Future Flood Prevention

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

My interest in the issue of flooding started in 2007, when south Yorkshire was badly flooded. Of course, those events led to the Pitt review, which recommended better and more co-ordinated planning, improved resilience and more strategic planning decisions by local authorities with regard to water and its potential impacts. However, weaknesses have materialised in the delivery of the Pitt review and, on top of that, the flooding challenges remain.

Peak river flows could be more than twice their current levels in some English regions by 2070, and some 5 million people in England alone are at risk of flooding. The national flood resilience review established, through Met Office modelling, that it is plausible that over the next 10 years we could experience rainfall that is between 20% and 30% higher than usual. It was always likely, therefore, that the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of which I am a member, would return to this all-important topic. That decision was accelerated by the 2015-16 floods, which impacted so badly on Cumbria, Yorkshire and Somerset. The need to look again at the issue became imperative, especially in the context of the Government’s own flood resilience review.

I want to focus on one particular aspect of the Committee’s recommendations, namely the strategic approach that this country needs to take to flood risk management, with a special focus on the need for catchment-scale planning.

I was a member of the delegation that visited Holland, which was critical to framing the Committee’s recommendations. Our report focused heavily on that fact-finding visit, and every member was impressed by the rigorous approach taken by the Dutch to risk management. The Dutch system is clear and accountable—locally, regionally and nationally—and I am mightily disappointed that the Government were so quick to dismiss our recommendations, especially given the evidence we received that too much of what we do in England remains badly disjointed.

The Dutch model is particularly impressive in placing water at the heart of the country’s approach not just to water supply, but to strategic, spatial and economic planning. In other words, in Holland water—its management, its uses and its maintenance as an essential environmental resource—is seen as a No. 1 priority in the country, and so it should be in the UK. A start would be to have more of a catchment-scale approach to planning for flood risk management. That would involve integrating the widest possible range of both hard and soft engineering measures, including natural flood management.

Evidence presented to the Committee underlined that point. Some witnesses considered that the Environment Agency relied too much on constructing defences at the point of flood impacts on town centres, and did not give adequate consideration to preventing flood waters from building up at source and along the river path. The Government’s own advisory bodies, the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change and Natural England, told the Committee that downstream flood prevention and resilience measures must be accompanied by action upstream.

All the evidence is that the Government are not taking sufficiently seriously the need to consider larger, catchment-scale investment. For instance, their flood resilience review encourages bids for its core cities pilot, which refers principally to

“financing flood resilience in urban areas, harnessing private investment to design new defences while delivering economic development and regeneration for the local area.”

There is absolutely no mention whatsoever of the need for a catchment-scale response.

In that context, Sheffield is developing its own scheme. Although it is worthy in some respects, it nevertheless fails to provide a robust mix of hard and soft measures. For instance, it provides no evidence of how it will make its water storage proposals work, and it provides no evidence that landowners will co-operate with it. References to natural flood management measures, such as tree planting and catchment restoration at source, are perfunctory. More than anything else, there is nothing in the scheme that would cover Barnsley, Doncaster or Rotherham, so it is not a catchment-scale scheme. If we do not stop or slow the flow in Barnsley, what is the point of putting in place measures in Sheffield, because all we will do is push the water further downstream to Doncaster? The Don is the spine of the South Yorkshire water network and it would be ideal for a catchment-level response.

I will conclude by making the point that I do not blame Sheffield for the approach it has taken. It has been encouraged to take such an approach by the Government, who seem more interested in leveraging in private finance for the purpose of delivering traditional, narrowly focused flood risk management schemes and in finding other pots of money than in taking the holistic view emerging from all the evidence presented to us on the Select Committee. I call on the Government to think again, and to support our recommendation on the need for large catchment-scale schemes that would go with the grain of all the emerging evidence.

I would have liked to talk about other aspects of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report, such as resilience and the role of sustainable urban drainage systems in managing flood risk, but time is very limited. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope that she and the Government will think again about the need to consider proper catchment-scale responses to this issue and the need for a more integrated approach to flood management in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Lady speaks with passion on this matter because it has affected properties in her constituency. I stress to her and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) that the Environment Agency does work with local councils. The guidance for new developments in the national planning policy framework is clear. Not only has the Environment Agency’s advice been accepted in 98% of applications, but there is a clear duty to consider the risk to existing housing stock. I am aware of the specific situation to which the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) refers, and I have passed it on to the Department for Communities and Local Government so that it can consider how to make things clear both in planning permission and in planning enforcement.

[Angela Smith]

I am pleased to hear about those representations to the DCLG. Will the Minister also make representations about making the use of sustainable drainage systems mandatory in new developments?

[Dr Coffey]

Councils are expected to do that for developments of 10 homes or more, and I hope that the hon. Lady will see progress in her local area. She referred to the situation in Sheffield earlier, and I can assure her that that was not what I heard when I met businesses and people to talk about the potential future scheme in Sheffield. However, one outcome of the national flood resilience review is that we want Sheffield to be a pioneer in how we bring in private investment.

[Angela Smith]

rose—

[Dr Coffey]

I will not give way because I need to make progress and to discuss other important matters to which other hon. Members referred.

Returning to funding and the estimates, this Government continue to play a key role in improving the protection of those at risk of flood. The historic £2.5 billion over six years to better protect more than 300,000 properties from flooding and coastal erosion is an important increase. A key change is that, instead of the annual budget and the hand-to-mouth existence whereby the Environment Agency was not sure whether a project would be finished, a long-term approach to spending allows the Environment Agency to do the appropriate planning and get on with work instead of guessing how long something will take. We have also increased maintenance spending in real terms over this Parliament to over £1 billion.

The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) referred to partnership funding. I want to point out that it used to be that a scheme would either get all the funding or nothing. There was no way for a wider range of schemes to be covered. I recognise what she said about the extent of other public sector sources of money, but it matters that LEPs can and have made bids in order to increase economic development and are able to partner that funding. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) said and I will follow up on the issue he raised.

I welcome the support for the use of natural flood risk management and the catchment-based approach that we are developing to prevent floods or to mitigate them where they do occur. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton welcomed the fact that we are introducing a new reporting measure on natural flood management in future spending years from 2018-19. We have allocated a further £15 million specifically for natural flood management schemes. I have not yet seen the candidates for those schemes, but the Environment Agency is working them up and I am aware of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s recommendation of one catchment scale to test out the principles. That approach is already being used in some flood prevention schemes, but it is right to have appropriate criteria for measuring.

On planning for future resilience, the hon. Member for Wakefield referred to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report and the House should be aware that we are now better prepared to deal with such issues. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton said that I am unable to change the weather—I am certainly not divine in that regard—but we are working hard to ensure that the lessons of previous floods feed into the national flood resilience review. I have chaired weekly meetings, which have only just finished, to get progress updates on what is happening with the different infrastructure providers. We have also re-established the inter-ministerial group on flooding, which meets quarterly for a broader response to flood prevention.

We have allowed the Environment Agency to invest in mobile flood defences. It now has 25 miles of temporary defences and half a million sandbags located across seven key areas, and it can deploy them flexibly around the country. The Army has also been made available. Troops were deployed in Lincolnshire and Norfolk at the request of the local resilience forums, but Suffolk and Essex decided that they did not need the help of the armed forces in the recent coastal surge. Overall, the country will be better protected and services for our communities will be more resilient to flooding. Over the next year, we intend to focus on surface water, which is a significant source of flooding, particularly in cities and urban areas. Again, that will involve collaboration between the Environment Agency, lead local flood authorities, the water sector, and other stakeholders with an interest in managing the risk.

On working together, we all recognise that flooding affects many aspects of our lives. We carefully considered the report’s recommendations on structures, but we do not agree that there is a need for substantial change—that does not mean to say that there are no ways to make it work even better. The local flood risk management action plan, which the Government published on 24 January, is a good example, and it aims to promote best practice and enable all lead local flood authorities to carry out their responsibilities as effectively and efficiently as possible. Eight councils have not started their plan, and I have written to them indicating that, if some action is not undertaken by the end of March, we will use our powers to get the plans going for them.

We should recognise that the current system means that, since 2005—stretching back into the last Labour Government—more than 500,000 properties are better defended today. I want to get it across that, right now, structural change would get in the way of delivering the flood prevention, resilience and other measures that will be undertaken over the next few years. Again, I am not convinced that just changing the name of who does what will improve the way that different bodies work together.

On the fire services, to which the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) referred, I can reaffirm that the Government have no plans for a statutory duty to deal with flooding. Fire services already respond to flooding as part of their general duties under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 and the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and in response to the risks set out in their integrated risk management plans. I pay tribute to those fire authorities that moved around the country following the recent coastal surge. It was well done, and in particular I saw the firefighters from Hampshire who came up to help Suffolk and Norfolk. That shows that the system is working well.