Gavin Lane, CLA President, said: 

"Few farmers need telling that the best way to cope with hotter, drier summers is to store more water. But the planning and abstraction licencing systems make building reservoirs unnecessarily tricky and expensive.

 "Farmers need to spend an average of £45,000 to obtain permissions before they can even begin constructing a farm reservoir. Some applications sail through the planning process quickly using the existing permitted development right but others can take years or are stopped by requests for prohibitively expensive surveys. There's little consistency between local planning authorities

"Government must introduce a dedicated permitted development right for farm reservoirs. Farmers can then build them quickly and at lower cost. We need a review of various problems with abstraction licencing combined with farmers needing affordable loans and better-designed grants so they aren't waiting years for the solutions we need now.

"Andy Burnham should end the waste of farmers watching winter rain run away simply because the planning and abstraction licencing systems aren't working fast enough. He can streamline the systems, cut the cost and help farmers build the reservoirs they need before another dry summer turns delay into disaster."