Storm Babet: Flooding

Samantha Dixon Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I know that the Secretary of State visited my hon. Friend’s constituency today and will have seen for herself exactly what local people are facing. I know that my hon. Friend has rightly been a great champion for them, and he makes a good point about the role of local authorities in the local flood forums. It is important that everybody plays their part in this, not just the emergency services who come in if there is a problem. It is about the messaging early on, and that is why the Environment Agency has a comprehensive system of warnings that people can sign up to. Some 1.6 million people are signed up to its flood warning scheme and I would urge people to ensure that they know how to join it. I also urge local authorities to play the role that they really should be playing, and I will be talking to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to stress that further.

[Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Following the storm at the weekend, several areas in my constituency were affected. There are still active flood alerts across Cheshire, so many areas are not out of the woods yet. On Saturday morning, I visited a number of my constituents living in close proximity to Finchett’s Gutter who expressed serious concern over the timings of the flood alerts received over the weekend. Some of them were already standing knee-deep in water by the time the alerts came through. I join Members across the House in asking the Minister again what discussions have been had to ensure that as the rainfall continues, alerts are sent out in a timely fashion to give residents plenty of warning.

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course it is critical that warnings go out appropriately at the right time, and that was why this incident started to be flagged the previous weekend and why the national flood response centre was set up. There is a comprehensive Environment Agency flood warning service and I advise people to sign up to it, as well as checking whether they are in an area that might be at risk of flooding. One of the issues is awareness. The EA runs a lot of comms programmes on this, but if there is more that should be done, I will look at that in the review.