Managing Flood Risk

Damian Collins Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Like all Members in this debate, I would like to set out some observations and lessons that I believe can be drawn from the winter flooding, but before I do that I would like to add my thanks to the local Environment Agency team, particularly Andrew Pearce, who heads it, and Ian Nunn, whom I have met and corresponded with over recent weeks. Regardless of Members’ views on how well the agency strategically dealt with some of the issues it faced, there is no doubt that it is full of a lot of extremely hard-working people who have worked long hours and given up their weekends and holidays over the winter to try to help the communities they serve, and they deserve to be congratulated and thanked for that work.

Of the constituencies with the highest flood risks in the country, mine ranks in the top 10, and that is principally because of the risk of coastal flooding to the Romney marshes, a stretch of land that is not unlike the Somerset levels in that it has many areas which are at or below sea level, and it needs to be defended and maintained all the time from the risk of flooding both from rainwater falling on to the marsh directly and from the coast.

We have been protected this winter from major coastal flooding by the coastal storms because of the large investment by the EA in the coastal defences, particularly the sea wall at Dymchurch, and I was pleased to hear that in the new spending round the EA will be investing in the beach defences at Littlestone. I was also pleased to see how quickly it responded after the winter storms to replace the shingle defences along the Hythe bay coast.

Many Members have talked about the importance of local partnerships in dealing with flood risk. I would like to highlight the work of the Defend Our Coast organisation that both myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) have worked with over the last four years. It helped to co-ordinate the response from the local authorities, the local community and the EA so as to understand where the risks were, and I know my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) met Defend Our Coast when he was a Minister and can vouch for what a fine organisation it is. However, the risk this year has not come from flooding from the sea. Instead it has come from the potential of flooding on the marsh and in the Elham valley from the River Nailbourne.

There are some simple lessons that can be drawn from the experience of this winter, particularly on Romney marsh. There is no mystery to keeping the Romney marsh from flooding. It has been designed to manage large amounts of water. To keep the water moving, there need to be pumps when the water gets too high and ditches need to be clear to push the water out, ultimately into the sea, through the main drainage canals.

There are a few very important areas of work that have to be done well and consistently in order to make that happen. First, the drainage ditches must be kept clear, especially of the build-up of reeds. That needs to be done methodically and all the time. It does not require the ditches to be dredged. The regular cutting of reeds serves to remove silt and keeps the waterways moving.

This work is done by two bodies: the Romney marsh internal drainage board and the EA, with the agency taking responsibility for the larger watercourses. I would pose the question, however, as to whether we should have one body that deals with all this work in a co-ordinated fashion, and whether it would be better for the local internal drainage board to take over the responsibility for all the cutting on the marsh, thereby recouping some of the money it pays to the EA to do that work for it. Sometimes the drainage board will cut smaller ditches that run up to the larger ones and then stop because that then becomes the responsibility of a different agency. It seems to me that it would be more efficient to have one body that is responsible for this work.

The other important area is pumping. All Members have talked about the need to pump water. When there is a build-up of water on flat land, we need to get it off and get it moving. The EA has done a fantastic job in getting pumps installed to keep water moving on Romney marsh. It has installed 15 pumps during the course of the winter flooding. On one occasion I had a meeting with the agency and the internal drainage board on a Friday afternoon to see what more we could do to get more pumps in place to relieve the pressure on residents in Lydd, and most pumps were in place on the Monday. They were therefore very responsive.

One reason why we needed the additional pumps, however, was that some of the older pumps in place on the marsh had stopped working. Maintenance is important. There will need to be substantial capital investment at some point in the near future in some of the older pumps. This investment will save money because the need to bring on relief pumps at short notice often costs more than maintaining the ones we have. We will have to consider where the extra capital investment will come from for the pumping equipment on the marsh. Having efficient pumps working well and the ditches kept clear is a cost-effective and efficient way of ensuring the water gets off and away as quickly asit needs to.

Co-ordination between different services is another issue. People have spoken about the need for co-ordination between the EA, the emergency services and local councils, and I would also include organisations such as UK Power Networks. We have had incidents where, because of storms, there has been a power outage, and therefore power that was being supplied to one of the pumps has gone down, yet when the EA sought to take that up with UK Power Networks, as the responsible body, it might as well have been calling a call centre. There did not seem to be a fast-track response mechanism whereby the EA could speak immediately to someone at UK Power Networks who could tackle the problem. That led to too long a period of time before action could be taken to get the pumps working again or before going to the extra expense of relief pumps being brought in because some of the main pumps had failed. How we build resilience into the network by having better co-ordination between UK Power Networks and the EA is a very important question.

There must also be greater clarity about the roles of the local authorities and the EA, and sometimes also the Highways Agency when there is flooding on roads or water running off roads because the drains and ditches have not been maintained properly. It must be clear who is responsible. Constituents of mine in East Brabourne were affected. They dealt with the situation directly themselves by paying for the relief measures that needed to be put in place. The question of who is responsible for this work needs to be addressed, however. Who should be doing this work on a regular basis? When there is a crisis, do residents know who are the first people to go to? I do not think it is clear, and sometimes this basic maintenance work falls down because of a breakdown in communication between different local agencies. That is relatively easy to fix.

There is no doubt that we have had a huge amount of rain. One resident I met in East Brabourne, Oliver Trowell, has lived in his house for more than 80 years and he had never seen flooding like it—I hope he does not see it again. Residents in the Elham valley, where I live, say that the level of water in the River Nailbourne is such that it may be decades before we see the same level again, but we are having to deal with it. We need to build in elements of stronger local resilience, ensure that the maintenance work is done and consider how the capital investment in some of the basic pumping equipment can be put in place over the next few years to ensure that when the next big winter flood comes we have all the local defences we need in place, the resilience built in and good co-ordination between the emergency services. That is the best way to make sure that the money the Environment Agency is investing in tackling flooding is having the best possible impact and providing the maximum possible benefit to local communities. That is the best way to plan for the future risk of flooding, which we know will inevitably come.