Storm Henk

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for coming to answer questions on the Statement. He referred to the Pitt review of 2007, in which Sir Michael Pitt clearly stated that we should end the automatic right to connect. A lot of the floodwater will contain sewage: it is sewage on farmland and in people’s houses. When is he going to introduce the consultation that will lead to the implementation of Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act that we were promised would be implemented this year? That is now absolutely urgent.

The noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches mentioned mapping and building inappropriately on flood plains. Can my noble friend give the House an assurance today that we are ensuring that local authorities are mapping to ensure that nothing is built on zone 3b land, where building should be an absolute no-no?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

On my noble friend’s last point, 99% of planning permissions given in the last financial year were done in accordance with the Environment Agency’s advice on whether those developments should go ahead. Over the last 50 years there have been some appallingly bad decisions and we have seen housing going where it should not. But I absolutely do not agree, if that is what my noble friend is saying, that we should say that there should be no building on flood plains, because that would mean having no new buildings in cities such as York, Leeds, London and Exeter. Of course, it is not what you build but how you build it and how resilient it is, so building in resilience is vital.

I do not know a precise date for the final stage of our implementation of the Pitt review—a point that my noble friend raised—but as soon as I can find out I will drop her a line.