Flood Recovery Framework

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford. This debate is clearly about risk, who carries that risk, when it is shared, and who pays for it. I will start by congratulating the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne). He has worked on issues to do with rivers for a considerable time, and that is really appreciated.

Flooding has been on the agenda I have had to deal with in York since I first came to this place. York floods—it is part of our history—but this year we had the greatest floods since 1872. We had more water for a more sustained period of time, and of course that had a devastating impact on part of our city. The mitigation that was put in after the Boxing day floods in 2015 has had a massive impact on our city, preventing flooding along the River Foss and the River Ouse, and I am grateful for that. The conclusion of that work is welcome. There is a bit more work being done on water storage; eyes are turning upstream to address the upper catchment and the water storage issues, which must be looked at.

The Minister has come to my constituency and seen for himself some of the challenges that our city faces. I want to talk about one cell, as the Environment Agency terms it, that floods with great frequency, impacting the businesses there. Yes, those businesses trade well in the summer, when the sun is out and people come down to our riverfront and enjoy that space, but their frustration is that the logic on which the flood recovery framework works—or does not work, in their case—means that it looks not at individual businesses and the cost to them, but at a much broader geographical area.

I met the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), the Minister in DLUHC, to look at the framework and why it does not work. In his letter to MPs on 8 January, he set out that the Government were going to trigger the framework, but there is no logic to say how it will be triggered or not triggered, so we need some consistency to ensure fairness. He also listed a number of counties where the framework would apply, and stated that authorities had to have more than 50 flooded properties to be eligible. That means that it does not apply to everyone. For us the story is bittersweet, because we no longer have 50 flooded properties, but none the less, for those properties that do flood—usually businesses—it is incredibly costly. I urge the Minister to look at a per-capita scheme rather than one that focuses on a geographical area and is not applied in a logical fashion.

I have met Yorkshire Water, the Environment Agency and City of York Council to look at what is happening in our city. We have a major choice to make. Do we shut water out and have the continual battle of keeping it away, as the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) suggested, or do we learn to live with water? It is a very difficult choice, given the climate changes we are seeing; Members from across the House have articulated how much more frequent flooding is and the extent to which water levels are rising. I have praised our flood defences, but we know that we do not have long in relative terms until they will be challenged. What do we do at that juncture? We have been looking across the globe, as the hon. Member mentioned, but this is very real for us now. We have to make strategic choices about how we manage water, while remembering that flooding is not our greatest threat—drought is—so we also need to think about what we are doing on storage for the long term. York does not have one river; we have two. Of course, many of our towns and cities were built along rivers, which were traditionally trading routes. We have to deal with that.

I have several requests of the Minister. First, can we have some consistency in the application of the flood recovery framework? Secondly, can it apply to all businesses affected? At the moment, businesses, and some property owners, are carrying all the risk. Thirdly, can the suspension of council tax payments and business rates for the owners of flooded properties for the period that they cannot trade be not optional, but determined from the centre by the Government? That would really help, and it has not happened yet in York. I have been meeting with the council to urge for that. However, that transfers the risk to local authorities, and they have got no money at the moment. They are having to balance their books with other risks, so I ask that that comes down from the centre. I discussed that with the DLUHC Minister, the hon. Member for North Dorset, earlier in the week.

Can we also have another look at insurance? The Flood Re scheme has been a real success. My constituents have certainly praised it, and it has meant that they are eligible for an insurance scheme that they can afford. However, the clock is ticking on Flood Re. It is only a 25-year scheme; it ends in 2039. We need to think about what happens after that, because the risks are increasing and there will still be need and demand. These issues need to be addressed now, or certainly by the incoming Government, to ensure that we have resilience built into our insurance system.

We also need an insurance scheme for businesses. There is no reason why businesses are in the “too difficult” box. We need minds to come together to work that through, and I call on the Minister to have those discussions, because it is not working at the moment. There are businesses in my constituency that are uninsurable. They are not insured and not getting flood recovery framework funding; they are out there on their own, forgotten by this Government. I really hope that the Minister has a response to that.

I am conscious of time, so the last issue I will address is that of sewage in our water. The effluence coming into our water system is making things even worse for businesses. Last year in York, we had 1,414 sewage releases. That is going to increase. Having an open sewer running through the middle of our city is obviously massively unpleasant, but we need to look at our whole drainage system. Running our system off Victorian sewers is not the way forward.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Sewage going into rivers is an important issue that has not been touched on. I hope the Minister is aware that Severn Trent recently announced a special programme to clear up the water around Shrewsbury, but this should be a cross-party issue. The Lib Dems have, I am afraid, tried to politicise it by putting on their little leaflets, “Local Tory MP votes to pour sewage into the River Severn.” That is extremely inappropriate, given the talk about anger with Members of Parliament and the denigration we all face. That is an issue that I have faced, and it has been really unpleasant. We have to be very careful about what we say on this issue.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but the point I want to make is that we need a strategic plan for managing sewage in our country. Clearly, the Victorians got it right and got on with the job, but we have turned our eyes away from the sewage system for the best part of 200 years. We really have to turn our eyes back. We have to think about hygiene and good sanitation. At times as I walk around wonderful medieval York, it feels that we are trying to bring that experience even more to life with the state of our rivers. I urge the Minister, and indeed the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), to have a plan for sewage.

Sewers are underground, but that does not mean they can be ignored. Increasingly, we are seeing the impact of that. Here in London, the Tideway project is an incredible investment; we need to see that across the country, including in the north, so I urge such investment to be part of the plan. It would take away some of the difficulty if there were fresh water running through our cities, even when they are flooded.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachael Maskell]

You are always welcome.

[Emma Hardy]

Thank you very much. I would really like to—it would be great to go and see that.

I completely agree with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on the importance of food security. It is good to see the right hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) in a debate that is not a defence debate. There was an amusing Twitter account on politicians pointing at potholes that I used to look through and giggle at; it is nearly as good as the Twitter account on angry people in local newspapers, which I highly recommend.

The effects of flooding are profound and lasting. When we talk about property or farming flooding, we must bear that in mind. I highlight that the people least able to afford it are the people who are often the most badly impacted, because they are the ones who do not have insurance. I understand that the framework is under review and the Government expect to complete it, but can the Minister tell us if they are consulting stakeholders? The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management was not aware that the review was happening, nor was the National Farmers Union.

As has been mentioned, the lead local flood authorities, the county or unitary level councils, must have 50 or more properties affected by internal flooding to qualify for emergency funding, but that was not always the case. I have two written parliamentary questions waiting for answers on this: when was the current threshold increased from 25 properties, and what assessment was made at the time to make it 50 properties? It always seems slightly odd when people come up with these rounded numbers and say, “It is 50 properties.” Why is 50 the magic number? Why is it not 48 or 53? Why have we chosen an arbitrary number and said that it must be 50 properties?

As the Minister will understand, flooding is the result of natural features in the landscape, not local authority boundaries. Any threshold will therefore exclude councils where areas of flooded homes are split across council boundaries. The threshold of 50 can mean that if two councils are impacted and there are 49 properties in each council boundary, they do not meet the criteria because they do not have 50 properties in one council boundary. They are arbitrary numbers. I return to my written parliamentary question and ask again: why was the threshold increased? Hopefully something a little more sensible will come out of the review.

As the MP for and a resident of west Hull and Hessle, I know only too well the scale and impact of flooding on thousands of properties. For some councils, the scale of flooding is a challenge; they must deal with grant applications from hundreds of property owners. The Government’s cut-off date for grant payments is mid-2025, and councils are concerned about the capacity of the industry to install property resilience measures in the funding window and, importantly, the availability of qualified surveyors. A CIWEM survey found that only a third of risk management authorities have a full complement of staff to deliver surface water management, and three quarters of RMAs are struggling to recruit new staff. Greater flexibility on the deadline for claims would be helpful to avoid the risk that councils have to step in and fund the costs of householders who could not claim within a specified period.

As has been mentioned in the debate, I will mention the impact of that on affected farmers. The NFU informs me that its members have struggled to get any information on the flood recovery framework schemes and eligible areas before they closed for applications. It said that a significant number of farmers have missed out on the deadline and have been turned away by their respective councils, which are either not aware of the scheme or believe that farmers can access only the farming recovery fund. Another thing that came up in the debate was understanding which scheme applies to whom and who needs to apply for them.

I will also mention bureaucracy. The application process is littered with difficulty. I have left out some parts for the sake of brevity, but to be successful a homeowner must apply to their council to check that they are eligible, if they know that the council has the funds to begin with; decide whether they want to undertake flood recoverability or flood resilience measures; pay for a pre-installation survey, the cost of which can be claimed back, but which must be paid for up front; and obtain three quotes for the proposed work—the grant will cover only the cost of the cheapest quote. Once the quote is approved by the council, the property owner must sign a memorandum of understanding setting out the responsibilities of both the homeowner and the council, get the work done in line with the specific conditions of the scheme—again, paying up front—and get a post-completion survey done and submitted to the council, at which point the council will go through the survey. Only if all the criteria are met will funds up to the value of £5,000 be transferred to the homeowner. The whole process takes about 18 months, with no guarantee for the homeowner that the council will release the funds. That is difficult both for the local authorities to administer and for households to access. Will the Minister therefore look at streamlining and simplifying the process?

I am aware that I am running out of time, but I am always keen to discuss flooding and I hope for more debates on the subject. I want to quickly mention that while we need a more effective and equitable flood recovery framework, what we actually need is fewer properties flooded in the first place. The number of properties to be better protected from flooding by 2027 has been cut by 40% and 500 of the 2,000 new flood defence projects have been abandoned, according to the recent National Audit Office report. That means that 136,000 fewer homes will be protected from the risk of flooding.

I have asked parliamentary questions about where the abandoned flood defence projects are and have yet to receive a clear answer. I have been told that they are not abandoned and that some have just been deferred. I have therefore gone back to the Department asking how many projects, if not abandoned, have been deferred and how long the deferral process will be. To say that the answer has been evasive would be kind. We want to know how many of the flood projects promised by Government are on track to be delivered and where are the ones that are not. Residents have a right to know. The Government seem to be hiding behind language at the moment. That is not fair and it is not transparent.

The Government have committed more than £5 billion for new flood and coastal defences by 2027, but they are failing in their delivery while also failing to maintain the defences we have. Labour has a plan, not only to ensure that budgets committed to flood defences are used to the maximum effect, but to bring together all those involved in flood prevention and resilience to ensure that everyone works together to protect our communities, farmers and businesses now and for the future. Labour will establish a flood resilience taskforce that co-ordinates flooding preparation between central Government, local authorities, local communities and emergency services. It will ensure that vulnerable areas are identified and protected, and provide accountability for the progress of the projects. It will be chaired by a DEFRA Minister and bring together senior civil servants, Ministers from across Government—including a new Minister for resilience, who would sit in the Cabinet Office—regional flood and coastal committees and other frontline agencies, including the Environment Agency and fire and rescue services. It will work with the Environment Agency to ensure that its formula to protect communities considers potential damages to rural communities and farmland when identifying areas to protect.

DEFRA appears to have given up. Its flagship flood defence scheme is slipping further and further behind, and it has lowered its targets for maintaining flood defences. That is symptomatic of a Government who are out of ideas and know that time is up. Labour has a plan and the energy and commitment to make the changes this country needs to meet the challenges of increased flood risk in the face of a changing climate.