Managing Flood Risk

Debate between James Morris and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about bringing together the community around flood issues, but one point about resilience, particularly in my constituency, has been the work of the Halesowen flood committee led by Claude Mosseri and his wife Ruth. They have brought together the relevant agencies to do vital work around the Illey brook area of Halesowen. Resilience is very much about local communities taking local action to bring the agencies together.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Before I held the public meetings I found that each agency was shuffling responsibility off to one of the other agencies. It is essential that all agencies and all tools in the box are unleashed to try to solve these flooding problems.

The meetings have produced results in parts of my constituency, but there is still a lot to be done. In particular, problems with sewage flooding arise because the sewerage systems are very old. The moment we have any sort of flooding the water table rises, water gets into the sewerage system, and the pumps are incapable of removing the sewage from people’s houses, leading to very difficult issues. I will be encouraging Ofwat to take a greater interest in this subject—indeed, I will invite it to my public meetings—to see whether we can encourage Thames Water to carry out what it says it will, and invest more in our sewers.