Flooding (Somerset)

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood, and to have the opportunity to respond to the debate.

I hope to satisfy my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) with my response, as far as I can on the day. As he said, he has raised the issues consistently, since long before my time with this portfolio. More recently, we have had a number of opportunities for debate inside and outside Parliament. He has been entirely consistent, as have my other hon. Friends present today, and they have worked together as a team, along with our right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who has also raised the issues with me.

I have only a short time to respond, so I will not set out everything to do with the extreme weather that we experienced, although it is important to mention that the effects in Somerset were replicated in other parts of the country. Yesterday I was debating with right hon. and hon. Members from the Humber estuary. My hon. Friends here today will be delighted to know that those Members were only requesting £880 million for the schemes identified in that area. We are not short of positive ideas to deal with flooding around the country.

The specific issues affecting Somerset are not so much to do with the large numbers of properties flooded—as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome said, in other areas a much larger number flooded—as with the volume of the water and its duration, producing the longer term economic impacts on the communities affected. There was in excess of 65 million cubic metres of floodwater, covering an area of 65 sq km. Exceptionally, that floodwater stayed on the levels for more than 12 weeks.

The Environment Agency did an excellent job in carrying out the single largest pumping operation ever undertaken in Somerset. As my hon. Friend said, the emergency services, the volunteers and all the other groups from local communities and from across the country who offered assistance did a magnificent job in some very difficult conditions. In addition to the 40 permanent pumps, the Environment Agency mobilised a further 24 temporary units, increasing the ability to pump by more than 150%, although there is an interaction between the tidal nature of the catchments and the ability to get the water out into the sea, which my hon. Friend considered when talking about the sluice. I want to make it clear that there are no plans to reduce the number of Environment Agency front-line flood and coastal risk management posts. That issue has been raised in the past.

On my first visit to the Somerset levels with my hon. Friend during the episodes of winter flooding there, the clear ask from the community was for dredging of the rivers. I came back to the Department determined that we should re-examine the case for doing so. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs followed up with a visit and asked all the local organisations to meet and to put an action plan together, with support from officials in the Environment Agency and DEFRA. That happened in a remarkably speedy six weeks. I chaired the first meeting and returned later to hear about some of the progress. We now have the action plan, whose delivery is crucial for the future of the levels.

[Tessa Munt]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dan Rogerson]

I will give way briefly, but I do not have much time.

[Tessa Munt]

It is a brief point. Will the Minister make absolutely certain that DEFRA officials stay engaged with the process, because an internal drainage board cannot do things on its own? It is crucial that DEFRA officials carry on working with the boards.

[Dan Rogerson]

DEFRA officials and indeed Ministers will remain involved. The Secretary of State was in the area again recently to look at progress. He has been appointed flood envoy for Somerset and Wiltshire by the Prime Minister, as I have for Cornwall. We maintain an interest in the delivery of the plan which, as my hon. Friend says, is crucial. Money has been made available from the Department for Transport, DEFRA and the Department for Communities and Local Government. For example, an additional £12.3 million from the Department for Transport has been made available to the county council to help roads recovery.

I want to pick up on some of the issues in the action plan and the progress that has been made against that plan. An important element is resilience, which is perhaps slightly more intangible than dredging and hard defences but is important. The Somerset civil contingencies partnership is providing a dedicated programme of targeted support to help people, farms, businesses and neighbourhoods to recover, including by accessing the support and advice that we have made available. They are working hard on plans to increase resilience in the future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome said, flooding will happen again, so we must ensure that communities have what they need at their disposal. That is particularly so for people who have moved to the area and may not have been through this before, unlike the old hands who have and know about resilience and how to support one another.

Implementation of the action plan has started with the dredging of the Rivers Parrett and Tone. It started when the banks were stable and safe enough to support the weight of the heavy equipment, when local access permission had been sought and preparations made for receiving the excavated silt. The dredging is progressing well and is on target to be completed by the autumn. The plan is to dredge 8 km of river; so far 1.7 km has been completed and the number of gangs has increased from two to six.

Work is in hand to find alternative ways of getting water to flow from the Parrett catchment area by increasing the capacity of the River Sowy and the King’s Sedgemoor drain so that water can be pumped more easily and be diverted to Dunball where extra pumps are working. The footings have been made permanent so we can call on them if necessary. That will lower the levels in the River Parrett sufficiently to enable the pumping stations to be operated, helping to lower water levels on the moors around Langport, and to a lesser extent around West Sedgemoor, Curry moor and North moor.

The Environment Agency is currently scoping this work and hopes to appoint a consultant by the end of this month who will work with communities and professional partners to agree aims and to include them in the development of the options. By the autumn, the agency expects to have assessed a range of options to see what is feasible. Partnership funding will be needed to build the scheme. Further key action is the construction of a barrier or sluice to deal with the impact of a rise in sea level and to protect Bridgwater from flooding, and to look at future development.

On Friday 6 June, the Environment Agency, with Sedgemoor district council, organised a technical meeting to discuss various options for the type of barrier that could be used. The meeting was attended by 60 people who received presentations from experts from across the country who have been involved in the design of other flood defence barriers. The long-term vision for Bridgwater was also discussed. A group will review these options and compile a report by September. That report will contribute to an informed decision on the preferred option.

The Environment Agency estimates that it will be three to five years before construction starts and that it will take two years to complete notwithstanding discussions on funding, to which my hon. Friend is keen to draw attention. If we have a plan by September, that will allow serious consideration of the funding options.

Under the action plan, a new Somerset rivers board is being set up. It will have greater control of and responsibility for work to maintain water and flood risk management in the area. This work is being co-ordinated by Somerset county council, working closely with district councils, the Environment Agency, Natural England and the internal drainage boards, which do such crucial work not just in the Parrett and Tone catchment areas but the Axe and Brue areas.

The Somerset rivers board was discussed at an interim leaders implementation group meeting on 20 June. It was a positive meeting that acknowledged the need for compromises and urgency. The options under review include organisational structures, legislative requirements and funding models, all issues that will need to be discussed by local and national Government to ensure a sustainable model in the future. Proposals being considered include an appropriate catchment-wide funding mechanism to generate additional funds. These proposals will be discussed at the next leaders group meeting on 7 July. When proposals have been agreed, next steps will include consultation and engagement on them. In addition, work is under way to consider raising the road to Muchelney and building a ring-bank flood protection scheme for Thorney. My hon. Friend was keen to make the case for that.

We have made provision through funding such as the farming recovery fund, and 167 applications were received from Somerset by the 27 June deadline. That represents 44% of all the claims. It was available to other areas of the country that experienced winter flooding from early December 2013 to April 2014. The total value of claims from Somerset is over £1.5 million of the money that was made available. Repair and renew grant is also available, and householders and businesses may claim up to £5,000 to establish flood resilience measures on their property. Of the 283 properties that were flooded in Somerset, 219 were in the area covered by Sedgemoor district council. Other councils have also taken that option.

In the few seconds remaining, I should say that I greatly appreciate the leadership that has been shown in communities. This has helped to bridge the gap between local and national agencies. We will continue to focus on delivering the action plan. There are challenges ahead, but if we work together we can overcome them so that that resilient community has a better time in future.