Upper Catchment Management

Debate between John McNally and Julian Sturdy

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point. She is a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on flood prevention, which I chair, and I am always impressed by her knowledge of and passion for her area and the wider field. I commend her for everything she does. As chair of the APPG, I had plans to visit some areas, but unfortunately a general election has come along in the middle of those plans. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) painted a picture of Pickering as a place of modern art, so if we are both re-elected, I will take the opportunity to visit that area, too.

Flooding is the UK’s predominant natural hazard, and a significant increase in properties at risk is projected in the years to come. As we all know, flooding is rarely good business. For small and medium-sized enterprises, it is sometimes a matter of survival. I learned that all too well as a councillor in Falkirk. When the River Carron is in spate, it is the second fastest flowing river in Scotland and, I assume, in the UK. During that time, I found myself helping people and businesses affected by flash flooding and saw first hand the disruption that was caused to traffic and the community.

Getting involved in finding a solution opened my eyes to the value of preventive measures. There is no doubt that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Mitigation measures such as weirs, widening and increasing the height of bridges, and some hard defences are all needed, and mostly they are planned under the area’s flood risk management strategy. We also introduced fish ladders and a mini-hydro project, which are starting to bring additional benefits to the community. To emphasise what the hon. Member for York Central said, once one person is brought in, that seems to attract another. Groups follow, and are motivated by other people’s initiatives, including the one I am describing.

As chair of the all-party group on flood prevention and a member of the EAC, I took it upon myself recently to visit various areas—Tadcaster, Leeds, Ballater, Newton Stewart and Hoy—and began to put together, to present to the Minister, the evidence about small and medium-sized enterprises and how they are affected. I understand that a lot of good work has been done in Calder Valley. The community is extremely resilient, but there is still a continuing problem for small and medium-sized enterprises. I believe that insurance brokers there formed their own insurance funding, to help to cover such enterprises that could no longer afford to insure their businesses and properties, or, indeed, the excess amounts given to them.

I have heard people identify the need for better catchment level co-ordination between the bodies responsible for flood management in England and I have had an insight, from seeing and hearing things at first hand, into the willingness of communities to take part in flood risk management; but I have also heard their frustration, and I have heard about the reluctance of the Environment Agency, local authorities and other agencies to work with those local groups.

A water body’s catchment is the entire geographical area drained by that water body and its tributaries. Since the system is all connected, flood risk in a given part of the catchment area will be heavily influenced by what is happening above it in the catchment. Traditional flood management has focused on building hard defences and of course, as I have said, they are needed; but upper catchment management treats the catchment area as a single system, and it is vital to use natural flood management measures to slow the flow of water towards vulnerable areas. The approaches complement each other. Slowing the flow of water decreases pressures on hard defences and, most importantly, reduces the maintenance costs and the risk of failure of those already established flood defences.

Natural flood management has already been a lifeline for communities such as Pickering in Yorkshire that are too small for hard defences to be cost-effective. Such measures can have additional benefits, as has been said—trapping sediment and agricultural pollution and providing human amenities such as parklands and habitats for wildlife, including game.

The use of natural flood management at catchment scale is still in its infancy, and measuring the effects of a given flood management measure across something as hydrologically complex as a large catchment is difficult. I am certain that that fact is realised by those employed in the industry. There are risks as well as opportunities. As far as I know there is no conclusive evidence that natural flood management can be used at a catchment scale to reduce flood risk.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point; does he agree that while hard flood defences are important we must remember that that is only moving the problem further downstream? A number of villages in my constituency, such as Acaster Malbis and Naburn, south of York, support the flood defences in York; but ultimately those only move the water downstream and move the problem elsewhere. That is why upper catchment is so important, and it is why we must look at the whole. That has been well illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).

[John Mc Nally]

I could not agree more. It is a great example of how water does not know anything; it just goes where it has to go and there is no doubt that we need to think about how to manage the problem.

As I have said, there is no conclusive evidence that natural flood management can be used at catchment scale to reduce flood risk; if water storage capacity is added in the wrong place it, too, can increase rather than decrease the risk of flooding, so it must be considered very carefully. That is all the more reason for proper research and funding. There is a pressing need for research and projects—I know that there are projects under way around the country—but we must be careful that that is not used as an excuse for inaction. Natural flood management options have already been shown to be cost-effective management tools for managing localised flood risk in pilot projects such as the one carried out in Pickering, but even in the absence of catchment-scale flood risk reductions, it would make sense to identify areas where there is an opportunity to use NFM on a smaller scale, or where it might itself increase flood risk.

Catchment-level maps of natural flood management opportunities and risks are maintained in Scotland as part of the indicative flood maps provided by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. As far as I am aware, in England, opportunities for natural flood management have been mapped only for a few catchment areas in Yorkshire and Cumbria. The Environment Agency has produced detailed maps of England showing where there is potential to restore different types of wetland, but not where that might impact on flood risk, which is an important point to remember.