Flooding: Ribble Valley

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) on securing this debate on flooding in the Ribble valley. He spoke passionately on behalf of his constituents, and painted a vivid picture of the events of Boxing day 2105 and beyond. He rightly paid tribute to the many individuals who came forward to help their neighbours and communities, particularly citing Gillian Darbyshire from the local Lions, as well as a number of other business people and local councillors—and, indeed, strangers. I am very aware of the impact that flooding can have on a community. I have supported my own constituents in Suffolk following flooding in recent years. Only at the weekend, when we had our own severe flood warnings, I was able to visit local communities who have also formed flood action groups like those that have been mentioned. It is important to pay tribute to those people who have taken charge of actions in their local community to help their friends in need.

As a bit of personal disclosure, I will always particularly welcome the contributions that strangers make. In 1998, when I was heading home to Liverpool, rather than Lancashire—although historically, of course, Liverpool was in Lancashire—I encountered my own flooding trouble. I had to climb out of my car, which was busy filling with water in the middle of nowhere, and knocked on the door of a house. I will always be grateful to the McDermotts of Honeybourne, who took me in for two days, after which I was able to make my way home. I am very conscious of the fact that flood risk can be very frightening for people, and the warm, loving presence of friends, and strangers, is something that never goes out of one’s mind.

The Government continue to play a key role in improving protection for those at flood risk. We are spending over £2.5 billion on 1,500 new flood defence schemes better to protect 300,000 homes by 2021. Over this Parliament, we have also been increasing maintenance spending, in real terms, to more than £1 billion.

As my hon. Friend said, there is a history of flooding in the Ribble valley, principally from the Rivers Ribble and Calder and the tributaries that run into them. He spoke extensively about the communities affected in his constituency, including Whalley, and Ribchester. Clitheroe, Bolton-by-Bowland, Slaidburn, Samlesbury, Higher Walton, and Walton-le-Dale have also been affected. It is fair to say that December 2015 was the wettest month on record, and the highest flows on record were observed in the Rivers Ribble and Calder during that month. Flood warnings were issued by the Environment Agency at Whalley and Ribchester, and temporary flood defences were deployed. As my hon. Friend will be aware, 432 properties in the Ribble valley were flooded, and about 2,600 right across Lancashire. I am aware that the communities he describes of Whalley, Ribchester, Higher Walton and Walton-le-Dale were among the worst affected, and Billington flooded from the River Calder for the first time. Thankfully, as he will also be aware, Low Moor, Slaidburn and Bolton-by-Bowland did not flood. Local communities expressed their gratitude for the flood defence works previously undertaken by the Environment Agency, protecting them from experiencing any flooding at that time.

Since that flooding incident, the Environment Agency has given one-to-one help and advice to over 100 residents in the Ribble valley. As part of the works to repair bank erosion at Whalley bridge, the Environment Agency contributed a significant sum to reduce flood risk by removing gravel from the river channel. Prior to 2010, as my hon. Friend will be aware, the Environment Agency completed flood risk management schemes at Low Moor, Slaidburn and Bolton-by-Bowland, spending a total of £1.5 million in those areas. Between 2010 and 2015, the Environment Agency invested more than £200,000 in making properties in Whalley and Ribchester more flood resilient. That included working closely with the local council to offer grants to homeowners for property level flood resilience measures, including flood doors and airbrick cover. The properties that were unfortunately flooded were eligible for £5,000 recovery grants. Some of the homes that flooded had not been previously eligible for grants as they had no recent history of flooding.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I am extremely grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments. Will she ask the Environment Agency to look again at the arches by Allan Elliott’s house, where a lot of silt is building up? The Environment Agency will be well familiar with that. The silt should have been removed so that free-flowing water could more easily pass through, but that has not been done; I do not know why. This is causing grave concern to people in the area, because if it is not done and the river rises, there could be severe problems.

[Dr Coffey]

I do not know the details of that, but my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the Environment Agency manager responsible for his area is in the Box today and will have taken careful note of what he has just said. My hon. Friend might be aware that a future scheme to protect Whalley from river flooding is in the development stage. It would cost approximately £1.4 million, and considerable work is being done with the Whalley and Billington flood action group and the local community to optimise the design of the scheme and to develop partnership options prior to a bid for funding. I think that that is the project to which he referred.

A review is ongoing of flood risk right across the River Calder, which will provide additional information to refine options for addressing that flooding. We expect to undertake a review of flood risk in Ribchester this year. A scheme to protect Clitheroe from flooding from Mearley brook will cost approximately £4.8 million, and work is taking place to develop partnership funding options prior to submitting a bid for funding. Lancashire County Council is developing a £2 million scheme to address surface water flooding in Whalley and Billington.

Overall, I am pleased that local partners are already working together to contribute to those schemes, alongside considerable Government investment, and work is continuing to bridge the current funding gap. I remind the House that under a Conservative-led Government, my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), changed the funding policy to give every scheme that had a positive benefit-cost ratio a chance to secure some grant funding, rather than the old system of all or nothing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley has referred to planning, and he should be aware that the national planning policy framework is specific about issues relating to planning in flood areas. The Environment Agency’s advice has been accepted in more than 98% of applications. I have looked carefully at the ones that were rejected by local councils, and that information is publicly available.

My hon. Friend referred to Redrow and his concern that the housing development in Whalley is failing to comply with planning conditions designed to reduce flood risk. As he has indicated, I expect the local authority to deal robustly with any developer that does not adhere to planning conditions. I know that my hon. Friend wrote to the Environment Agency about the matter. The Environment Agency does not have the necessary powers, but if there is more that my hon. Friends at the Department for Communities and Local Government can do, we will do it. I will just say on the record that this is the second time today that Redrow has been raised with me as a developer not particularly fulfilling its conditions—in the other case, it is fulfilling a condition that simply does not work—so I will certainly be following up on that matter with my hon. Friends responsible for planning.

In terms of drainage, the Environment Agency leads on flood risk associated with culverted sections of main rivers in England. Where there are culverts, the EA will inspect them regularly, and operations staff will clear structures upstream of such culverts prior to flood conditions. Lancashire County Council, as both the highways authority and the lead local flood authority in Lancashire, leads on flood risk associated with highway drains and culverted ordinary watercourses.

In the village of Whalley, Lancashire County Council has been investigating the condition of the culvert that carries an ordinary watercourse—Wiswell brook— underneath King Street, to which my hon. Friend referred, in the centre of the village. The culvert has surcharged in the past and led to flooding, most recently on 21 November. When any works are deemed to be necessary to the culvert and associated infrastructure, bids for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs funding will be submitted by the council via the Environment Agency.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) spoke eloquently on behalf of her constituents. I thought it might be worth sharing where we are on the Preston and South Ribble flood alleviation scheme, to which she referred. At the moment, the costing for that is about £32 million. The scheme would better protect more than 3,000 homes and 600 other properties in the area from fluvial and tidal risk. It would also decrease flood risk at Walton-le-Dale, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley. Further work is ongoing to assess whether the scheme could be extended to benefit Higher Walton.

As it stands, the scheme qualifies for about £17 million of Government grant-in-aid, and it requires £15 million of additional partnership funding on top of the contributions that the Environment Agency is working hard to secure. Many local businesses in this catchment area would benefit from the scheme. If my hon. Friends are in a position to assist with obtaining further partnership funding, it would go a long way to securing the viability of the scheme. I understand that the local enterprise partnership has been heavily involved in trying to secure funding for projects in Burnley and Lancaster. I encourage my hon. Friends to work with the LEP to consider potential moves for the scheme.

It is worth setting out for the House what we are doing more broadly to improve resilience and to ensure that we are better prepared this winter for whatever arises. No Government can promise that no one will ever be flooded again, but we can learn and act, and that is what we did with the national flood resilience review. The review was undertaken to assess how the country could be better protected from future flooding and extreme weather events. I can report that considerable progress has been made to help to prepare for future flood events. We have invested £12.5 million in mobile flood defences, which means that the Environment Agency now has 25 miles of new temporary defences, located across seven key areas and available to be deployed flexibly around the country, compared with just 5 miles available last year. There are 500,000 sandbags, and as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced, 1,200 troops were on stand-by if councils needed their help. In all three cases, they were deployed at the weekend.

With regard to the Ribble valley, the Environment Agency has undertaken a robust assessment of the locations that are suitable for using temporary barriers. It assessed the practical implications, such as road closures, and the flood-risk benefit, as well as ensuring that they do not make the flooding worse elsewhere. There are plans in place to use temporary barriers at Ribchester and Billington. Unfortunately, these barriers are unsuitable for Whalley, despite being used in 2015, a fact of which the local flood action group is aware.

Infrastructure providers have been reviewing the resilience of their key assets for communities of 25,000 people and above. They have been identifying where they can also protect these assets with temporary defences this winter, while longer-term solutions are implemented. I have been leading a series of weekly ministerial phone calls to ensure that we are in a good place. My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley referred in particular to mobile phones. They have been a key part of ensuring that we are more resilient.

This means that the country has been better protected this winter—of course, the winter is not over yet—and services to our communities will be more resilient to flood events. The next stage of the review will focus on surface water flooding, which is a significant source of flooding, particularly in our cities and urban areas. The next stage will involve collaboration between the Environment Agency, lead local flood authorities, the water sector and other stakeholders with a key interest in managing this risk.

We have worked with the private sector to develop a new property flood resilience action plan, and I thank Peter Bonfield for leading that work. It illustrates some straightforward measures that homeowners and business owners can take to improve the resilience of their properties to flooding, as well as to enable them to get back in far more quickly if, unfortunately, they are flooded. These can be simple measures, such as in-built covers, or more substantial works, such as installing pumps, having solid floors or rewiring so that plug sockets are higher up the wall.

On insurance, my hon. Friend made a series of points about the presence of companies, quotes, the availability of assessors, the challenge of the risk being passed on and the problem of not being able to get to the end of the process. I will raise these issues with the ABI and share some of this with my hon. Friends in the DCLG, who are primarily responsible for the recovery from flooding.

On Flood Re, I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue of access to affordable flood assurance. For those at high risk, whether households or businesses and their surrounding communities, I recognise that the matter is very important. Flood Re is already under way, providing relief for the thousands of households at high flood risk so that they can now access affordable flood insurance. I recognise that that will bring very real practical and emotional comfort to many. Fifty insurance companies, which is over 90% of the market, now offer access to Flood Re, and 53,000 households have benefited during its first six months. It is important to stress that this project is time-limited—it will last for 25 years—and is, in effect, funded by all other households paying towards it. That principle of taxation ensures we can support our communities.

On businesses, just last month the British Insurance Brokers Association launched a product designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises at high flood risk to access affordable insurance. By using very granular postcode data and recognising the benefit of property level resilience measures, it should prove a welcome solution for many businesses. The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), who is no longer in his place, also raised that issue.

I want to give this product a chance to work, but I would welcome evidence about whether it is working. As I have pointed out in relation to Flood Re, there is the significant principle of taxation that means we can help each other. If we moved to the stage of asking businesses to start adding to their insurance premiums to help businesses in other parts of the country, that would be an unprecedented form of mutual business support. It would take a lot of evidence for me to say that that is the next necessary step, but I am open to the evidence and I want to hear from people. Should it prove that there is a need for additional action, I remain open to exploring what could be done.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley referred to European Union funding. I draw his attention to a written statement from the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made on Monday 16 January, which sets out in considerable detail what has happened in relation to EU funding. Ultimately, we were going to receive a payment of £15 million. We now have to pay back £14.5 million due to ineligible expenditure relating to an application made in 2007. It therefore looks like we will end up with about half a million pounds. I will leave it to my hon. Friend to read the written statement in detail to explain that situation further.

I would appreciate it if my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) were able to provide more detail on the issue he raised, so that I can look into it. He should be aware of the £9.7 million allocated to the Morecambe wave reflection wall, which is due to be completed by 2019 and will protect more than 8,000 properties. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) referred to the building issues and I agree that we need to follow up on them. Again, I will involve my hon. Friends from the Department for Communities and Local Government in that matter.

This has been a very useful debate to consider the particular situation in this very special part of Lancashire. I was born in the county of Lancashire and it will always be in my heart. I hope I have been able to show my hon. Friends that plans are under way to try to address the flooding issues. We have already seen the benefit of additional investment, including the use of the mobile barriers. I hope the House will join me in thanking the Environment Agency, our emergency services, council officials and the many volunteers involved in responding to the east coast tidal surge this weekend just gone. I am sure we are all relieved that the worst-case scenario did not happen, and are grateful for the work put in by so many people to ensure the potential impact was minimised.

The Environment Agency will continue to work with my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley to reduce flood risk in the area, and to work collaboratively to help to deliver projects locally. I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the House that I will listen to all the comments made today. The Government will continue to try to ensure that we are all as best protected from flooding as possible.

Question put and agreed to.