Flood Risk: London

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flood risk in London.

In July last year, my constituency of Kensington suffered devastating flooding. It was not only Kensington: the adjoining boroughs of Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham, which are represented by the hon. Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), were also badly affected.

I want to give a sense of the magnitude of the flooding. On that Monday evening, London Fire Brigade received almost 1,800 flooding calls. If related calls are included, that figure reaches 3,000, which is the highest number that the London Fire Brigade control room has ever taken. I did a survey of the most affected wards in my constituency, and although people in almost 500 homes replied to say that they had been flooded, the reality is likely to be multiples of that number.

Flooding has truly devastating consequences for those who suffer it, and I will give a few examples. I heard from one lady who had just bought her first home. The floodwater in the basement was almost up to the ceiling with only a few inches spare. Many constituents—not just one or two, but multiple constituents—are still out of their homes nine months later. A lot of the basement properties in my constituency are actually owned by housing associations, and residents in those basement properties have lost absolutely everything they own—from clothing and photos to important documents, everything has gone.

Constituents of mine were flooded not just in July, but three or four times over the past 10 to 20 years. That is an important point, because although July was a truly devastating flood, it was not a one-off. The flood that I am referring to happened on 12 July, but London saw another devastating flood only two weeks later on 25 July. There was another in 2007, and I should declare a personal interest in that one, as my own house was flooded on that occasion. Those were three devastating floods, but we also had floods in 2004, 2005, 2016 and 2018.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She is pursuing this issue on behalf of her constituents, as I am on behalf of mine, and she has hit the nail on the head by saying that we have had previous floods and we were told that the problem had been solved, but it has not. Does she agree there is a danger that, again, we have a partial, patchwork solution—flooding local improvement projects here, one or two schemes there—when what we need is a comprehensive solution so that our constituents do not live at constant risk, particularly in the summer months, of their homes being devastated in this way?

[Felicity Buchan]

This is one of the rare occasions on which the hon. Gentleman and I completely agree. We need a comprehensive solution, which I will go on to talk about: we need a short-term solution, because my constituents are very anxious about this summer since most of this flash flooding has occurred in July, August and September, and we also need a long-term strategy. My constituents, like the hon. Gentleman’s, simply cannot live with this risk hanging over them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

As pointed out, these so-called never events appear to be happening more frequently. Given the combination of climate change with other things, we need to look fundamentally at how the system is joined up. I think the hon. Member for Hammersmith articulated that this does not need a “bit” approach but an overall approach. Hopefully, hon. Members will see where the thinking is going.

That overwhelming meant that we got complex localised surface water flooding. Water does not stop. It knows no bounds. It does not stop at a constituency edge or a road end. Indeed, many of our towns and villages have lanes called Water Lane, for example, because we know that is the natural course of water. It happens quickly; it is difficult to predict; it can be exacerbated by the impenetrable surfaces that my hon. Friend spoke about, and it can overwhelm the drainage networks. Everyone—all those agencies, individuals, local authorities, Ofwat, the Environment Agency—has their part to play in understanding the flood risk and the mitigating actions they should take, as do the householders, to ensure they can best protect themselves and their property.

The statutory responsibility to manage flood risk falls to the risk management authorities such as the Environment Agency and the lead local flood authorities and water companies. As my hon. Friend well knows, the Environment Agency has the strategic overview role, and while it does not lead on surface water flooding, it provides support and advice and facilitates partnerships. I know that she has met with all the agencies and with Sarah Bentley at Thames Water to champion her constituents’ challenges, but I would like to reassure her that that cross-partnership work is going on.

Lead local flood authorities have the operational lead in managing local flood risk, including surface water risk. They are best placed to understand, mitigate and respond to these risks. Working with local communities and with the invaluable information that Members and other bodies bring forward, as part of the local flood risk management strategy, they are driving down and making sure that we get the right mitigations in the right places to protect people.

The Government fully support and encourage greater collaboration and partnership working. Following the flooding, many organisations stepped forward this time to work together to make sure we got the right result. As everybody has said, this is not a situation where responsibility can be passed on. There is a task and finish group going on. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), covers this part of the portfolio and will be meeting with the deputy Mayor shortly to hear more about this work. She will challenge them to ensure that the right work is going on in the right places to drive the right results and make sure there is ambition.

What I have heard from everybody is that they want there to be the ambition to protect constituents. The task and finish group has been working on a range of issues, including better communication. As was alluded to, we know that many residents do not have English as a first language. We know that there were challenges because of transient populations, and a sub-group on communications has been set up. I have been assured that the failures seen last summer are noted and being addressed and rectified. I believe the call centre went down, and there were various other challenges.

[Andy Slaughter]

It would be useful if we could have the details of the task and finish group and have communications with it. Yes, work is going on, as the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) indicated, but there is a real lack of trust, because we have been through all this before. We have had sewer and surface flooding, and the solutions are only partial flap valves that really deal only with sewer flooding. We cannot allow this to happen again. We need a comprehensive solution. It may cost a lot of money, but we have to protect the thousands of people who are vulnerable. To echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) made about Flood Re, will that cover our constituencies as it covers rural constituencies?

[Jo Churchill]

Flood Re is a scheme jointly administrated by Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and it has covered some 335,000 properties. I am not entirely sure of the scope of things, but I will make sure that Members are written to, because it is a valid point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, the challenge—one that I have had in my own constituency—is that when the work is done, the reinsuring becomes either prohibitively expensive or in some cases virtually impossible. I will make sure that I write to Members on that matter.

Thames Water commissioned an independent review of the performance of its network, including the Maida Vale flood defence scheme and the cancelled Counters Creek scheme. As my hon. Friend said, it also committed £10 million in property flood resilience measures, including those non-return valves. Counters Creek is arguably not a single solution to this. It was designed for specific storm events, not the rain bomb or the intensity of the events of last summer, and it has been argued that it would not have prevented the flooding.

I would like to reassure my hon. Friend that that has been looked into. Further investigations were done by Thames Water, and it implemented the flooding local improvement project to reduce the risk posed by the non-return valves. The challenge with rainwater is that it is almost like watching popcorn. We cannot be sure where the flood is going to occur, because of the different meteorological effects and all the rest of it.