Please provide the annual expenditure by Devon County Council for each of the financial years from 2015 to present on maintaining rural drainage ditches.
I am particularly interested in the expenditure that is not part of the cutting of notches in the embankment from roads into the rural drainage ditches. I would like to be able to identify the savings that Devon is now achieving by the shifting of maintenance to landowners after 2019.
Work undertaken by Devon County Council cleaning ditches alongside the public highway is funded from the Highway Maintenance “Cleaning” budget. This budget funds works including carriageway siding and ploughing, annual cleaning of grips easements and buddleholes, and autumn leaf sweeping in addition to ditch cleaning. Information is held on expenditure on the overall “Cleaning” budget, but information is not held on the individual work types such as ditch cleaning.