Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 19 MAY 2004
BARONESS YOUNG
OF OLD
SCONE, DR
DAVID KING
AND MR
IAN BARKER
Q300 Paddy Tipping: Finally, let
me turn to a specific which is the Thames Barrier and ask you
about your thinking and planning on this. The Thames Barrier is
being used more and more. It is getting out of date. It is going
to have to be replaced. What is the target for replacement and
are you on track for achieving it?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: There
was press coverage recently which talked about the Thames Barrier
being worn out. I think that was the implication. I do not know
what the words were that were used, but the implication was that
it would be useless by 2020. That is not the case. We have known
for a long time that there would be sea level rise and climate
change implications—particularly sea level rise implications—for
the Barrier. What we are not talking about is junking the whole
Barrier and starting again. That is not the name of the game.
It is about improving the standards of the Barrier and improving
the standards of the flood defences all down the Thames estuary
and a whole load of other, concomitant works. There was a piece
of slightly bizarre press coverage that implied that the total
investment in the Barrier was going to be junked after 50 years,
which is not the case.
Dr King: When thinking about the
estuary, it is important not just to focus on the Barrier. The
Barrier is a very important component but there are seven other
barriers. There are 500 kilometres of embankment and something
like 400 different sluices and gates that all operate as part
of the tidal system. We are very fortunate in the design of the
Barrier and indeed the other barriers that there is quite significant
headroom, if you like, built in. The Agency has started a major
study that is looking at the future flood risk management for
the estuary. That study kicked off at the back end of last year
and it will cost in the order of £16 million. It will take
something like four years to complete because there is a significant
amount of detail but the product of that will be a flood risk
management plan for the estuary that will cover the replacement
and the enhancement. The expectation is that we will start that
programme of works in about 2015, but that would take us through
defences right to the end of the century. That is not to say we
will not do anything in the meantime, but in terms of having an
overall good, strategic view and plan of the estuary, that is
the timescale.
Q301 Paddy Tipping: What are the
threats to your plans?
Dr King: Obviously there is significant
development planned for the Gateway and, as part of that planning,
probably for the first time flood management has become an integral
part of the planning infrastructure. It is very important that
the decisions that are taken in terms of moving the Gateway forward
do not compromise what we need to do in the longer term, but we
have been working very closely with developers, with the ODPM
and others in ensuring that is the case.
Q302 Paddy Tipping: Could you say
that in plainer language? Are you saying that all this extra housing
that is going round the estuary potentially causes a flood management
risk and what you are trying to do is to work with the planners,
work with the ODPM, to ensure that does not happen?
Dr King: Clearly, if you add the
quantum of houses which is something of the order of 150,000 into
the estuary, it will increase the risk but what you have to remember
is that the estuary, with the exception of the Kent Marshes etc,
is defended today to a standard of 1:2,000 years. [As sea level
rises, the standard of protection will reduce as planned to the
design standard of 1:1,000 years.] There is a very good level
of protection. Obviously the risk increases because the consequences
of failure are greater.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Could
I comment on some of the things that are needed in the Gateway
if we are really going to keep the options flexible for the future?
Clearly, we need to get to a level above individual development
zones within the Gateway so that we have a proper, spatial plan
and can anticipate where development can usefully happen, set
back from the river, where we need to protect access so that we
can ensure that circulation and access are still protected if
there is a flood incident and that we also see flood resilience
planning of the actual buildings and developments in the Gateway.
We need a strategic approach. We need some strategic routes protected.
We need to make sure we do not put vulnerable communities and
developments in the wrong place and we need to make sure that
the individual construction schemes are well managed.
Q303 Paddy Tipping: Is all that happening?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
are working very closely both with the arm's length development
bodies and the ODPM on how we can make sure that we do have all
of those layers in place. Clearly, development in the Gateway
is going to be quite an economically tight issue because much
of the development is on brown field sites and that is quite a
costly process to remedy. There is an anxiety about what the on
costs of both flood defence and sustainable construction would
look like in the Gateway. We have to be mindful of the fact that
we cannot design solutions that are going to mean that economic
development simply cannot happen. It would be inconsistent for
us to do that when there is already a considerable amount of development
protected to a one in 2,000 year standard. Providing both sides
of the equation, the development equation, the environmental equation
and the flood risk equation, respect each others' viewpoints as
we move forward, we are working very closely.
Q304 Mr Drew: In a sense, the more
constrained we are by resources because of the macro schemes,
the big schemes which may include the Thames Barrier, the more
difficult it is for us to deal with the micro schemes, the ones
Paddy referred to on the Severn. That has an implication for the
ability to do anything with those areas. In reality, we are just
going to use them as part of the flood protection, the natural
flood plain, but the problem with that is you end up continually
reviewing these schemes rather than doing them. It is a bit of
a myth to pretend you are going to get any private money in because
you have effectively precluded all development in that area. Can
you see that there is a bit of a vicious circle there for some
communities? They now do not have what they effectively thought
they were promised, which is not hard schemes but just getting
the banks repaired and so on. That has not happened. They probably
will not get access to private money, so they are left in limbo.
What sort of good news can you give to those communities? I have
to go and meet one of them along with the Environment Agency,
and they are saying, "We were promised this 18 months ago.
It is further away today than it ever was."
Baroness Young of Old Scone: One
of the things we have to get better at is recognising when a community
is not likely to have a scheme in the immediate future or even
the foreseeable future and just being pretty plain and open about
it. One of the things we have done in the past, which has been
done from good intentions on our part but may not have served
the community as well as we had hoped, was to desperately look
for a viable scheme, with umpteen different options, different
appraisals, constantly working with the community to try and find
something that would work and, after two, three or four years,
having to say to them, "I am sorry. We cannot find anything
that stacks up." It is really heart breaking for communities
that are put in that position. We have to find ways of recognising
quite early on when we are flogging a dead horse in the short
to medium term. I am sure David will want to comment more on a
couple of other issues. One is we have heavily committed to a
major programme of efficiency to try and make the money go as
far as possible. Obviously, the more we can do that as well as
bringing in additional funding, the further our funding will go.
It may well be that for some of these communities the important
thing is for them to flood proof their houses. It does make a
huge difference in a flood incident if you have flood mitigation
measures in your house, electrics coming in from the top rather
than the bottom, impermeable surfaces on the ground floor, living
on the first floor so that the stuff on the ground floor is less
vulnerable. All of that can make a heck of a difference as to
whether a flood incident is an annoying, disrupting phenomenon
or a life breaking event which some of these floods are for some
people. I think we have in some of the communities to encourage
that approach. The Flood Forum is excellent. It is a group of
flooded communities that got together immediately after the 2000
floods and they are great. They have been there. They have the
t-shirt. They have had the flood. They know what they are talking
about and they are working very closely with us on all of the
measures, right across flood risk management.
Dr King: Our priority is about
flood risk management so the principle is directing funds where
the risk is the greatest. However, if you follow that in its purest
sense, you are absolutely right. If we just use the Gateway as
an example, it is very early days but our estimate figure for
a replacement of the defences is in the order of £4 billion.
You would have to take that outside the norm and that may be true
of other situations. In addition, if you look at the east coast,
we have put significant investment post-1953 into defending the
east coast. A lot of those defences will start to come to the
end of their natural life and again there may be a case for looking
at that outside the normal investment stream. That needs to be
taken into consideration. Also, there is clearly a political judgment
which is the speed at which you provide defences, because that
is dependent on money. I would reiterate what Barbara said. There
are quite a few additional tools in the tool kit now that are
over and above just hard defences. One is about awareness and
the effectiveness of awareness. It is all very well people being
aware but they must take action. We run an awareness campaign
every year and follow up with that. Secondly, in terms of warning,
we are currently coming to the end of a project which will implement
what we call multimedia flood warning, which gives the opportunity
to people to receive warnings through internet, text messages
or whatever way. That opens out the warning. If they put in the
flood resilience, there is an opportunity for them to act. Secondly,
the temporary defences. They are not all that expensive and I
think there are opportunities for communities to use those.
Q305 Chairman: In your evidence,
in paragraph 4.7, you say, "Foresight may well not contain
the worst case scenario."[10]
Then you say there is a new study that has come out from Defra
where you have reviewed the adequacy of the allowance made for
climate change by an increase of 20% to peak flows. How on earth
is anybody going to be able to plan definitively for the types
of expenditure we are talking about when we have Professor Sir
David King's report which is hailed universally as the ultimate
study? Then we read in here that this may not be the ultimate
study. There is an even worse case scenario. You are talking about
expenditure outside the norm. The Foresight Report talks about
responses requiring between £22 billion and £75 billion
of new engineering by 2080. How are you going to get a consistent,
agreed position to recommend to Government when you still seem
to be feeling around as to what is the size and scale of the problem?
Dr King: In terms of climate change,
it is difficult to manage because there are lots of uncertainties.
In the evidence we presented, what we flagged is—and this
would be accepted—that in the Foresight study one model
was used, the Hadley model, which is excellent, but there are
other models available. The Hadley model is known to be dry, if
I can use that expression. Some of the other models would show
that there is greater precipitation in the summer period and that
is what we are flagging there. As we move forward, obviously you
are planning over a long time period. I do not think super David
King would claim that it is the definitive answer. We will iterate
this as we move forward and on each iteration and with better
information and better modelling we will get a better answer.
Q306 Chairman: In all of your evidence
and indeed in the Foresight Report, to deal with flooding (a)
you have to have a commitment to spend big money and (b) you have
to spend this money over a long period of time. In other words,
the message that comes out of here is that the problem is here
and now. Unless we set out on a long road to deal with this problem,
the consequences of flooding could be enormous. Governments find
it very difficult to make the kind of long term commitment which
is implied by these various scenarios. It is very easy to push
everything to the right in public expenditure terms. One of the
numbers kicking around here was that we are spending about £800
million on flood defences at the moment. If you put it up to a
billion, you have to find another £200 million every year.
On another one of these you could say it is a definite £billion
a year. That is serious public expenditure commitment against
a background where there is still doubt. I presume you are saying
Foresight may be on the down side. You think it should be more.
Somebody will come up with a model that says it should be less.
How are you going to get certainty with people like the Treasury,
who do not like spending any money at all on anything, to agree
to underwrite a Defra budget to deal with these matters?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
is an area where certainty is difficult and therefore many of
the decisions you have to make are what we call no regrets decisions,
that do not prejudice the future but are moving in the right direction.
To be honest, at the moment, in our terms, we are spending less
than half a billion a year on flood defence action and therefore
getting up to the billion would be a step in the right direction
because that is absolutely without regrets. Under any scenarios
at all, it is going to need something moving in that direction.
I have no clue as to what we might get out of the spending review
this time round, but if we are not going to move at all up the
way I think that would be ignoring the future impact of climate
change. The second point we need to make is that climate change
is long term. There is still a lot of debate about whether what
we are seeing is the front end of it or whether, in reality, it
is going to be 2020-25 before we really start to see climate change
in earnest. We are not in theory right up against it at the moment
but we need to begin to make plans that take account of those
future impacts. Let us make the progress we can against the bottom
end of the ranges rather than worrying too much about the top
end, because at the moment we will never hit the top end.
Q307 Chairman: Mr Tipping made a
very interesting observation when he asked about a small community.
The message was, "Well, tough. You may not get protection."
If governments have duties of care, which I presume they do, how
do we communicate to the communities that are not going to get
the money because, unless you spend it all, somebody by definition
is not going to be protected in the way that they might want to
be. Are those communities likely to judicially review the Government
and say, "You are not doing your job, Government. We want
protection. We cannot buy the insurance. The Environment Agency
have put us in one of their flood risk areas. We are in the green
area. We are going to be inundated, so what are you going to do
to protect us?"? As a society, are we going to have to say,
"You, you and you will be protected but you, you and you,
including Mr Tipping's constituency, are going to be flooded"?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
should look at where we have come from. Many of these communities
have been flooded in the past over many, many years. There are
a number of things happening that make it worse for communities
now. One is we are all much more affluent; we have carpets, electrical
goods and MDF kitchens that fall apart under the onslaught of
water. The impact is more severe the more affluent we have become.
Many of these places have been flooding periodically. We had particularly
bad floods in the year 2000 which were widespread but they were
one in 300 year events in many cases or one in 200 or 150 year
events. They were unusual and we hope that they are genuinely
unusual. Clearly, we have a responsibility for flood defence but
it is a discretionary power. We can undertake flood defence works
but we are not obliged to and we have to use what money we can
raise in the most prioritised, cost effective way. I think communities
suing the government would probably discover that legally they
did not have much purchase. We want to make sure that we are giving
communities the right sort of advice and support so that if we
cannot provide defences because they simply are not cost effective
or they are impractical—in some cases it is communities
where there literally is not a practical solution—we nevertheless
do not leave them high and dry and hopeless and we introduce them
to the measures. They can take a look at temporary defences and
whether they are feasible and we can make sure that they get adequate
warning so that we can try to ensure that we are not facing the
worst circumstance, which is not loss of property but loss of
life.
Q308 Chairman: Work has already been
embarked on by your Agency on the pilot river basin study for
the Water Framework Directive, namely the Ribble. I was somewhat
concerned to see in Sir David's report that the Ribble estuary
has a nasty danger blob. Right over the top of it is one of the
areas which could be subject to severe flooding under one of his
many scenarios. Are you going to amend or take into account in
the pilot river basin study the types of risk issue on flooding
that we have been discussing?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
catchment plans for the Water Framework Directive will be very
closely combined with a whole range of existing catchment plans
that we have either done or are in the process of doing on water
resources, water quality and flood risk management. All of that
will be brought together. The underlying principle of the Water
Framework Directive is that we do look at all of the land management
and water impacts in collaboration and try to identify where,
through our river basin characterisation process and the programmes
and measures we have to draw up in order to get all of those who
can have an impact on that catchment to take the right action
to improve the status of those waters. All of those issues will
need to be taken into account. That will also include issues like
sewerage and land drainage as well as flood risk management.
Dr King: In terms of the Water
Framework Directive, the river basin plans will be underpinned
by a number of other plans, one of which is the catchment flood
management plan. It is the catchment flood management plan that
would factor in climate change considerations.
Q309 Chairman: You are going to try
out the work on that in the Ribble estuary plan, are you?
Dr King: We are already progressing
catchment flood management plans in a number of different locations.
Q310 Mr Mitchell: If you have Paddy's
unsaveable villages, are you not going to have to designate them
in some way, like they used to designate certain mining villages
D in the Durham coalfield. D stood for, "Die, you bastards."
You are going to have to designate some as UW, under water. They
are going to have to be told, are they not?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
need to keep calm on this because the fact that we know more about
flood risk does not mean to say that they are at any higher risk
at the moment. Because we are right at the front end of climate
change, many of these communities are not at a substantially higher
risk than they have been for many, many years. They may be slightly
at a higher risk because we are seeing other factors like more
concrete, so that means faster run off and therefore faster flash
floods. Sometimes the way in which land is managed for forestry
and agriculture can have a big impact. There may be changes that
have happened as a result of other things that are happening within
the flood catchment, but many of these communities are not in
any worse a position than they have been for a long time. We need
to stay calm. If what we are predicting in terms of climate change
means that they are going to have an enhanced risk, we need to
be very open about that but it is over a substantially lengthy
period. In the Foresight study, we are talking about 2030 to 2080.
There is a long time to prepare. I do not think we should be regarding
houses that are at risk of flooding more frequently, for example,
than one in 75 years, which is the level that the ABI have set
for beginning to ask questions about the insurability and the
premium loading. Beyond that, they may flood tomorrow. The houses
that are defended to more than one in 75 could equally well flood
tomorrow because it may be a one in 100 event or a one in 150
event. The message we get over to all communities that are in
the flood plain is even if you have a whacking great defence do
not relax because the reality is there will be events that will
over top even the best protected of defences. We cannot simply
protect against the one in whatever unexpected event. If you are
in the flood plain, you need to have a proper flood plan. You
need to know what you are going to do with your granny and your
hamster and where your insurance policies are. You need to know
how you are going to react and plan to protect your house and
family if you find yourself in that position. Clearly, you take
a view about the degree of protection you have but even for people
with defences, if you are in the flood plain, you really seriously
must think about what would happen if the defences were over topped.
Perhaps we can point Mr Mitchell in the direction of our website
where there is an admirable piece that shows exactly what we would
like all householders in the flood plain to do.
Dr King: It is a very important
message that you cannot stop flooding; you can only mitigate against
it. The question is how you mitigate.
Q311 Mr Mitchell: I heard you say
you were going to spend 60 million quid on a new study for the
replacement of the Thames Barrier. That sounds a ridiculous amount.
What are you going to have? Gold sluices?
Dr King: £16 million.
Q312 Mr Mitchell: Let us move on
to reservoirs, in that case. You seem less keen on reservoirs
than Water UK which said that reservoirs may well be necessary.
What you say is that it is unlikely that new resources will be
needed solely to deal with climate change. "Solely"
is the weasel word there. Are we going to need more reservoirs
or are we not?
Mr Barker: We may well need more
reservoirs. I was surprised to see in some of the earlier submissions
that there is a view that the Agency is against reservoirs. Some
three years ago, we published a strategy for water resources in
England and Wales that looked 25 years ahead and was based on
the Foresight scenarios and different socio-economic models, to
try to understand what might happen to demand for water within
houses, within industry and within agriculture. Within our strategy,
we took the view that on a twin track approach there is a lot
that could be done with demand management to make better use of
water, but nonetheless new water resources developments would
almost certainly be needed to meet growing demand. We proposed
some 1,800 megalitres per day which, in old money, is about 400
million gallons a day worth of resource developments, including
a number of new reservoirs and a recommendation that some companies
look seriously at the potential and the need for new reservoirs
and also consider the need to raise existing reservoirs.
Q313 Mr Mitchell: What will they
be used for? I, in my simple minded way, thought they would be
used for storing winter rain so you can drink it in summer, but
it was also suggested to us in earlier evidence that they would
be used for managing river flow. Will they be used in that way?
Mr Barker: It depends on the reservoir
and where it is. Some reservoirs can be used for a variety of
purposes to help overall water management within a catchment.
For example, a reservoir near the head of a catchment can store
winter run off and can release that water during the summer to
maintain flows downstream. That flow augmentation can benefit
not just the ecology of the river but can be used by other people
downstream to abstract water as well as the water company that
built the reservoir in the first place. Then of course there are
the recreation and community benefits from the reservoir. Counter
to that is the cost and the impact of a reservoir. There is a
careful balancing act in determining whether, in response to changing
or growing demand, a reservoir is the best option in terms of
meeting that demand.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: One
of the reasons that we are portrayed as being anti-reservoir is
that we are pretty keen that some of the other measures that need
to be in place to manage demand are seriously addressed by the
water companies, things like reduction of their own leakage. We
are in a position where we are seeing the leakage in the Thames
increasing, year on year and the amount of water lost from leakage
in the Thames could supply five million people. We are talking
about big volumes of water that need to be resolved by proper
leakage management. We believe that universal or semi-universal
metering of households would help. It would help not only to identify
where leaks are happening but it also has a proven track record
in reducing demand. Education of the public by the water companies
and by others in demand management and all of those need to be
tackled as a first option. I know that metering is an unpopular
prospect because people believe that it bears down hard on poorer
households, but there are ways in which smart tariffs can be used
that will allow all households a basic slug of water and then
ramp up the costs for what I would call luxury use: watering your
garden or filling your swimming pool or washing your car. Also,
there are models within the electricity industry for things like
the Energy Savings Trust, a Water Savings Trust, which could provide
money to poor households to capitalise them for lower water use,
new white goods that use less water, low flow shower heads, low
flow taps, those sorts of things that would help them reduce their
water use and would be a social benefit because it would mean
that they could reduce their water bills as well. We are keen
to look a bit dog in the manger-ish on this one because it does
mean that the first option of a reservoir, which is a hugely disruptive
thing for local people and vastly expensive and a nightmare to
get through the planning system—we do not really want to
see too many of those if we can avoid as many as possible by demand
management measures.
Q314 Mr Mitchell: You are therefore
saying that although all that is being done you are not in a position
to tell us how many new reservoirs would be necessary. Are you
in a position to tell us?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
is a bit like a game of chicken at the moment because we think
we are not quite at the point where we are going to see companies
running out of water because they have not built a reservoir but
we are going to get there quite soon. Their water resource plans
which they have submitted as part of the price round are being
crawled all over by Ian's people at the moment to just establish
where we really believe a company is beginning to make a proper
case for further resource development and where we do not believe
they are. We will be having pretty robust discussions with the
water companies over the next few months on that precise issue.
We think we know where there may need to be new resource development,
either in increasing reservoirs or one or two new ones, but we
would feel it very unwise to talk about that publicly because
we do not believe that we yet have water efficiency measures out
of the companies.
Mr Barker: The message for this
Committee is that in terms of what we know and think we know about
climate change, over the timescale which it is sensible for water
companies to plan, we do not believe that climate change in itself
will be a driver for a new resource, but it is something the water
company would need to take account of in its planning for any
new resources that were necessary to meet demand.
Q315 Mr Breed: In a macro sense,
have you had any discussions with the ODPM in respect of their
planning policy? Do you believe that they understand and ensure
that climate change is a factor in determining where they consider
new developments should be?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: With
Defra, we have been talking to the ODPM about planning. We are
at a point where the planning system is changing quite markedly
so there is a real opportunity, particularly at the level of the
new spatial plans, to ensure that climate change can be built
in, both in the national guidance given by the ODPM and in the
work that is being done at a regional level on spatial planning.
Our regions are connected with that work at regional level. There
is also new planning guidance underway and various draft planning
policy statements (PPSs) at the moment have the opportunity of
making sure that sustainability and the impact of climate change
can be built in—things like PPS1, which is about creating
sustainable communities, and PPS11 on regional planning and PPS12
on the local development framework. All of these recognise climate
change as an issue that needs to be taken on board in plans. We
are also talking to the ODPM about building regulations where
we have some real opportunities. You may have seen in the last
week or so the sustainable buildings task force report which has
come out with a number of propositions to improve the design of
buildings in ways that can be achieved through building regulation
powers, to try and ensure that buildings reduce the amount of
energy and water they use and take on board other climate change
issues, including flood risk management as well as issues unconnected
with climate change like waste and ability to manage waste as
well as the issue of construction waste. There are lots of opportunities
at the moment in terms of national, regional and local planning
policy to build climate change and sustainability in. We are in
discussion about that. The important thing will be the proof of
the pudding being in the eating. It is true to say that we still
have to win hearts and minds in terms of some planning authorities,
where we find that though many of them have improved their engagement
with us on development in the flood plain, for example, there
are still some who, against our advice, build houses in the flood
plain with the attendant risks, disruption and lack of insurance
that that involves.
Q316 Mr Breed: You have more or less
indicated that planning guidance at the moment is not strong enough
to ensure that planning authorities do not allow development in
potentially risky areas.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: In
principle, it is. We need to keep the pressure up to make sure
that in practice the new planning policy does deliver that on
the ground.
Dr King: If you are looking specifically
at PPG25, the planning guidance that covers development in the
flood plain, firstly one has to recognise that that was only published
in July 2001 although it will be reviewed this year. We have seen
an improvement from local authorities. However, there are a number
of things we would like to see in terms of the strengthening.
Firstly, the Agency is not a statutory consultee on matters of
flood risk and we believe we should be. We are hoping that that
will be addressed this year. Secondly, there is a requirement
for local authorities to refer back to the Agency where they are
minded to permit development where we object. That is not always
happening, so we would like to see stronger reinforcement of that.
We also believe that with the regional spatial strategies and
indeed the local development frameworks there should be a requirement
there for strategic flood risk assessments.
Q317 Mr Breed: What about those sorts
of situations where there is already development, with local authorities
being much more constrained about where they can build and going
on to previously developed land, often known as brown field sites?
If you have a brown field site which is at risk of flooding, are
you going to say that, notwithstanding the need for housing and
everything else, this is an opportunity to use this piece of land
which has been previously developed for housing but, nevertheless,
because it is at potential risk, you are going to say, "No,
you cannot use it any more."
Dr King: No, that is not true.
In terms of PPG25, there is a sequential test which enables the
developer or the local authority to work through. There is a requirement
under PPG25 to carry out a flood risk assessment and we would
object if no such assessment was carried out but obviously we
would look at the merits of the case.
Q318 Mr Breed: Even if was previously
developed land?
Dr King: Yes.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: There
are a number of things that we would still be pressing for on
the planning front. For example, planning authorities are still
struggling with their role in responding to climate change. There
was research that the ODPM commissioned a few years ago to look
at good practice on local planning authorities' response to climate
change. We believe that that can be transmuted into guidance and
issued to planning authorities. It would be very helpful to them.
Also, we feel that water security and water supply need to come
higher in some of the planning guidance. We are seeing, for example,
in the new development zones propositions for housing in areas
where we are really quite anxious about how we are going to be
able to provide water to them. The availability of water resource
should be a material consideration in the planning system which
it currently is not.
Q319 Chairman: Your comments on water
supply neatly take us on to water pricing issues. In paragraph
3.4 of your evidence you say, "We expect companies to make
allowance for these in their long-term water resources plans."[11]
I had a look at a document which was sent to me by United Utilities,
a final water and waste water services plan for 2005-10. I expected
to find some reference in this glossy document to their beginning
of plans for dealing with climate change. I even looked at your
own chairman's comment: "What our stakeholders say. The investment
water companies will make in the environment will be more than
offset by the economic and social benefits that it will bring
to local areas and communities. A better environment stimulates
tourism and economic regeneration bringing jobs and opportunities
to the areas, as well as creating a better place to live and work."
Wonderful. No mention of climate change. No mention, in United
Utilities arguments for spending all of their customers' money,
of climate change whatsoever. Here we have one of the biggest
water companies in the country who seem to have completely ignored
your advice. Are you monitoring what these companies are doing
and, more importantly, what they are saying to their customers
to prepare them for the fact that they are going to have to spend
more money on their water and their sewage and part of it is to
deal with this long term problem?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think you are being a trifle hard on United Utilities but I will
leave Ian to explain why.
Mr Barker: What you have there
is the public version of the company's plan, I suspect. Each company
has submitted to the Agency and to Ofwat its detailed water resources
plan and we are currently scrutinising those plans and expect
to see in them, as you suggest, the fact that they have taken
account of the impact of climate change on the availability of
their resources. We are currently analysing the plans to see whether
climate change has had an impact and, where a company believes
it has had a significant impact, we have asked them to carry out
additional modelling work. We have yet to establish whether or
not that has been undertaken for those companies where it might
be necessary. We will not know to what extent companies have heeded
our advice until we finish that analysis and then we shall report
to ministers in July this year with our findings on the companies'
plans. In terms of North West Water, most of the evidence on climate
change suggests that the impact in terms of water resources availability
will be less in the north west of England than in the south east.
One would not expect to see it as as big an issue for United Utilities
as for some of the southern companies, for example.
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