Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill (First sitting)

Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I thank all hon. Members for joining the Committee to discuss this important issue on this rather busy week. I introduced the Bill to the House a little over a year ago. I am grateful that it has progressed this far, and I very much hope that it makes it to the statute book. Hon. Members will recall that there is support for my Bill from across the House, and I hope that good spirit continues.

Clause 1 and schedules 1 and 2 provide the Secretary of State with powers, via regulations, to establish new bodies known as rivers authorities. On Second Reading, I and other hon. Members recalled the impact that flooding can have. It is truly devastating for all involved and, unfortunately, it can happen again and again. In fact, chroniclers described how, 400 years ago, Somerset was covered with

“huge and mighty hills of water”

that moved “faster than a greyhound”. Unsurprisingly, that was not the last time that happened, as we saw in the winters of 2013 and 2014. Statistics show that the devastation on that occasion was staggering. As the water receded, the people of Somerset argued for something to be done to avoid a repeat of their suffering.

That is where the idea of rivers authorities was formed. Since 2015, Somerset has paid for and benefited from its own rivers authority. My Bill takes the steps necessary to formalise that arrangement and secure the Somerset Rivers Authority’s future. It also opens up the opportunity for other areas to introduce rivers authorities, as long as there is due process and local support.

Rivers authorities will be flood risk management authorities. That is achieved by subsection (2) of clause 1, which amends the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to include rivers authorities in the definition of risk management authorities. That helps to ensure that rivers authorities co-operate with other risk management authorities, and enables them to share information for that purpose. It also ensures that they contribute to the achievement of sustainable development. That is a key part of the Bill. Rivers authorities will work with other risk management authorities and other local parties to provide local flood risk management work, in addition to anything the Government, the Environment Agency or other risk management authorities do. Consequently, they will provide a higher level of flood risk management in their area of operation.

To fund that important work, rivers authorities will also become major precepting authorities, via the amendment to the categorisation of major precepting authorities in section 39(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 effected by schedule 2 to the Bill. That allows a rivers authority to issue a precept, which will be collected from local taxpayers by the relevant billing authority. That funding will be ring-fenced to ensure it is spent on flood risk management. The precept will be charged by the rivers authority across the whole of its area, in the same way that other precepting authorities charge. That is all under the premise of delivering additional flood risk management interventions, thereby helping to reduce the risk of flooding.

Clause 1 also amends the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to insert new sections 21A to 21J. Hon. Members will have to forgive me for delving a little deeper into some of them. New section 21A provides the power to create a rivers authority and sets out the conditions that must be met. The first is that a rivers authority must consist of the whole of one or more local authority areas. The second ensures fairness for households in the area by requiring that it does not overlap with another rivers authority.

New section 21B provides the Secretary of State with the power to make regulations about an initial shadow period for a rivers authority before it is established on 1 April. That enables the rivers authority to carry out preparatory functions ahead of its first year of operation.

New section 21C makes clear what can be provided for in regulations about the composition of a rivers authority, including matters relating to governance and remuneration. That includes the proper administration of its financial affairs—a key requirement, as rivers authorities manage public funds. Subsection (7) ensures that a rivers authority has a committee with sole responsibility for making the calculations in relation to the annual precept. The Government will ensure that such a committee will have a majority of members from local authorities’ elected members. That will ensure that those who are democratically elected are held accountable for the level of precept that a rivers authority raises.

New section 21D applies certain provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 on committees and local government procedure in relation to a rivers authority. Subsection (5) gives the Secretary of State the power to make further provision about the proceedings of a rivers authority or any of its committees or sub-committees.

New section 21E sets out the main functions of a rivers authority, one of which is that it will prepare a plan of flood risk management work for the coming financial year by all the risk management authorities. The rivers authority will use this to identify opportunities for co-ordination, gaps and omissions. If there are gaps in the local plan, the rivers authority must publish a plan of proposed additional flood risk management work. It must supplement the work that existing risk management authorities have already planned to carry out.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. The co-ordination role of a future rivers authority is key for me across the border in North Devon, where there are a number of organisations that do very good work, including internal drainage boards, a group call the Marsh Inspectors, which was set up by legislation in the Victorian era, the Environment Agency and the various local authorities. It is sometimes difficult to co-ordinate all that and ensure we have an overall plan. Does my hon. Friend agree that what is welcome about this idea is that it will provide that co-ordination?

[David Warburton]

I absolutely agree. The point of the rivers authority is the central co-ordination of risk management authorities, which will ensure that people are not operating in separate areas and attacking things in a disco-ordinated way. It is about co-ordination and bringing things together to plan strategically.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Warburton]

We move on to the second part of the Bill. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will endeavour to be briefer in my comments about these clauses.

Another important body involved in water management that helps tackle flood risk management is the internal drainage board. Clauses 2, 3 and 4 cover internal drainage boards and, in particular, how they determine the drainage rates and special levy, which are used to meet most of their expenses. As Members will know, internal drainage boards provide an important service to their local area by maintaining water levels for agricultural and environmental needs, managing water courses and reducing flood risks.

An IDB operates within an area that is known as an internal drainage district. In Somerset we are fortunate—as we are in so much else—because we have three IDBs: the Axe Brue, the North Somerset Levels, and the Parrett. Two of those cover some of my constituency, and I have personally seen the hard work that they undertake. As the Minister mentioned, on the low-lying ground of the Somerset levels, much of which is below sea level and is intended to flood annually, though in a managed way, drainage board work is crucial and exceptionally important to us all.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the importance of the internal drainage boards, which gives me—and him, I suspect—the perfect opportunity to celebrate the work of the Braunton Marsh internal drainage board in North Devon, which has been in the eye of the storm. Hon. Members might remember coverage of the Braunton floods over the Christmas period of 2012, when, sadly, the village was inundated. Unfortunately, many businesses never recovered from that. The drainage board, working with a number of other organisations, has done fantastic work in bringing together a lot of the flood risk management strategies. They are important, and that is why the second part of my hon. Friend’s Bill, on which he is speaking so fluently, is so welcome.

[David Warburton]

I am grateful in many ways to my hon. Friend for his exceptionally important intervention. He is absolutely right that the drainage boards do tremendous work and are vital. We are lucky to have them. One of the important things about the Bill is that it will facilitate other places’ setting them up—something which they are unable to do at the moment.

In total there are 112 internal drainage boards across England, which cover some 1.2 million hectares—around 10% of the land. The work they do protects 600,000 people and nearly 900,000 properties. They operate and maintain over 500 pumping stations and 22,000 km of watercourse, which is slightly further than from this room to New Zealand. Those are incredible numbers, but there is scope to increase that local support and allow more of the country to benefit. However, to enable this support to be available where it is wanted and where it is appropriate, the Land Drainage Act 1991 needs to change.

Internal drainage boards are funded by the areas they serve. Drainage rates are paid by agricultural landowners, and the special levy is paid by local district or unitary councils, which in turn recoup these costs. Under the Land Drainage Act 1991, the proportion of IDBs’ expenses raised by drainage rates is equal to the agricultural proportion of land values in an internal drainage district. In turn, the proportion of expenses raised by the special levy is proportionate to the value of all other land in the internal drainage district.

The calculations that IDBs are required to carry out, in order to apportion the payment of their expenses between the drainage rate and the special levy, depend on an assessment by each IDB of the relative value of agricultural land and buildings, and the value of other land. However, the assessment of the value of other land in internal drainage districts currently depends on data from 1990, which, unfortunately, in many instances is missing or incomplete. This prevents the creation of new IDBs or the expansion of existing ones.

This part of the Bill amends the Land Drainage Act 1991, to enable new data to be used by internal drainage boards when calculating the value of other lands, if they elect to do so, thereby addressing the current barrier to creating or expanding IDBs. Clause 2 amends section 37 of the Land Drainage Act 1991 to enable the Secretary of State to make regulations that provide an alternative methodology for calculating the value of other land. The regulations will be made subject to the affirmative procedure. In the new regulations, the Secretary of State will be able to provide a methodology for calculating the value of other land by making use of data that is not only available and complete, but more up to date.

Among other things, proposed new subsection (5ZB) of the 1991 Act will allow the regulations to make provision about methods to be applied or factors to be taken into account in valuing other land. This proposed subsection allows the regulations to provide for internal drainage boards to elect to have the regulations apply to them and to specify a procedure for making such an election. The IDBs would not have to adopt the new methodology; the Bill provides them with the ability to adopt it if they wish. That benefits those that do not wish to change their procedures; if they do nothing, nothing will change.

IDBs will need access to information from the Valuation Office Agency—the executive agency of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—to calculate the value of other land using a new methodology set out in regulations. Clause 3 provides a power enabling the VOA to share revenue and customs information with IDBs—