worker and remanded in custody.

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