River Severn Flooding

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the flooding of the River Severn.

I am grateful to have been called to speak in this debate on the recent flooding of the River Severn. I am sure that Members are aware of how badly Shrewsbury has been affected as a result of that flooding. The part of Shrewsbury where I live, Coton Hill, was badly affected, with terrible damage and flooding in my neighbourhood. However, over the past few days and weeks I have spent quite a bit of time in another bit of Shrewsbury, Coleham, which has also been badly affected by these floods. I will refer to a couple of people whose situations I am very conscious of, some of whom I have met: Lee and Sandra from The Hair Forum, Rachel from The Glam Studio, and G. O. Elson, who is in his 50th year as a local butcher. Seeing the devastation that has happened in those people’s neighbourhoods and the financial damage caused to their businesses has been galling.

Yesterday, I met with Peter Nutting, the leader of Shropshire Council, when he came to the House of Commons. He informed me that over 300 businesses and residential properties had been affected just in Shrewsbury, and estimated that the cost of clearing up from the ramifications of this flood will be over £1 million in my constituency alone. Of course, the Bellwin scheme will help, but a large chunk of money will not come from that scheme; Shropshire Council is having to find that money itself. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) and my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) will attest, our local council is grappling at the moment with the massive, spiralling costs of adult social care, and is running a deficit and struggling to make ends meet as it is. Those additional costs will be very problematic for it.

Local residents have stressed that action is needed, as problems with insurance and future floods will finish off many independent traders. I spoke to one bed and breakfast hotel owner who lost £30,000 over the course of these events. He was near tears as he showed me the devastation to his hotel. As is typical for businesses, his hotel will not only suffer during the floods, but for days and weeks afterwards. The media are very good at highlighting that Shrewsbury has flooded and very good at showing pictures of a flooded Shrewsbury, but not so good at subsequently informing citizens around the United Kingdom that those floods have alleviated. Whether a business is a local pub, a local hotel or whatever else, its books will be significantly down, not just over the course of the floods but in the following days and weeks.

Seeing the devastation and listening to the heartbreaking stories has hastened my resolve to get action for these hard-working entrepreneurs. That is why on Wednesday 26 February, I was here in the House of Commons rather than in my constituency with my electorate, because I wanted to challenge the Prime Minister at Question Time, to share with him what was going on in Shrewsbury, and to try to secure some sort of commitment from him. If she checks Hansard, the Minister will see that in response to my question, the Prime Minister assured me on the Floor of the House that whatever work the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency do together to alleviate the problems on the River Severn, and whatever solution they come up with, he will ensure that the Government support that solution. I am going to hold the Government to account on this issue and make sure that the Prime Minister fulfils the commitment that he made to me.

I am obviously delighted that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced a massive additional allocation of taxpayers’ money for flood alleviation schemes in this afternoon’s Budget. With that in mind, we are going to ensure, hopefully collectively—I am pleased that other right hon. and hon. Friends from constituencies along the River Severn are also present—that we fight for our share of those additional resources to make sure a holistic solution is found for the Severn.

Last week I asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to visit Shrewsbury, and I am grateful that he took the time to visit my town. He met flood victims and also came to Shirehall, the council building in Shrewsbury, to meet with local councillors including Peter Nutting, as well as with council officials including Mark Barrow and others, who are in the audience today. He received a presentation on a topic I hope to address later: the River Severn partnership, which is a holistic, collective approach of communities and organisations up and down the River Severn, working together to come up with a credible solution for managing that river. We will then want the Government to support that solution.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend on having secured this debate, and have absolutely no doubts that he will hold the Government to account. He has already alluded to some heart-wrenching stories, but does he agree that there have also been some very positive stories, and that we should pay tribute to local authority workers, Shropshire Council, Telford and Wrekin Council, the Environment Agency and the emergency services? All those groups have done a huge service to the people of Shropshire.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I could not agree more, and I am sure that all of my right hon. and hon. Friends from Shropshire will join him in paying tribute to those people.

The River Severn partnership is a strategic coalition of 18 organisations, including local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, water companies and the Environment Agency. It has an agreed memorandum of understanding aimed at working collaboratively to develop a comprehensive long-term approach to management of the River Severn. Here, we have an established group of all the relevant and appropriate bodies, working together on an innovative and forward-looking holistic solution that could literally be a game-changing approach to flood management.