Managing Flood Risk

Alok Sharma Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

Three months ago, the storm surge hit the east coast and caused considerable damage in a number of coastal communities including Lowestoft, in my constituency. Before Christmas I secured an Adjournment debate in which I highlighted the items of immediate concern. Today it is appropriate to review the situation, and to highlight what went well and the instances in which we can and must do better.

In Lowestoft, a small geographical area was hit very hard. The community rallied round and the area is gradually returning to normal, but many people will not be back in their homes for a number of weeks, and for some life will never be the same. The repairs to the sea defences have still not been completed, and it is a race against time to get the beaches open for the important tourism season. We need to learn lessons from the night of 5 December and consider how we can best manage flood risk, making the best possible use of the available resources, which will be limited. We must recognise that events such as those that we have witnessed, either directly or on television, will become more frequent.

There are three instances in which I believe that we should be doing things differently. First, we need a new framework for the management of flood risk from rivers. The Government’s management of flood risk must be simplified and streamlined. There is too much duplication of effort and inefficient use of resources, with funding shared between five levels of government. We need better co-ordination and simplification. All work related to flooding should ideally take place in one Department. Locally, a whole-river approach to flood management should be adopted, from source to the sea. Each catchment and each river is different, and each should be managed by local people, who invariably know best.

Since the scrapping of the National Rivers Authority in 1994, a more fragmented approach has been adopted, and we now need greater certainty and local flexibility. It is also important not to become fixated on specific ways of managing flood risk: it must be recognised that different solutions will be appropriate in different settings and on different rivers. I make this comment with specific regard to the issue of dredging. In some places it will solve a problem by creating additional capacity for holding water, while in others it may exacerbate a problem. In managing a river, it is important to use all the tools in the box, whether dredging, desilting, repairing of banks, the managing of vegetation downstream, slowing the flow, storing water or improving infiltration upstream.

There is a need for better and more regular ongoing maintenance with investment in pumps and drainage infrastructure. More licences should be granted to farmers to undertake regular minor work such as clearing blockages, desilting and vegetation maintenance, and I draw attention to my farming interests as detailed in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Homeowners and businesses should also be armed with the tools and the information needed to defend their properties. There is a need to build resilience into the defence of individual properties. The £5,000 repair and renew grant for affected homes and businesses can play a very important role in achieving this, whether through the fitting of flood boards, covers to air bricks and the insulation of valves to prevent the backflow of sewage.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

I held a public meeting last week on flooding issues in my constituency and those who are flooded welcomed this £5,000 repair and renew grant, but some who have not experienced internal flooding were concerned that they may do so in future. Does my hon. Friend share my view that the Government should consider introducing a scheme whereby they provide part-funding for those who want to make their homes resilient or have some kind of tax credit for that purpose?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I think Pitt was right when he said that the whole system had been too centralised and needed to be decentralised. The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee disagrees. She wrote a very rude comment about the way we enacted the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and did precisely what Pitt recommended. She said, “No, it was all terribly bad and a waste of money” and that she strongly believed it should all be centralised—I may be paraphrasing, and if she was here she would probably leap to her feet to say that what she had said was not so simplistic. Where local lead flood authorities are good, we are seeing the best sort of devolution of power and responsibility, and we need to see more of that. Where they are not living up to that, we should find ways of making it happen. We discovered through Exercise Watermark, for example, that some are not playing their part, and that some agencies are not fitting into that locally. Water companies were partly to blame at that time, but I do not know whether that is still the case.

[Alok Sharma]

I share West Berkshire council with my hon. Friend and our right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood). I, too, would like to put on the record my thanks to Carolyn Richardson and others who have done such a great job over the past few weeks. Local residents in Purley in my constituency have decided to form a flood action group as a way of getting local people together to liaise with the Environment Agency and others. Is that something my hon. Friend would recommend other communities look at, working together to find a local solution?

[Richard Benyon]

I applaud the residents of Purley, because I have seen that approach work not only in my constituency but right across the country. The National Flood Forum has a cut-and-paste organisation for local communities to pick up and run with. It is a superb organisation with real knowledge and expertise. I know that the Department and the Environment Agency will also assist local communities in setting up a flood forum. The difficulty is that communities that have never been flooded will be flooded. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) that there will be new flooding, as we all know, and it is in those communities that we want lead local flood authorities to start getting voluntary action going, with flood wardens, parish councils getting involved and local communities setting up those sorts of organisations.

I am guilty of not responding to the second point my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) made, on whether we should introduce a statutory activity. I blow hot and cold about Pitt’s recommendation to create a duty on fire and rescue services to prepare and be equipped to deal with flooding. In my constituency over the past few weeks, we have seen Tyne and Wear fire and rescue service, Cheshire fire and rescue service, East Yorkshire fire and rescue service and many others, all coming through the centrally controlled asset management register, which brings precisely these sorts of assets to our constituencies when we need them, and they are still there today doing wonderful work. Something is happening, and perhaps more can be done.