Flood Risk (North-East England)

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop]

I would have to differ from my hon. Friend about that.

Saltburn was badly affected by the combination of high tides and swollen rivers. Saltburn Gill expanded, almost filling the entire valley floor, covering car parks, ruining much of the town’s Valley gardens and harming tourist attractions and businesses. Thankfully, the council has now repaired the damage along the sea front and, with the exception of the amusement arcade on the pier, the majority of businesses are trading again in time for the busy summer season.

Elsewhere in East Cleveland, the former mining village of North Skelton was hit, with water cascading down from higher farmland to the south and finding its new course by inundating homes in the terraced streets and the nearby A174 main road. The tragedy there was that many of the families affected were private renters, and relied for building insurance on their landlords’ ability to repair the structural damage. For them, it was not easy to get redress, which has led to casework that I am still pursuing.

Thankfully, for flood prevention in North Skelton the local council and principal landowner are working together on schemes that will involve breaking up the current prairie-like fields with new tree and hedge planting—an effective way of reducing and controlling flash floods and run-off. Such work takes time, however, and over the coming year I feel that affected North Skelton residents will still worry in periods of long and heavy downpours. One consolation would be to put in place effective measures to ensure that private landlords have sound and reliable building insurance—something that would benefit everyone in the long term. Such things cannot be left to the discretion of the market because we are talking about people’s homes where they raise their families.

Redcar and Cleveland council has spent more than £24,000 on council tax relief for people affected by the September 2013 floods, in addition to money spent via social fund grants and loans. After the Prime Minister’s “money is no object” claim I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), regarding the Government’s highly publicised council tax relief for flood victims, only to be told that my constituents would not qualify as it covered only

“severe weather in December, January and February 2014.”

That seems wholly unfair to me, to local councillors of all parties, and to local residents. The Government are refusing to support local residents by providing centrally funded council tax relief for the sole reason that—in their eyes—those people were flooded three months too early. Such cases prove that the north-east is still at risk from flooding.

Although flooding is a threat in much of England, research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in a 2011 paper, “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, demonstrates that there is a clear north-south divide in terms of socio-spatial flood disadvantage, and that the north-west, north-east, and Yorkshire and the Humber have neighbourhood social flood vulnerabilities that on average are above the English mean. That risk has not been met by Government investment in the north-east. As of January 2014, Government funding for flood defences was forecast to be lower in both nominal and real terms during the current spending period than during the previous spending period, and the Committee on Climate Change has calculated that that represents a real terms cut of around 20%. Although the Government have brought forward money that was already set aside to improve sea defences in Skinningrove, there has been little investment in other more rural areas of the north-east.

Since climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the UK, we must have a joined-up, nationwide strategy on flood prevention. The effects of flooding last long after the water has subsided, and as many of my constituents know, the effects can last almost indefinitely causing lasting financial and emotional damage. The Government must act to protect all households from the damaging effects of flooding, not just in urban areas or where there is a high media presence. I urge them to extend the support and emphasis that they gave to areas hit by flooding last winter to places such as East Cleveland that were hit earlier in the year.

Finally, I thank the hard-working and dedicated emergency services, in particular the firefighters of Cleveland fire brigade who responded to around 300 calls in three hours when flooding occurred last September. That included a call from me, as the flat where my wife and I live was flooded. Without the assistance of Cleveland fire brigade we would have been in a fairly sticky situation, given that at midnight that evening I was in my shorts trying to bale out my neighbours in their living room.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

What an image!

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Exactly.