Memorandum submitted by the Flood Hazard
Research Centre, Middlesex University (FL 113)
GENERAL
1. Overall, flood risk management in England
is advanced compared to other countries. Particular strengths
are the community of researchers and practitioners that Defra
has built up through its annual conference and the tradition of
local involvement in decision making.
2. It is important that flood risk management
is not treated in isolation but only in the wider context of sustainable
development and integrated water and land management.
INTEGRATED WATER
AND LAND
MANAGEMENT
3. The big challenge and necessity, shown
up by the 2007 floods, is integrated land and water planning,
and integrated water management, including integrated urban drainage
plans. The imperative is to deliver integration through what
is necessarily a mosaic of organisations, and thus we have to
become good at partnership models. The success of an organisation
is increasingly determined by its ability to influence the actions
of others (e.g. the Environment Agency's ability to influence
the spatial planning strategies of local authorities and also
the public through flood warnings).
4. We have always had to manage water in
order to make the best use of land: land is scarce, absolutely
scarce in the case of the South-East of England. Since local
authorities are also generally the Highway Authorities, the logic
is to make the development of sustainable drainage plans the responsibility
of the planning authorities. Indeed, the case can be made that
the River Basin Management Plans required under the WFD ought
to be the responsibility of the local authorities rather than
the Environment Agency. It might be useful to look at France
and the Netherlands to see how they are trying to integrate land
and water management.
5. We also have to shift away from treating
flood risk management in isolation from Integrated Water Management;
for example, how we manage flood risk management can impact upon
the risk of droughts. For example, Ian Calder has shown that
afforestation, whilst it may reduce the risk of floods, can simultaneously
increase the risk of low flows in summer. Climate change will
make water management more difficult, particularly through increasing
rainfall intensities. Storage will become an increasingly prevalent
flood risk management option and likely to be combined into drought
management.
FLOOD RISK
AND DEVELOPMENT
6. New development is potentially a great
opportunity which must be grasped; currently we are only replacing
our existing housing stock at the rate of 0.1% per annum which
means that we have to deliver sustainable development very largely
through our existing stock of buildings. Thamesmead was an early
attempt at development on a major flood plain in which the development
was adapted to the flood risk. Therefore we must avoid unnecessarily
"sterilising" flood plains by prohibiting development
there, but we must plan development and flood defence / flood
risk management in tandem.
7. Equally, it is our existing stock of
buildings that constitutes the major part of the problem. With
climate change, it is likely that we will have to abandon parts
of some existing urban areas in order to make space for water.
We have to do this without creating planning blight but we lack
the instruments, for example, to buy up land. One possibility
would be a "Water Conservation Charge", similar to that
used in China, which could be used to improve the sustainable
development of rivers and coasts.
8. Because we need to move towards Integrated
Water Management, rather than PPS 25 we need guidance on integrating
water into spatial strategies. At the same time, spatial planning
must continue to be multi-objective and to recognise multiple
constraints: a land use planning system based only upon water
management issues would be a disaster.
PUBLIC SAFETY
9. The Environment Agency proposed, after
the Boscastle flood, to identify the areas of highest risk to
life from flooding; this study is urgently needed.
FUNDING FOR
FLOOD RISK
MANAGEMENT
10. Under the existing financing system,
both water and wastewater companies lack incentives to promote
sustainable water management. The anticipated shift towards demand
management, source control, rainwater harvesting and similar techniques
will potentially reduce the revenue to the companies without necessarily
reducing their costs. Moreover, the revenue of the wastewater
companies is tied to that of the water companies but their interests
do not necessarily coincide, particularly when the emerging target
for demand management is a reduction of 50% in consumption. In
consequence, it is not surprising that the companies are not promoting
the adoption of sustainable water management techniques.
11. The increasing investment in flood and
coastal defence potentially creates a dangerous imbalance for
the Environment Agency which always had four roles:
— integrated water management,
— integrated pollution control,
— promoting sustainable development,
— and a major construction and operational
role in flood and coastal defence.
Since its inception, the bulk of the Agency's
funding has been for flood and coastal defence. With the increasing
expenditure on flood and coastal defence, there is a risk that
the other strategic roles of the Agency will be overwhelmed by
the high visibility activities of flood and coastal defence.
At some point, it may become necessary to separate the constructional
and operational aspects of flood and coastal defence into a separate
agency.
12. Across the world, flood and coastal
defences are generally primarily funded collectively rather than
exclusively by those at risk. At present, river and coastal flood
and coastal defence schemes, on average, cost about £15,000
per property protected. Dealing with sewer flooding can cost
£250,000 per property, OFWAT agreeing that a significant
proportion of schemes with such a cost being included in the last
price and quality round. The £15,000 average cost is equivalent
to about three hip replacements, and over their lifetime the average
household will "give" (through general taxation) some
£1500 to those at risk of river and sea flooding in the way
of funding flood defences. So critical questions are:
— How much are members of the public
prepared to contribute towards protecting other people from flooding?
INSURANCE
13. Insurance is a luxury good: uptake of
all forms of insurance increases with income and lack of access
to insurance is recognised as a form of social exclusion. At
the same time, the UK is essentially unique in providing flood
insurance without governmental support either in the form of subsidies
or as the reinsurer of last resort. The UK is also almost unique
in that governments have never provided compensation to those
affected by natural disasters, and historically the Treasury has
rejected compensating disaster victims. It is not clear that
this model is viable over the longer term.
RESEARCH
14. The 2007 floods revealed some major
knowledge gaps that need to be filled with new research:
— How much are members of the public
prepared to contribute towards protecting other people from flooding?
— The major effect of the floods on
infrastructure and hence on disruption (M5; water; power).
— Evacuation triggered by power and
water outages, as well as from flooding itself.
— The extent to which floods occur
well beyond the floodplain when in essence they are pluvial driven
events. This is a serious issue for spatial planning, insurance,
etc.
— The apparently increased connections
between urban drainage and river flooding.
— We have had serious floods in 1998,
2000, 2003 and now 2007. Yet we do not know if this is a new trend.
It is not yet clear whether this is because we do not know, or
because it is still not outside the confidence limits of the normal
events.
Flood Hazard Research Centre
Middlesex University
September 2007
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