So a feasibility study is to be held into a flood defence scheme at a spot where a teenager died.

The study is being fast-tracked by the Environment Agency after 17-year-old Max Sullivan-Webb lost his life there during last week's floods.

But don't expect any immediate action to make the area safe.

The feasibility study, costing a staggering £30,000, will first have to establish whether a scheme is viable. With luck, the results may be available by September.

Then, presumably, the findings will meander their way through various committees or other talking shops.

A decision will be taken about whether the scheme is viable. The next question will be - can we find the money?

Then, finally, we might get a decision to start work.

What a rigmarole! Meanwhile, we will probably have had a dozen more floods, and more lives lost.

Feasibility studies on possible flood defences at this spot were carried out by West Oxfordshire District Council in 1995 and 2003.

Then the work was deemed to be too expensive. Can't we use those findings to save a bit of money on the current study?

Bureaucracy in this country is sometimes utterly mind-boggling.

We owe it to tragic Max to get the job done.