Flood Plains: Housing Development

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on getting this debate and on showing her expertise and knowledge in this field. In particular, I commend her report Bricks & Water, which raises many of these issues.

This Session of Parliament has seen rather a contradictory approach by the Government in this area. On the one hand, we have the Environment Bill and the associated preparations for climate change in COP 26, along with a general recognition of the need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. On the other hand, we have a planning reform Bill that is likely to dilute or omit protections and adaptations that are needed due to man’s intervention and climate change.

We know that substantial numbers of houses are prone to flooding and that extreme events such as massive storms and sea surges will be far more frequent. We know that surface flooding and the breakdowns in drainage and sewerage systems are already with us. However, we are still not taking the measures needed, and the problem is becoming worse. We need to ensure that developers and the construction industry do not add to the problem and that local authorities do not see building on flood plains or flood-prone areas as an easy way in which to meet their affordable housing quotas or to provide up-market riverside dwellings to raise the tone of the neighbourhood.

Frankly, we need an absolute ban on building on category 3 land, at the very least. At present, the only brake on such developments beyond the individual planning processes is the role of the Environment Agency, which has responsibility not only for mapping the flood risk but for general guidance on developments in flood-prone areas—and of course, that is where you find the experts on total flood systems and river systems management, as the noble Baroness indicated. Of course, it is a statutory consultee in such planning proposals, but, frankly, that does not work.

I was a member of the board of the Environment Agency when we were explicitly given these new roles. I remember saying at the time that we were accepting responsibility without power—the privilege of muggins through the ages. I am afraid that that anxiety has been borne out: the Environment Agency has not had the resources to examine anything like all planning proposals, even the large ones. When it does comment or object and call for modifications to developers’ proposals, it can be totally ignored by the local authorities and even by the Planning Inspectorate. The Environment Agency combines expertise in this field with understanding of river and flood responses, yet it has no real power.

I suggest that, on the one hand, the presumption of any proposals for building at least on category 3 flood plains should be absolutely prohibited, and the Environment Agency should have the power to enforce that—or, alternatively, given the Bill that is before us, we could place a duty on the office for environmental protection that there should be no new developments on land that is most subject to flooding and, if necessary, the OEP could overrule the planning system, the Environment Agency and any other public body, if new developments are being given the nod. That is a possible role for the OEP, which would make it effective in this adaptation field.

I have a number of questions for the Minister to answer now or in writing. How many planning decisions in England over the past five years have involved building on flood plains, particularly in category 3 areas? On how many of them had Environment Agency advice been given as a statutory consultee, and to how many did the agency object or put in significant modifications? How many have actually gone ahead?

To go back to what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked, how many of Sir Michael Pitt’s recommendations remain unenacted? In more immediate terms, will the Minister and his colleagues in MHCLG insert a new clause in the planning Bill to ban absolutely all building on flood plains or at least in category 3 areas?