Flood Response

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Again, my experience is of how extraordinarily resilient communities are, but, very often, they will not admit that they are under great pressure. I went to see a number of farmers in Yorkshire last year. There was a facade of coping, but I was very struck by the powerful sense of devastation felt at losing livestock and all that went with it. I understand that and will pass it back.

On catchments, in both the Agriculture Bill and the Environment Bill the whole concept will be for the farmer to have an ELM, which we will bring forward, but some of the great advances have been seen where there are much wider clusters and you are thinking about how you manage that wider catchment area. A very good example is Slowing the Flow at Pickering, but there are other ways of getting ownership that goes much wider than a number of landowners or farmers, which gives you an advantage. The schemes will be trialled and co-designed with ranges of farmers and landowners so that we get that advantage of working with the countryside and with natural capital.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may take the Minister back to the response that he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. The kind of building that goes on in towns and cities—this is particularly true in London—can exacerbate the risk of flooding. I give as an example the frequent removal of front gardens in densely populated urban areas and the substitution of hardstanding, which is usually to accommodate cars. When there is inundation, the effect is often not on the houseowner who has done that but on others. I am old enough to remember a serious example in London about 40 years ago when a very hot summer was followed by extreme rain, and the impact of water running off Hampstead Heath was that many houses at the bottom of that incline were flooded. As we know, that sort of thing is more likely to happen as extreme weather events become more common. Does the Minister think that it is time for planners to take a more active part in preventing that kind of low-level intervention by individual houseowners who exacerbate the risk of flooding?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is a very important point; we should all be playing our part. I would like to say to people who want to concrete-over or tarmac their front garden, “Think about it. It might even be your house that is inundated.”. It is important that we look much more at this. I shall pass it back to MHCLG, because I know that it has been considered in your Lordships’ House. Each of us can find ways of reducing run-off and having permeable surfaces. If we need to have hardstanding, how about using gravel or choosing other ways in which we might reduce flooding which might affect either our own house or, perhaps more worryingly, those of our neighbours’?