Winter Floods 2013-14

Debate between Rebecca Harris and David Heath

Thursday 8th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Heath]

I am very sorry to hear that. In the previous year the Prime Minister did not put in an appearance in Somerset, so perhaps it was a case of hitting the right moment and of the strength with which representations were made. Certainly we had the Government’s attention, which had an effect.

To deal first with the immediate response, before I move on to the Government’s response I have to pay tribute again to the huge voluntary effort. People behaved quite extraordinarily in helping their neighbours, and people from further away helped those whom they did not know. There were enormous numbers of charity donations. I spend a day at the Somerset Community Foundation opening letters that were quite heartbreaking, with donations from people who could ill afford them but were giving them because they felt it was necessary to help those in distress. As many people will know, there were donations of forage for animals from farmers in other parts of the country, which were hugely welcome. That has led to the setting up of what I hope will be a permanent exchange, which will be of value.

[Rebecca Harris]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a delegation from Castle Point Motors arranged for a large shipment to go down to the Somerset levels last year, so help was coming from as far away as Benfleet and Canvey Island?

[Mr Heath]

I hope the hon. Lady will accept my grateful thanks on behalf of my constituents, because that was literally a life-saver for people and livestock in my area.

There was, I have to say, a belated response from the military, an issue that might need to be looked at. Perhaps the principal local authority did not ask for help sufficiently promptly, but until the Prime Minister intervened there was also a difficulty with the cost of involving the military. That should not happen. The Royal Marines are on our doorstep, so we do not expect that they will not be able to help when we are underwater. They are well placed to assist and would have been happy to have done so, had they been able to. When they were introduced, they were very valuable.

Local authorities worked extremely well to ensure that people were safe and had alternative housing. Enormous pumps were introduced—the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton drew attention to them in her remarks, and they were quite the biggest I have ever seen. A great benefit of what happened is that we now have proper hard standing, so that those pumps can be deployed at short notice in future. However, that raises questions about some of the rather elderly pumping stations on the levels. Those stations saw their best years possibly 50 or 60 to 100 years ago. How much longer they can continue to do their unsung work I do not know.

After the immediate issues were dealt with, next came the new protections, key among which was dredging. There was a great deal of scepticism in my constituency that the Environment Agency would carry out the dredging it had promised. Such was the suspicion that it was felt that the agency would waft a dredger in the direction of the River Parrett and the River Tone and that would be about all that was done. But it was not; the dredging was done with dispatch and real urgency. The initial dredging has been completed and there is now a study looking at other areas of the river system that will need action. I hope that will go ahead in the very near future.

Where necessary, individual communities were protected. For instance, the ring barriers around Thorney and Muchelney pottery will make a real difference. They are not quite finished yet and we look at the skies with some trepidation, but they are well in hand. The Environment Agency has undertaken asset repairs on a wide scale, including at Beer Wall, and many other parts of the system are now improved.

One of the issues that grabbed the media’s attention was access problems, such as those to the village—then an island—of Muchelney. Although there was not as much water ingress into properties there as there was at Thorney, it was cut off for a long time and people found it hugely difficult to cope with that. The county council is attending to that by raising one of the road accesses to Muchelney. Unfortunately, that work has not been finished in the time scale that we hoped would apply, but we can look forward to that happening soon. We have also had a major resilience study on the greater south-west and access issues.

I turn to the big money issues, including the establishment of the Somerset rivers authority. Crucial to the Committee’s report is how we get local expertise, together with external professional expertise, to work on the entire water system. At one point I despaired that we would never reach the conclusion that we should create a Somerset rivers authority, simply because the Department for Communities and Local Government—there is no Minister from that Department here today, so I can say what I think—said that it could not be done, as the creation of such an authority would set a precedent and the funding mechanism was too difficult. I found that frustrating, so I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs managed to find the immediate funding required, but that prompts the question of where such funding will come from in the future. We can get it going, at least, but it is essential that a sustainable funding system is put in place.

There is the question of how we use the Sowy and Kings Sedgemoor drain complex as a major extension to the drainage system. Again, that involves big engineering issues, but feasibility studies have been done, and I hope that we will make progress on that in the near future.

The biggest project of all is the Parrett sluice—or barrage, depending on what people choose to call it—which will keep the sea out at high tide and ensure continuous flow in the right direction rather than the wrong one. That will help us to keep the water levels lower. So, what is not done? Apart from—

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[Mr Heath]

I do. We need a much more aggressive statement of concern from the Environment Agency and, where appropriate, the water companies, that says that there is an issue that the planning authority must address, and the planning authorities would need to respond to that.

The problem is really not that difficult to understand. When the floods were at their worst, I went down a flooded road, Aller Drove, and the one thing that really struck me was that a lot of the houses there were bungalows that had been built in the past 30 or 40 years on what is more than a floodplain—it is an inland sea, on reclaimed land that is below the level of the river that runs alongside them. The same thing can be seen in Moorland village in the neighbouring constituency of Bridgwater and West Somerset. That is nonsense. Even our iron-age predecessors knew how to do that properly. There are archaeological remains in Somerset, in the village of Meare. It is very famous—the Glastonbury lake village. The lake village was completely built on stilts, because people there knew what would happen every winter, and knew that building on the ground was rather futile.

[Rebecca Harris]

I am enjoying and agree with the interesting points that the hon. Gentleman makes. He is absolutely spot on. He spoke about the need for the organisations and agencies to take more account of what people who know the land have to say. Does he agree that sometimes the Environment Agency or the water companies do not object to a local plan for housing on what all the local people know is a floodplain? It is often completely baffling to local people that their better knowledge of such issues does not seem to be taken into account.

[Mr Heath]

I am still a great believer in folk memory. People who have been around for a few years can point to where the water level reached in their grandad’s day, because we remember that sort of thing. We can say, “You build there, and it may not be this year or next year, but some time, you will be underwater. You either need to find a different site, need to construct your building in a different way, or need a mitigating factor that provides the protection that is needed. It is not for the Government eventually to come and bail you out when you have built a stupid building in a stupid place and it is underwater, so get it right in the first place.” The other side of the coin applies in terms of lack of water, and I hope that the Minister may accept the representations made by the water companies for more of a statutory interest in planning when they feel that there is a danger to their water supplies from various forms of construction or utilisation of land resources.

If we get these things right, we will be moving in the right direction. I turn to my biggest concern. So far this year, I have not had to put on more than my wellies—on my feet at least—in order to visit constituents. Wellies have been sufficient, but last year, they were not; I needed a boat. That may all change this weekend—who knows? The Somerset levels will always flood, and anyone who thinks that what has been done will prevent them from flooding does not, I am afraid, recognise the nature of the landscape and the environment. However, as I have said so many times, there is a world of difference between 3 feet deep for three weeks and 10 feet deep for 10 weeks, and that is what we are asking the Government to deal with.

The Government have done a very good job in recognising the concerns that I and my neighbours in Somerset have been raising over the last year. Having spoken on this subject 18 times, I think, in the last year, I would love to think that this may be the last time I will have to. However, the Minister can be absolutely assured that if the race against time to get the remaining things in place is lost, and if we have major flooding again in Somerset and people are forced out of their homes and trapped on islands created between the villages for the third year running, I will be making a lot of noise about it, as will my constituents, and we will want to know why.

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[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I would like to reiterate what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to add my congratulations to the Select Committee on this report. My constituency did not suffer in the particular winter that it refers to. We survived the tidal surge because we have the best tidal defences in the country. However, we have had serious problems with surface water flooding. There was a small, very localised amount of flooding last winter, but it was a particular issue in August 2013 and again in July 2014. We believe that well over 600 properties were affected. It is impossible to get the correct figure as a result of the enormous reluctance of people to admit that they were flooded, because of the fear of the impact that that would have on both their insurance and the value of their homes, but we have had two very significant flooding events. Much in this report is of considerable relevance to the experience that we have had in my constituency. After those dramatic events, it became clear to all my residents that not enough maintenance had taken place in previous years and, in their view, the various organisations responsible were not working together in the way in which they should.

I place on the record again my great gratitude to the Department, both for its own review of my flooding event and for allowing the chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, to do an independent review of what had happened. That was critical to restoring the confidence of my residents and, I think, had quite an impact in terms of ensuring that the various agencies stepped up to the plate on this occasion. I have to say that they have done that. There is still work to do, but a huge amount of work has been going on regarding the maintenance of watercourses around my borough. That has brought to light a lot of problems and inadequacies underground. There is the problem of appalling connections; there are people whose drains are not connected to anything at all.

The issue raised in the report about awareness of responsibility and confusion over maintenance responsibility was writ large in Castle Point. Shockingly, we discovered that quite a lot of the organisations—the county council, the Environment Agency and the water company—were not aware who owned which part of the stock. If someone is not sure whether they own a particular bit of stock, it is probably quite unlikely that they have been maintaining it properly. Some of my residents’ suspicions have certainly been found to be right and we are getting, I am pleased to say, to the bottom of it.

It was likewise with private landowners who have a riparian responsibility. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) mentioned, it was quite a shock to some of them to discover that they had responsibilities; they did not realise that. I am very grateful to my local county council, which has put in some gratings and grilles to try to protect parts of the watercourses to ensure that debris is not flushing through to people’s private properties. It is sometimes very difficult for them to deal with the problem.

We definitely need greater understanding not just among organisations and agencies but among the public of the importance of watercourses and whose responsibility it is to keep them clear. Frankly, I suspect that gangs come from London and fly-tip in Castle Point, and they have absolutely no regard for the fact that dumping an old sofa in what looks like a dodgy old ditch is quite likely to cause someone to flood down the line in a couple of days. We have lost touch with our understanding of the land and the importance of watercourses, and we need to bring that back. I know that the Environment Agency has great difficulty in trying to deal with the culprits who do fly-tipping, but they need to be educated about the damage that they could be causing to people.

There is now much more partnership working in my borough, I am delighted to say. The organisations are talking to one another. They are doing their gully cleaning and what have you in consultation with one another, and a lot of progress is being made.

We now have the Canvey urban drainage survey, which is a comprehensive survey of all the problems—largely underground—on Canvey Island. An unusual feature of Canvey Island is that it is below sea level, in effect, at high tide, surrounded by a fantastic flood defence wall. There are 45,000 people living there, which causes particular issues for water management. The physics make it quite important that we get things right, so the programme is an important one. I am in the strange position of being quite enthusiastic when I see it raining, because although I worry about my residents flooding, I know that the more rain we have, the sooner we will get the answers to our queries from the testing and telemetry that is going on underground to work out what is happening with our watercourses. I suspect that we will be able to come cap in hand to the Department with a bid for funding when we have the results of that survey later this year.

I am enormously grateful for the Chancellor’s announcement in the autumn statement of more than £20 million for flood defences in Castle Point. I find myself in agreement with the Committee when they talk about loosening the rules governing what is maintenance and what is capital spend. That money is notionally capital spend, although there are some capital projects that one can undertake that lead to better maintenance, such as automatic dredge clearing and telemetry. The Environment Agency could be quite clever about that. It is sometimes hard to say what is capital and what is maintenance, but we need ongoing maintenance.

[Mr Heath]

I make the observation from my years of leading a county council that sometimes a certain fuzziness in that definition is helpful. Being able to wrap up some revenue expenditure as capital or capital expenditure as revenue, depending on the rules applied by the Treasury that year, is extraordinarily helpful in making sure that whatever needs to be done is done.

[Rebecca Harris]

From the point of view of my residents, whatever needs doing should be done, and as much fuzziness as possible would be appreciated. I have seen evidence of some fuzziness, which I am grateful for, from the various agencies already. We are, none the less, grateful for the money.

A DEFRA report mentioned the need for tree planting to mitigate the situation. That is not, strictly speaking, relevant in my area but, in some cases, the removal of large numbers of trees to build housing developments has clearly altered the water table. In my constituency, a housing development in Kiln Road, Thundersley seems to have altered the water table greatly. That was not anticipated during the planning process and therefore not taken into account. That reinforces the need for a firm statement from Government, the Environment Agency and other agencies to the effect that before housing is put in, the flooding capacity must be looked at carefully. Such consideration must cover both the urban drainage capacity and the network that it will be looped into—which may be totally inadequate, however good the standards are on a new estate—and whether the development will change the water table. In too many of the numerous housing developments in Castle Point, such things have not been taken into account, much to the cost of my residents.

I hope that the Minister will make a statement on the progress with Flood Re, because it is critical. Residents have told me, as we have already heard, that even though a considerable amount of flood alleviation work has been done in their area, and even though they have been grateful recipients of the protect and renew grant—because they flooded last summer as well—and have made considerable improvements to the flood-worthiness of their property, they are still being told that they have to pay enormous premiums and increased insurance costs. One constituent told me that her insurer had withdrawn from the ABI over Flood Re and would not be part of the scheme. That is an enormous concern to me, and it will be a major problem in an area such as Castle Point. I would be grateful if the Minister could give us an update on the progress of negotiations over Flood Re, and tell us whether he is aware of the issue that I have raised.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

I conclude by saying that I am very encouraged, oddly, by how much progress has been made by the Department and the Environment Agency in their understanding of the importance of flood risk as a result of the devastating and horrendous events that have occurred, which have really upped everyone’s game and focused attention on the issue. We have been talking about climate change for years, but we are increasingly addressing the other side of the question, namely that if we are going to get climate change, we need to adapt so that it does not damage our residents’ lives and security. I am delighted that we are looking at that as a major issue for the country. I warn that I will keep pressing my local authority, my local council and my water company, as marvellous a job as they are doing, to keep doing more and working harder, because the job is not done yet.