Examination of witnesses (Questions 500 - 519)
WEDNESDAY 17 JUNE 1998
MR CHRIS
DAVIES, MR
KEITH RIDDELL,
MR JEREMY
MOODY and MR
TOM WHITE
500. You sound hopeful rather than certain.
(Mr Davies) I was the engineering representative
with a group of planners, etc. We produced the DoE guidelines
for development of coastal zone management plans, and it is quite
clear that again with a wide range of authorities in some authorities
there was good integration, account would be taken in others,
and then there may not be the same problems.
501. Would you favour effectively a veto from an agency
responsible for this aspect of policy on planning matters in designated
zones, either flood plains or the coastal zone areas?
(Mr Davies) No, I think the different pressures
on land are such that a balance has to be struck. I feel that
having a national veto would not be the way to approach this.
(Mr Riddell) If I could add to this, success is
sporadic around the country but there are examples of where, let
us say, guidance has failed to be effective and other areas where
it has worked very well indeed. The concept of guidance is the
runner, because flood and erosion potential are not the only issues
at stake here. We are faced with perhaps 4 million more homes
somewhere or other and the reason for guidance not being applied
as effectively as it could be in the past is a lack of information,
a lack of knowledge and lack of education on exactly what risks
are being taken on board in any planned new development. I think
the arena we are dealing with is completely one of risk management
and that risk management cannot be successfully undertaken without
provision of comprehensive information.
502. All of those points are innate in a local democratic
process.
(Mr Riddell) That is right.
503. So if you provide lots of information, lots of education,
it does not necessarily produce the outcome that one might wish,
and you appear to be defending the right of a local authority
to make a judgment to permit development in an area which will
be both risky to the occupants of that development and pass on
substantial costs to other agencies, paid for by the taxpayer
at large rather than the community in that area or, indeed, the
developer of that particular site. You are happy to defend that
individual right, are you?
(Mr Riddell) We have not necessarily drawn the
conclusions that you have just drawn there, that these additional
costs are passed on to the taxpayer at large.
504. But they are.
(Mr Riddell) We have mentioned that there is room
for review of funding arrangements and the distinction between
national and local responsibilities. I think all these things
go together.
505. So just to draw you out a little further, you would
then qualify your freedom to local authorities with perhaps a
legal obligation for the developer to share a proportion of the
costs of any defence of their development, which at the moment
is not obligatory?
(Mr Riddell) Yes, that may well be an appropriate
mechanism.
(Mr Davies) Not only the direct costs of defence
but in compensatory measures that have to be taken elsewhere.
Mr Todd: Indeed, which might be restoration of habitats
as well as the strict engineering compensation that may be required.
Turning to the valuers, any restrictions on planning in these
sorts of areas will have a significant impact on the potential
value of the land obviously.
Chairman
506. I saw you trying to catch my eye just now. There
are other points you want to make not directly on this question.
Please feel free.
(Mr Moody) Yes. I think we could start by commenting
on some of the earlier questions and then fill out on your specific
question to us. You wanted to go first, Tom.
(Mr White) Only to say that in an area which is
dominated by Internal Drainage Boards, such as my own, they do,
of course, in all cases now, I think, make a charge on development
related to the area of defence.
Mr Todd
507. But that is only in an IDB area?
(Mr White) That is in an IDB area, which, of course,
is very particular to my area. In the same way also, it would
not be true to say that someone acting or a council allowing development
in Northamptonshire would pass the cost of getting rid of that
water to the taxpayer because, for example, if you take the Welland-Nene
flood defence budget, which ensures that the water from the Welland
and the Nene is got away to the Wash, the greatest single contributor
to that is the Northamptonshire District Council.
508. Which is heavily supported by the taxpayer at large?
(Mr White) The taxpayer at large but also by the
rates, which presumably is not the taxpayer.
509. But only 20 per cent. of their revenue comes from
that source.
(Mr White) But the point I am making is that they
are not necessarily throwing the cost downstream because they
will have a charge themselves to make towards the defence coming
in.
(Mr Moody) But there are the twin issues here
and I think for those areas outside the IDBs there may be a considerable
history of complacency about the relationship between planning
and water management issues.
510. If you are behind an Environment Agency coastal
defence, for example, which we certainly saw, then you might not
take quite the same view because that is paid for out of the general
taxpayer and not contributed to by the developers who sit in jeopardy
behind the wall?
(Mr White) There is an incorrect notion that the
agricultural drainage ratepayer in the Fens pays to get rid of
the water that has come from the high country. That is, of course,
not true because the high country makes the same contribution
through the flood defence budget.
511. Could we turn back to the question I did put to
you about the impact on valuations?
(Mr Moody) I think our view on the impact on valuations
is that obviously where the planning regime bites it operates
as a restriction on opportunity and, therefore, focuses value
on specific land. The planning regime now is so plan-led that
the value latent in development will usually only be expressed
where that land is identified in the local plan or there are live
hopes appreciated by the market that that land will shortly be
appreciated by the local plan. So for the great majority of agricultural
land the issue of any veto on significant commercial, residential
or industrial development, if that is what we are talking about,
would not be germane to its price. Where that land is in the queue
for the local plan, or the edge of a settlement or a new settlement
that an authority may be planning or anticipations of road junctions
or whatever, then clearly that would be a material effect on that
additional development value which could take its value from £2-3,000
an acre to many thousands per acre, but outside those zones I
suspect there would generally be not very much impact on the valuation.
Just rounding off some of the earlier answers, I think you have
the issue of development within the flood plain, and having seen,
for one reason or another, planning applications to a Midlands
county in the Eighties, I was very surprised at the time at the
way both that council and the relevant water board expressed no
concern whatsoever about significant housing development within
the 1947 flood plain. There is a recent instance from my trawl
for evidence for today on the Midlands floods. Some land in the
Midlands on which one of our members had failed to secure planning
permission for a relatively minor development for a client was
within years picked up by the local council for the retention
of salt for road operations during the winter. That salt may now
have been spread far and wide by the floods that have happened
more recently, and then you have the issues obviously of development
outside the flood plain with its run-off, and the consequent effects
of management have been picked up. So there are two angles to
it but you would need to be fairly careful about a definition
of "development" that would be caught by it because
the definition of "development" is fairly wide-reaching.
512. Yes. Indeed, your point about the change in the
run-off time in your particular area has a bearing on that?
(Mr White) Yes.
(Mr Moody) The other point that would have a bearing
on it is the definition of the flood plain itself, that the old
plans all show the 1947 flood line. Much of East Anglia is 1953
when the sea reached nearly to Cambridge. Of late in the Chairman's
own area and across into the north of Oxfordshire, the floods
have clearly reached a level significantly higher than has ever
been appreciated, which may in part be as a consequence of the
development that has happened in the last 50 years, that there
is now less capacity in the Tewkesbury washlands or whatever to
hold the water, and equally more run-off to channel it down.
513. And changes in agricultural practice as well?
(Mr Moody) That is right, yes.
Chairman
514. On that point, I was interested in what you said
about a local authority denying a developer planning permission
for a modest development and giving itself planning permission
for something much more significant. We have heard some anecdotal
evidence that suggests that the problem often rests not so much
with local authorities as with the planning inspectorate, that
local authorities can sometimes resist development in the flood
plain and are then overruled at the inquiry by the planning inspectorate.
Do you have any evidence to support that anecdotal suggestion?
(Mr Moody) I have had no submissions to me on
that point. I think there is a general observation that the planning
inspectorate has been more respectful of local government in the
last few years than it may have been a decade or more ago. So
I think there may be less truth in that than maybe there might
once have been.
515. I saw Mr Davies nodding his head there.
(Mr Davies) Yes, I have anecdotal evidence of
that as well.
516. You have had a planning inspectorate overrule a
local decision?
(Mr Davies) Yes.
Mr Todd
517. Turning back to the co-ordination of policy, with
the establishment of regional development agencies this has been
seen by some as an opportunity to co-ordinate more effectively
policy in this area. Would you suggest, Mr Davies, that that is
a reasonable way forward?
(Mr Davies) Going back to the comments we made
previously about the interrelationship between development pressures,
social issues and all the other issues associated with either
coastal or flood defence proposals, and also our suggestion that
things should be looked at on a regional basis, then certainly
that would seem to be an appropriate vehicle to consider to cover
these issues.
518. The difficulty is that regions, either MAFF regions,
which I think you referred to in your document, or any other definition
of region that we may use, do not tend to encompass the natural
features that require planning. I see a nod from the valuers at
this?
(Mr Moody) That is right. Two immediate instances
come to my mind, that in earlier evidence I think we heard that
the issues regarding a coast management plan for Holderness would
see Holderness prejudiced to the benefit of Lincolnshire, which
would not come, since the demise of Humberside at least, with
any normal region, and again the issue of the Fens lying between
East Anglia and the East Midlands and almost all strategic regions.
Mr Todd: So there is some difficultly in following
a regional route in this unless one makes a bold assumption that
regions talk to each other about these matters, which we cannot
be entirely sure of.
Mr Hurst
519. To Mr Moody and Mr White, can you expand on your
role as valuers in raising public awareness as to the dangers
of flooding to particular properties or parcels of land?
(Mr White) Yes. In preparing valuations for, for
example, banks or the AMC or a purchaser in a purchaser's report,
it would normally come within our remit to advise that client
on the likelihood or otherwise of flooding. One of the common
questions that is asked of a valuer in the Fens, for example,
is, "What chance is there that my investment will be under
water within 20 years with the melting of the polar icecap?"
I am happy to say that on the advice of our local drainage boards
I am able to give a positive report, in that we do not believe
this to be a proper fear. So in that sense, if professional advice
is taken as to the likelihood of flood danger, then a professional
answer will be given, and because in our part of the world (Mr
Hayes' constituency) we take our drainage rather more seriously
than some, because without it we are in more trouble than most
on a day-to-day basis, we are able to allay any fears. It is actually
in other areas such as Tewkesbury where the danger is greater.
We do, of course, have two questions. One is the river water that
comes from the highlands and the other is the defence against
the sea, but both of them are taken with equal seriousness because
the Wash basin is such a critical area in that respect.
|
