Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260 - 279)
TUESDAY 12 MAY 1998
COUNCILLOR HUMPHREY
TEMPERLEY AND
MR DAVE
RENNIE
Mr Hurst
260. Councillor Temperley, you mentioned the quite extensive
involvement you have in flood and coastal defence in Somerset.
You tell us in your evidence that you have some £500 million
of capital assets relating to flood defence which would require
some £10 million per annum to maintain. Are you able to say
how much is spent at the present time?
(Councillor Temperley) About half of that. One of
the things which has happened since my experience has started,
is that we have had several major coastal flooding events. What
has happened is that the minor capital works have tended to be
overwhelmed by the very high priority of, for instance, at the
moment we are just completing, a programme to protect Minehead
at something like £14 million. That scheme has tended to
mean that the inland important but less urgent works have been
delayed. So the pumping stations, the sluices, the flood banks
which need maintaining tend to have fallen behind in terms of
the maintenance programme.
261. I understand that but presumably the £10 million
as an assessment of the actual need is based upon schemes such
as Minehead being included in that figure. Are you able to make
an assessment of any declining quality of the flood defence capital
assets as a result of that underspend on maintenance?
(Councillor Temperley) Yes. The local Flood Defence
Committee has done a capital asset review. We are well behind
in our maintenance programme and, for instance, pumping stations'
pumps with estimated lives of 25 years are running up to a 40-year
cycle for replacement. Those kinds of things are quite serious.
We will have an additional income source no doubt because some
of the pumping engines we are able to sell have a high value for
vintage purposes. There are some very interesting ancient diesels
on the market when we actually manage to get round to selling
off those assets.
262. What is the legal position in civil law? Are you specifically
excluded from liability of a duty of care to protect property
and persons from flood?
(Councillor Temperley) Yes. So far as I understand
it, neither the Environment Agency nor the county council can
be held liable unless there is an extreme act of negligence. There
is no general liability. We are very concerned that the effects
of long-term economies tend not to have been felt at head office
level but the level of workforce we are able to maintain, particularly
with local knowledge, to operate sluices, to operate flood gates
in those events, the numbers are getting rather low and the experienced
men have very often taken early retirement so we do not have the
kind of resource we should like to have on the ground.
263. Part of your answer to that would be as indicated earlier,
that there be a separate budget for work of this kind and you
could raise that money through the ratepayers of the county.
(Councillor Temperley) We are already spending something
like four times the national average on flood defence per head
in Somerset. Those of us who are involved in the levels and moors
pay another form of taxation. We pay a drainage rate to the inland
drainage boards on both domestic property—which has been
changed now—and on farmland and farm buildings. We are paying
an additional tax of £2 to £3 per acre in many areas.
264. You would like a situation where you have freedom to
pay more and be charged more.
(Councillor Temperley) I have never heard anybody
complaining that we were spending too much on flood defence.
265. Does that include people who do not live in the flooded
areas?
(Councillor Temperley) Yes. In a sense the county
is diverse but people who live on the hills do recognise that
we have to deal with their water when it arrives on the lowlands
and vice-versa. Although not in Somerset but in the National Park,
you will no doubt all have been aware of the Lynmouth flood disaster.
We know that not only do floods cause a great deal of inconvenience,
but I attended the 45th anniversary service of the deaths of 30-odd
people in Lynmouth. It is very much a fact that local people understand
those issues.
Chairman
266. You talked about deterioration in the quality of your
flood defence capital assets. If I am correct, the managed retreat
you talked about is at Porlock, is that right?
(Councillor Temperley) Yes, that is right.
267. I am informed that the reason that particular capital
asset of a beach deteriorated was because you were not getting
the shingle you should have from erosion in Devon because Devon
were protecting a coastline which would naturally, if it had been
allowed to erode, have protected yours. You have incurred a cost
because Devon is doing something perhaps it should not do. Should
you be looking for compensation from Devon for the cost of the
land which has been lost?
(Councillor Temperley) The coastal practices do not
in fact work like that. We do have the benefit of various detailed
studies of the way the processes work. Most of the Porlock shingle
ridge arrived in the bay many thousands of years ago. There is
limited transport along the coastline. The shingle budget suggests
that something like 100 cubic metres a year are arriving in the
bay and 400 cubic metres would be required to maintain the flow.
Much of the coastline to the west, which is possibly the coastline
referred to, is in the ownership of the National Park. There is
no maintenance of that particular piece of coastline except in
so far as we occasionally have to move the coast path when a landslip
means it falls into the sea. The point could be right but in actual
fact it is entirely theoretical. I can see the gentleman from
whom the point arose.
Chairman: He does not exist for the purposes of today but
thank you for the answer, which we may explore in writing subsequently.
Who knows?
Ms Keeble
268. You suggest that the existing system of flood defence
is not flexible enough to respond to the drainage requirements
of different parts of the county. How would you like to see it
changed?
(Councillor Temperley) I am not sure I recognise the
point.
269. Points 4 and 5 in your memorandum.
(Councillor Temperley) That refers to the national
scoring system. We do find the national scoring system is causing
us some problems in that the opposite sides of the same river
both appear to rate the same in terms of the MAFF scoring system
but one bank has properties which are directly affected by flood
risk and we felt there was life in danger. There are some issues
about the long-term standards of the flood defence and whether
in fact you can demonstrate they are in imminent danger of failure
and a lot of detailed technical issues about the way that system
is working. The second round of the process seems to have ironed
out some of those issues, but we are still left with a big problem
that the other local authorities, district councils, depend on
SCAs, supplementary coastal approvals, for funding their capital
schemes. I do not think many of the district councils' relatively
minor non main river schemes will go ahead unless there is SCA
cover for those schemes. The SCA cover depends on meeting the
MAFF national priority schemes. It does seem to be rather absurd
to use a national priority scheme to evaluate a £30,000,
£40,000, £50,000 scheme in a village to protect a couple
of houses. That seemed to me to be much more appropriately done
under subsidiarity principles at a local level.
270. Are you seriously being able to get money to protect
three or four houses in a village?
(Councillor Temperley) Yes, that is the system. No,
you do not get money; you get SCAs.
271. You get approval.
(Councillor Temperley) Yes. MAFF hold the purse strings
in the sense that they hold the SCA approval without which most
local authorities would not be able to go ahead with the scheme.
272. How many applications have you put in? How many applications
have you not put in because you do not think they would meet the
criteria and how many applications have you had turned down?
(Councillor Temperley) In my district council, which
is South Somerset whom I can probably speak for, the entire minor
flood defence scheme works has had to go on hold because there
is not enough capital money available to back those schemes because
of the change in the grant scheme.
273. When you say the minor works, could you give an example
which shows what might happen if this does not go ahead type thing?
(Councillor Temperley) Three or four houses at the
bottom of a village may get flooded. In one scheme we have just
completed at Dowlish Wake a cider factory and four listed buildings
were protected at a cost of something like £250,000. It is
those kinds of schemes which are likely not to take place. We
embarked on a major programme in that area after the 1979 and
1980 floods, including one quite big scheme, a multi-million pound
scheme promoted locally via the district council to protect a
town called Bruton. In most cases I do not believe those scheme
will go ahead and I believe that is a great shame.
274. Have you found the restriction of money for maintenance
and the fact that the current spending regime encourages people
to apply for new schemes to be a problem with maintaining flood
defences rather than just building new ones?
(Councillor Temperley) I do not think so. What tends
to happen is that the maintenance monies are squeezed. I cannot
think of an example where we have abandoned an existing flood
defence and built a new one because that is the way the funding
works.
275. In tabling quite a lot of questions here about the different
amounts and different types of flood defence schemes which have
been approved and have been funded, they seem to break down into
three very different headings: one is the Environment Agency's,
one is local flood defence committee's and one is the local authority
ones. There seem to be slightly different funding schemes for
the three, although they all have to have approval at the end
of the day. Do you think the systems could be simplified so that
you have perhaps one clear funding scheme into which people could
put bids and they could be approved, which does not seem, from
what I can see, to exist at present. It might be my misreading
of it.
(Councillor Temperley) I could give a political answer.
276. Any answer.
(Councillor Temperley) The political answer is that
I am a believer in regionalism and a block grant on a regional
basis would be a very appropriate way to deal with this matter.
277. So you left it much more to the local rather than having,
say, the Environment Agency making decisions for schemes across
the country.
(Councillor Temperley) I see no reason why the Environment
Agency should not be the recipient of a block grant, provided
there is an appropriate mechanism for accountability. The accountability
mechanism at the moment is via the regional Flood Defence Committee
and it is quite effective. Possibly when regional chambers get
more effective and in better fettle, then they would be the appropriate
place for that accountability to reside. Although I am a political
nominee for an RDA board, I would be totally resistant to the
idea that the RDA boards should be the people responsible, because
I do not believe that under present constitutional arrangements
they have appropriate local accountability.
278. I just want to go back to the criteria. You said you
think they are too rigid. It does seem from some of the evidence
we have had that there needed to be a bit of a change, of reprioritisation
because of the lack of attention going to inland flood defences.
Under the scheme you say you would like to see, how would the
prioritisation work, or would that also be left to local level?
(Councillor Temperley) What I hope I said was that
I felt that because of the immediacy and apparent urgency of coastal
sea defence issues as opposed to coast defence issues, flooding
from the sea, in many cases they had taken money which could not
then be spent inland. There is a backlog of work which is required
to be done inland and I think that the national priority scheme
probably puts a very high value on the sea defence issues and
a lesser value on the coast defence issues. There is a whole lot
of issues about the agricultural benefits which we need to have
a long and considered view about and how we value in our area
many of the benefits of sea defence schemes accrued to agriculture
as opposed to settlements. You made the point earlier, Chairman,
about the 4.4 million houses. If we are not very careful, we will
end up with quite a number of those houses being allocated into
areas which are at risk from the 1,000-year flood, because otherwise
you have grade one land, you have national parks, areas of outstanding
natural beauty and areas which are below the 11-metre line and
there is not much left in between.
279. What would the financial implications be of what you
are proposing? More money? How much more?
(Councillor Temperley) In our terms, under the present
local government funding system, if you had a disregard the impact
would be felt purely on the council taxpayers of the locality
which chose to raise additional money for flood defence.
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