Examination of Witnesses (Questions 831
- 840)
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2008
MR STEVE
BATTY, MR
MALCOLM G COWARD,
MR PAUL
ROUSE AND
MR MARK
HARRISON
Q831 Chairman:
Gentlemen, you are very welcome indeed. I hope it has been explained
to you that we have approximately 45 minutes for this panel of
witnesses. After welcoming you officially on the record, I am
going to ask each one of you if you would be kind enough to speak
for five minutes to put on record a summary, if you like, of your
own particular perspectives on flooding. I am aware that in the
case of Mr Batty, Mr Coward and Mr Rouse you have been kind enough
to send written evidence to the Committee, for which we are very
grateful, but obviously we would like to hear from you personally.
Can I formally put on the record our welcome to Mr Steve Batty
from Keyingham, near Hull, Mr Malcolm Coward who comes from Rufforth,
near York, and I can remember spending many happy hours on Rufforth
airfield watching motor racing in my youth, Mr Paul Rouse from
Sutton-on-Derwent, and Mr Mark Harrison from Blyton here in Lincolnshire.
I think Mr Harrison has got something to say to us specifically
about the Citizens' Jury in this area, so we will come on to that
in due course. Mr Batty, would you care to start our proceedings
and in five minutes give us the benefit of your views on flooding?
Mr Batty: Thank you, sir. Good
heavens, five minutes. I will move on quickly. As you have mentioned,
I am a private citizen. My involvement started when my 24 year-old
son and his wife were flooded out in Burstwick as a result of
the overflow of the Burstwick and Skeckling drains. My history
is in the chemical industry. Although people were talking about
the deluge, six million tonnes of rain falling on Burstwick drain
in the course of a day, usually these sorts of instances have
a much longer causation that trails behind them and I set about
trying to deal with that. After writing a letter to the papers
local farmers contacted me and explained the workings of the Internal
Drainage Boards and their relationships with the Environment Agency.
Subsequent to the investigations that I carried out, I found that
indeed the problems go much, much deeper. The Humber Estuary drains
40 per cent of our country and the incoming tide brings in more
silt than the outgoing tide can get rid of and this silt is building
up. Witnesses who spoke to me living at Stone Creek told me that
times have long since gone when they could sail straight out onto
the river and huge mud banks there have been caused by the ingress
of silt and also dredging activities dumping silt on the northern
bank of the river. All of this is impinging on the ability of
the drain cloughs to allow water out of the drains. I found the
claim about dredging incredible but I did, in fact, speak to a
director of a dredging company who told me that was quite true
and what they actually do is dredge mud out of the shipping channel
and then dump it in predefined areas in the Humber navigation
so that the movement of water in the Humber can redistribute the
silt and inevitably that means, of course, on the northern bank,
although they do not aim to dump on the northern bank. Farmers
told me about their frustrations with the Environment Agency whose
reluctance to involve themselves in sustained maintenance of the
cloughs was leading to silt build-up and there has been a loss
of over a metre and a half above the Newland datum line which,
of course, is also impinging on drain water. Internal Drainage
Boards have a discretion about which drains they clear. They are
obviously interested in clearing land to enable it to be farmed
but they have a discretion and often do not clear drains very
close to centres of habitation. There appears to be no joined-up
thinking in that area. I found that drains, roadside drains and
from villages were not checked prior to further development being
put in and simple things like putting down tracer into the water
to check movement of water, to check the drains are clear, none
of that is undertaken, and if the IDBs are not doing the drains,
no-one is doing the drains. I have to say that the Internal Drainage
Boards, in my opinion, have the highest record in terms of keeping
drains clear. This has obviously been mostly farmers who have
a very strong vested interest in doing so and I have nothing but
praise for those guys. Subsequently, I know of farmers who have
approached parish councillors to set up self-help schemes to enable
cash to be donated from parish councils to help clear the drains
close to villages. I have found that sort of approach is immensely
productive and is to be recognised. It was interesting to hear
the gentleman on the previous panel talking about the clearing
of Hedon Haven. I and others have campaigned since the flooding
occurred that these drain cloughs should be dredged clear and
it was actually Associated British Ports, when I spoke to their
chief hydrologist, who told me that the Environment Agency had
not taken up offers to use dredgers and for some number of years
had not exercised their responsibilities in keeping those drain
cloughs clear. Eventually, through public pressure one of those
drains has now been cleared and we are looking forward to seeing
Keyingham drain and Stone Creek treated in the same way. As the
gentleman on the previous panel pointed out, there was 185mm of
rain very recently and that drain functioned properly and got
rid of what fell on it. That is an important key piece of evidence.
Q832 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. Mr Coward?
Mr Coward: Chairman, Rufforth
is a small village situated approximately six miles west of York.
Historically, Rufforth's name was derived from the village's close
proximity to extensive moor and marshland where crossing places
or fords were needed and one road was particularly bad, hence
the name Roughford, which was later refined to Rufforth. The land
was subsequently drained through numerous ditches and dykes which
remain as an integral part of the land drainage system. During
the Second World War the Ministry of Defence constructed an RAF
airfield to the south of the village. To maintain the integrity
of the land drainage system a pipe was installed to drain the
surface water into Bull Dyke, one of the major drainage dykes
in the village. It is not known when maintenance was last carried
out on this pipe, but following the flooding in June 2007 surveys
were carried out. Two blockages due to damage from tree roots
and one area where the pipe had collapsed, probably due to building
work, were found. The collapsed area of pipe has been repaired
and the roots have been partially cleared. My property and the
adjacent properties are drained through a network of ditches which
feed into a ditch alongside Bradley Lane from which there is a
culvert which connects to a drain on the opposite side of the
road. We have experienced ongoing problems with surface water
drainage and repeated approaches have been made to City of York
Council, Yorkshire Water and the Highways Department in an attempt
to rectify the problem. None of these agencies could explain where
the water drained to, nor could they produce plans to show where
the pipes are located. During heavy rainstorms we have experienced
problems with the sewerage system because surface water from houses
on one side of an adjacent cul-de-sac is fed into the main drain
system. Both my neighbour and I have experienced sewage backup
to our domestic drains, which on occasion prevents use of the
toilet. The present sewerage system was probably installed when
mains water was supplied to the village. Since then, considerable
building development has taken place and additional pumping stations
have been installed, however the outflow line from the village
is now working to its maximum capacity. Prior to the mid-1930s
a very basic drainage system existed in the village. This sewage
pipe provided a drains system to various farms and cottages and
also to the Tankard Inn and discharged into Old Sewerage Dyke,
a main drainage dyke situated to the west of the village. Ivy
Cottage, one of the old houses in the village, situated next to
the Tankard Inn, has been flooded twice in the past three years.
In the first instance, flooding occurred because a sewage pump
would not start following electrical maintenance work in the village
which coincided with a heavy rainstorm. The increased volume of
water flowing to the centre of the village from Bradley Lane caused
sewage to back up into the house. Yorkshire Water installed two
non-return valves in the sewer pipes downstream from the property
causing more problems than it cured, because when the water level
rose the valves closed and blocked the drains. After the floods
in June 2007, Yorkshire Water has installed a separate holding
tank and two pumps that will enable effluent from the property
to be retained until the water drops. In the worst case scenario,
should the holding tank fill up before the level of the water
drops, the pumps have the capacity to discharge fluid from the
holding tank into the main sewer. Five years ago, two bungalows
in Bradley Lane were demolished and one bungalow and two large
family houses were built on the land, during which the surface
water drain pipe installed by the Ministry of Defence was damaged.
The owner of one of the new family houses has experienced continual
problems with poor land drainage and the seepage of sewage onto
his property. He has made repeated complaints to the City of York
Council and Yorkshire Water but has not received a satisfactory
response from either party. At his personal cost, an independent
survey was carried out and the findings, subsequently confirmed
by City of York Council, are alarming: raw sewage from the Tankard
Inn and some of the older properties in the village is still being
discharged through the original drainage pipe that terminates
at the Old Sewerage Dyke. The Parish Council has been very concerned
with this issue and, through correspondence and meetings with
representatives from the agencies and companies involved, the
Council has endeavoured to resolve the fundamental problem regarding
ownership and responsibility for maintenance. Last Monday, the
Chairman of the Parish Council was advised by City of York Council
that Yorkshire Water had agreed to accept responsibility for the
outfall into Old Sewerage Dyke. Later this was confirmed verbally
by Yorkshire Water. This poses the question, should the pipe be
capped close to the centre of the village and the sewage diverted
into the main drain system? The pipe should be used for surface
water drainage which will help dilute the contaminated fluids
and clean residues that remain in the Old Sewerage Dyke.
Q833 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. Mr Harrison?
Mr Harrison: Chairman, my name
is Mark Harrison. I am the publican of a 250 year-old public house
in a village called Blyton which is just outside Gainsborough.
Early last year in March 2007 we finished a quarter of a million
pound refurbishment of those premises and we got the establishment
trading only to be flooded on 25 June 2007. The pub lies in the
bottom of the village and we received top water from two sides,
from the top of the street, which was mainly directed at us as
the infrastructure of the drainage system for the village is so
inadequate and antiquated that it cannot cope to take top water
away, and we had a deluge of water from a new Bovis Homes estate
that has been built within the village that has been built on
a floodplain. Where water used to be stored and slowly released
into the dykes, it now hits the dykes at a torrid rate. Also,
the dyke at the rear of the pub overflowed and backed up, a dyke
which has not been cleared out for some 47 years according to
the local residents. The dyke downstream from the pub was blocked
or restricted in 12 separate places. This resulted in over £100,000
worth of damage to the commercial property and the loss of £50,000
in personal effects in the guise of vehicles and things. The business
was closed for approximately four months. We finally reopened
on 2 November 2007 after reaching a compromise with the insurers.
A compromise indeed: we only received £75,000 for £100,000
worth of damage. The only reason we settled for that was if we
had gone down the insurance route the projected reopening date
would have been spring this year. As a direct consequence of all
the inadequate infrastructure and the blockage from dykes, our
premiums have now increased by some 80 per cent and our excess
has increased from £400 to £2,500 with limited cover
on flooding. We are still negotiating business interruption and
loss of earnings and no payment has been received to date. As
a consequence, it puts a very bad strain on relationships and
on the business. Through the whole event which we had we were
unable to talk to one person with authority or responsibility
to try to prevent the situation happening again. If you start
talking about top water, if it is on the road it is the highways,
if it is somewhere else it is the Internal Drainage Boards, and
if it goes on to a field it is a private landowner. There is not
one person you can pin down. There appears to be conflict between
the District and County Councils. We put in for planning permission
to develop the site and we have a planning restriction by the
District Council that we cannot put any top water into the dyke.
Lincolnshire County Council, the highways, blatantly admitted
that the infrastructure cannot cope for the village and do we
mind taking the top water over the pub car park to put it into
the dyke. As a consequence, to protect our property we have had
to invest a further £10,000 in having our car park reshaped
and re-levelled to direct all the water into the dyke. If there
is a conflict with the District Council then my argument is going
to be, "I am pumping the village's water into the dyke, not
my own". We constantly got on to the council and various
people within organisations and the dyke was finally starting
to be cleared just before Christmas, and it was a good job it
was because last week we were within about a foot of flooding
again. I state this: it was maintained for the first time in 47
years. If you listen to the Internal Drainage Board they reform
the dykes every ten years. The old villagers say years and years
ago they used to lead two shire horses down the wash dyke side-by-side
but you could not get a donkey down there off Cleethorpes Beach
at the moment. We were then invited along on 19 January to a Citizens'
Jury Flooding Review. Basically this was local residents all in
similar situations to me from the commercial and private sector
and we were given presentations by various agencies and we had
reviews and discussions with other members of the public who had
experienced flooding through the regions to come up with some
comprehensive list of about 70 recommendations and points which
were put forward to the council. Basically a summary of those
recommendations is here but obviously I cannot spend five minutes
on 70 points. I will summarise it in eight points. The people
want focus on flood prevention and not recovery. People will try
to say, "Well, how were things after the flood?" but
we should not have been there; we did not want to be flooded.
If maintenance prevention was carried out correctly we should
not be in the situation we are in. There needs to be clarity and
harmony between agencies. It was quite evident at some of the
presentations and some of the dealings I had with agencies that
there is a trend to pass the buck; nobody would put their hand
up and say, "Yes, that is our problem". A quite important
fact that came out of our meeting was that there should be one
authority with knowledge and understanding that has the authority
and responsibility for mapping, planning, managing, reinstating,
upgrading and enforcing the clearing of drains and waterways because
there are a lot of waterways and dykes which have been filled
in over the years, et cetera, and there does not seem to be anybody
who has a map of everything. The most important one for us is
to improve the planning process to ensure that flood risk is taken
into account beyond the development and impose building restrictions
and pass the cost of drainage and infrastructure upgrades on to
the developers. In the case of Bovis Homes it was rejected at
district level but passed at national level and there was no consultation
with local people and no building restrictions imposed. As a consequence,
where properties did not flood up until two years ago they are
now flooding on a regular basis, and it is not all down to global
warming, et cetera. If there is not the infrastructure to cope
then do not build, it is easy. It is alright hitting numbers for
the people in Whitehall but not at our expense. The other point
that came across in all the presentations, and it wound a lot
of people up, was the use of permissive powers and riparian ownership.
We do not want to hear the term "permissive powers",
we want to hear what the obligations are, what they are going
to do. When it comes to riparian ownership, there needs to be
clarity because for some of the older members in the village who
have not had to submit Land Registry documents for a number of
years their boundary is to the bank of the wash dyke, not the
centre, so there is confusion. Another main point that came out
of our Jury was that there seems to be a distinct lack of government
funding for such improvements. A realistic amount of money needs
to be set aside to correct the known problem. It is no good keep
saying, "There's no budget available". At the end of
the day, throughout all of this, we demanded that there be a review
on progress in 12 months' time to make sure that things have been
done because far too often there are public inquiries and reports
are written but no action.
Q834 Chairman:
Mr Harrison, thank you very much indeed, that was a very good
summary of a great deal of very hard work. Finally on this panel,
Mr Paul Rouse.
Mr Rouse: Chairman, more of the
same, I am afraid. Sutton-on-Derwent is a village with 230 houses,
two pubs and a village hall. It lies to the east of York in East
Yorkshire. Although the nearby River Derwent floods the surrounding
fields and restricts travel, our flooding problems in the village
have been created because new housing development now overwhelms
the drainage system in heavy rain. The village is three times
the size it was 40 years ago when the system was installed, which
is not bad for a village which is a non-selected settlement and
is not classified as a sustainable village but something else.
As more houses were built we began to see flooding caused by surface
water due to drainage inadequacies. This severely affected a number
of houses, some of which had to put up with a frequent ingress
of sewage. This is because the village has a combined system,
which means that the surface water and the sewage are handled
by the same pipe work. Also, most of the new housing has been
built up above normal ground level to facilitate drainage, often
on infill sites next to existing houses. Unfortunately, the runoff
this elevation creates, added to the reduction in field drainage
that the land used to provide, now floods the adjacent dwellings.
Rather than increase the size of the six inch pipe that handles
both sewage and surface water for ours and two other villages,
and has burst four times in the past two years, Yorkshire Water
installed an emergency pump in the local pumping station, our
pumping station, which they told us would automatically kick in
as required. This pumps the excess water, including raw sewage,
into the River Derwent. In fact, we now know it is not automatic
and requires an engineer to start it. It does protect most of
the houses at risk providing that the engineer is available. Last
summer we got the engineer there just in time to stop a major
catastrophe. People actually live in fear of the engineer not
being available and what happened a couple of years ago happening
again, or the pump will fail, as has happened in other villages
where a similar system has been installed, like Leven in East
Yorkshire. Some people actually stay up all night in heavy rain.
Even when the pump is working, houses still flood and have to
be pumped out. This is caused by the runoff problems mentioned
previously and that they are lower than the drains. In one case,
a new house was built lower than the existing drains. I should
say that these problems were foreseen by the Parish Council when
considering planning applications, but they were overridden by
the District Council and in one case by Government inspectors
on appeal. The protests were no doubt seen as NIMBYism. They managed
to get the drain repaired after it was found that Transco had
broken it in a number of places when fitting gas but, despite
recently digging up the entire village street in order to fit
a new freshwater pipe, Yorkshire Water chose not to lay a larger
drain. I can only think this is because the leaks from the old
freshwater pipes were costing them money whereas there is no financial
incentive to lay a drain. We think that there are lessons to be
learned from what has taken place in our village which are just
commonsense. Before granting approval for new developments, planners
should always ensure that the infrastructure is in place to handle
the resulting demand. As councils and water companies benefit
from these new developments in terms of Council Tax and water
revenue, they should be obliged to make whatever investment is
needed to gain that revenue before any building starts. Most organisations,
including the public company I used to run, have to invest in
order to increase revenue; why should these people be any different?
Ofwat should be instructed to ensure that all water companies
are fulfilling their statutory responsibilities and are providing
adequate infrastructure to existing developments or they should
be held financially responsible for the mess they create which
would concentrate their minds. Where infill developments are allowed
on land adjacent to existing properties, planners should ensure
that they are built at an appropriate level and account should
also be taken of the field drainage they displace. A company with
a right to dig up a road should be held responsible for any collateral
damages that it causes to services and for leaving the road surface
in good condition so that houses are not damaged by traffic following
work in the road, which happens. The lack of affordable housing
is currently high on the political agenda but, based on our experience,
this also needs joined-up thinking. Before councils approve an
affordable homes building programme in a rural area such as ours,
a number of things should happen. The first and most important
is to quantify and qualify the need. The usual definition of affordable
housing is "non-market social housing to rent", yet
the term is commonly used to describe low-cost housing to buy.
It is essential to determine which is required. Then, instead
of top-down targets based on questionable research, and I say
that having spent millions on research in my time, such as the
Housing Needs Survey, why not use the parish councils to determine
actual local need on a village-by-village basis. We hear about
the lack of affordable housing disadvantaging local people in
rural areas, but most of the affordable houses built to sell in
our village were bought by people from outside our community.
All of these houses contribute to the problem I have just been
outlining. The East Yorkshire Council wanted affordable housing
built in our village because the local school was thought to be
in danger of closing. Unfortunately, they got their sums wrong
and the school has now had to be doubled in size. Whatever the
housing need, developments should never be allowed to start until
the necessary infrastructure is in place, and councils should
not immediately dismiss local objections as NIMBYism. Finally,
we share concerns with all of the villages in the York area, many
of which you have heard, and heard in the earlier session, about
improving water management, such as making sure that the rivers
are dredged. The one thing I did not hear anything about was the
level of hill drainage which a few years ago was increased to
facilitate grazing, et cetera. All that is doing is pushing a
lot of the water that used to be absorbed by the hills down into
the rivers. Although the River Derwent does not flood our village,
it floods the roads into it, which is why many of us need four
wheel drive vehicles. The River Derwent is not our problem, it
is the decisions made on developments in the village that have
caused all the hassle.
Q835 Chairman:
Thank you all very much indeed. You have given us an excellent
series of pictures about your own experiences. I wonder if I could
start the questioning with Mr Coward, and the others may want
to join in. There is a flavour that I get linking you all, but
you were particularly focused on, which is trying to find out
who is responsible for what and getting some kind of positive
response from the person you finally find who listens to you to
actually do something. Is that a fair assessment of your key frustration?
Mr Coward: It has been a nightmare.
I have lived in the village for 27 years and we have had ongoing
problems, more serious latterly. Trying to get hold of the right
people to answer questions has been a virtually impossibility.
I think this might have been exacerbated by the fact that in the
early 1990s, in 1993 I think it was, the village of Rufforth was
transferred from the Harrogate administration into the unitary
council of York. When we have approached York or Harrogate authorities
for information, plans or information about general topics they
have invariably said, "That was all passed to York"
and when we talk to York they say, "We have not received
it from Harrogate". This really compounds the problem we
have in trying to sort the people who are responsible for ownership
and maintenance of the drainage systems within the village. This
has illuminated the problem very, very clearly because, as I mentioned
in my presentation, the owner of one of the new houses ran into
the buffers when he was trying to find out about the pipe that
was seeping raw sewage onto this property. He had to go to his
own personal expense of carrying out a survey of the drains and
the various sewage pipes in the village and it was only through
putting dyes in the source areas throughout the village that they
managed to determine which properties were responsible for the
raw sewage being deposited into what I understand to be a freshwater
dyke. I think that is an absolute travesty in this day and age.
Mr Batty: My experience is not
the same. The issue has not been people not owning a drain or
anything like that, people have been very clear about ownership,
but it is about the responsibilities for maintenance. The Environment
Agency claimed Burstwick main drain some 15 years ago and the
Internal Drainage Boards, whose drains drain into that drain,
have claimed that the Environment Agency have not cleared the
debris from that drain, whether it is vegetation, dumped debris
or vegetation matter growing up the sides of the drains, whereas
the Internal Drainage Boards' approach has been to cut back vegetation
by the side of the drains and dredge the drains clear of silt
in order for there to be free movement and, therefore, they just
speed the water up into Burstwick main drain. Another issue that
I heard both from the Environment Agency and the Internal Drainage
Boards, whose drains drain into the estuary through the cloughs,
was they are inhibited from doing any maintenance work due to
conservation regulations. They were all blaming Natural England
for imposing restrictions on them. That was not the case. I actually
looked at the conservation regulations and there are provisions
within the regulations that do allow for maintenance work to be
undertaken through the creation of management agreements and providing
four months' notice prior to any work so that Natural England
have the opportunity to comment on the work content and give advice
on how not to damage the environment. It seemed to me that there
is a hassle behind all of that and is something the Internal Drainage
Boards were hiding behind. When I asked Kate Jennings of Natural
England how many applications they had over the previous months,
none was the answer. When I spoke to her after the flood and she
was waiting virtually with pen in hand expecting requests for
work to come in, none arrived. I asked how a representation was
made and she said that there is a strategy committee for managing
the Humber Estuary and Internal Drainage Boards people were invited
and were normally on those committees, but on the north bank of
the river none of them were turning up. It seemed as though the
people were ready to point a finger as to why things were not
being done but there was no real reason why they should not have
been done at all. In the case of the Environment Agency and not
clearing the cloughs, Peter Holmes of the north-eastern region
of the Environment Agency refused to believe that silt at the
cloughs on the outlets or even in the drains was having any impact
on the freedom of movement of water through the drains and out
into the river. Of course, there are a number of issues there.
One is that the cloughs can only take water out at low tide and
if those cloughs and doors are not able to re-seat again on an
incoming tide then water comes back in again and they have got
to get rid of it all once more. I repeat the comment that was
made earlier, they have been in, they have cleared Hedon Haven
clough and we have had much better performance in the recent weather,
so clearly maintenance of the cloughs is an issue.
Q836 Chairman:
Let me just pick you up on that. You sound as if you have got
a very considerable amount of knowledge you have now accumulated
over time and you have had one success. Did you get frustrated
that there was not somebody you could go to to say, "Here
are my observations, can you go away and sort them?" You
seem to be a lone battler knocking on lots of doors and getting
reaction.
Mr Batty: It has been very frustrating
from that point of view. I have to say though that everyone, whether
it has been the Environment Agency, the local council and their
review board, the Internal Drainage Boards, riparian owners and
farmers, everyone has been very helpful. Nobody is hiding anything.
Nobody is trying to stab a finger of blame and totally abdicate
any responsibility but, you are quite right, there is a very strong
sense of frustration throughout the community that there is no
joined-up thinking in this at all and that is to the detriment
of us all.
Q837 Paddy Tipping:
I just wanted to pick up the point Mr Harrison made and Mr Batty
has just made about riparian owners. It is a fancy title, an old-fashioned
bit of legislation. Do you think people really understand what
it means?
Mr Harrison: Basically no. As
I say, when I have been to parish council meetings or talked to
local neighbours, some of the older ladies in the village whose
properties back on to a dyke and they have got their very old
Land Registry documents they quite clearly state their responsibilities
lie and finish on the bank whereas mine, because it has been bought
and sold over the years and they have changed legislation or whatever,
quite clearly states it is to the middle. It needs to be spelt
out to people what their responsibilities are. Again, it is a
very big word. There is an example in the village where a culvert
runs under somebody's property, riparian ownership, and that culvert
needs upgrading because the Bovis Homes have been built and you
should not leave the hydraulics and the calculations down to the
riparian owner to change that culvert. He might go from a nine
inch to a four foot culvert and flood somebody down river. The
whole issue of riparian ownership needs looking at. I think it
is down to waterway management, for want of a better word. Where
you have building control for a building you should have waterway
management control for the waterways, whether they pass on private
land or not.
Q838 Paddy Tipping:
You just reminded me that you were talking previously about this
phrase "permissive powers". Could you just tell me if
I have got this right, that the local council, district council,
has got permissive powers, powers that they can use if they want
to to make the riparian owner do the work?
Mr Harrison: It is not so much
that, but it was in a lot of the presentations, whether it was
the Fire Brigade, the Police or whatever, with regard to flooding
"permissive powers" were the words that kept popping
up all the time. When you talked to people who were at the presentations
they were looking at it as a bit of a get-out clause, "You
don't have to do it". From our standpoint, you pay your taxes,
you pay this, you pay that, you want obligations, not "You
don't have to do it".
Q839 Mr Williams:
A number of the witnesses have highlighted experiences that a
number of us as MPs will be familiar with, the distress that sewer
flooding causes to residents both in the house and on their property
and, arising from that, the lack of notice that planning authorities
take when sewerage works are reaching their capacity and any more
development will give problems and the lack of the water companies
responding to those problems when they arise. The other issue
that I am very concerned about, and perhaps somebody could help
me on, is this issue of combined systems that take both storm
water and sewage, either deliberately or because the storm water
system reaches capacity and then overflows into the sewerage system
which causes sewage problems. Have people got experience of that?
Mr Rouse: Our village has a combined
system. It has been there since 40 years ago when they put in
the sewerage system. The surface water is there really to flush
through the sewerage system. Without it there would be problems,
if I understand it correctly, in getting the sewerage system to
work properly, but the trouble is a 40 year-old system with a
six inch pipe for a third of the houses worked but it does not
work now. Instead of increasing the size of the pipe they are
trying to compensate by using these pumps that kick in in emergencies
and throw the stuff literally across the fields towards the river.
That is fine and dandy provided you have got somebody who is on-call
and can switch them on and provided they do not break down. In
Leven, where my mother lives, they had an emergency pump, it broke
down and all the houses that had only just been built were flooded.
I cannot understand why nobody can force these people to put in
the infrastructure because, as I said before, they get the benefit
of the increased revenue. Why should they not improve the infrastructure,
it is only an investment to get increased revenue, it is nothing
more than that. There is nothing particularly complicated about
it. You were talking about the planning people reacting to things.
The planning people allow these developments. There must be some
kind of recommendation that if you are building on a floodplain
you should elevate the site. So you start with a flat field and
you build a hill and put houses on top of it, but all that is
going to do, particularly if it is an infill site, is to allow
the surface water to come down on either side and flood the adjoining
houses. That is what has happened in scores of instances in our
village. That is just stupidity. Nobody is thinking about it.
They are saying, "That's the recommendation and it makes
life easier", and sure it does if you are building a town
but not if you are building on a infill site.
Q840 David Lepper:
This is to Mr Harrison. You took part in the Citizens' Jury and
you told us about that. Do you feel that has increased rather
than dissipated your sense of frustration about what has happened?
Do you feel as a result of those Citizens' Jury hearings that
you took part in that somebody is going to be made more accountable
for these issues?
Mr Harrison: I think everyone
left there positive from the point of view that we came up with
these 70 recommendations come what may. A manager out of a private
sector, when you start looking at the cost and the time that goes
into such meetings, a little bit like this, will squeal they have
not got the budget and then we will see this sort of forum and
more forums, but at the end of the day it is like I said, a lot
of what we came up with was commonsense. It is a bit like getting
a consultant into a factory and they just want reassurance from
an independent company that what they are thinking is correct.
We probably saw that a little bit with the Jury. What was most
apparent at the end of the meeting was that people are very frustrated,
they can see a lot of mistakes, a lack of management, a lack of
action, and at the end of the day they do not want to keep talking
about it, actions speak louder than words, and that is why at
the end of the meeting it was agreed that we would have a review
of progress in 12 months' time.
Chairman: Mr Harrison, that is a very
good note upon which to end. I should add, of course, that once
the Committee produces its final report the Government will have
a short period of time to then respond and everybody will be able
to see how they reply to the many important points, including
yours, which we will reflect upon in our report. Gentlemen, thank
you very much, not only for your written evidence before we came
but also for coming here today and talking to us and answering
our questions. You have brought, as always, that unique perspective
of people who have been involved in problems connected with flooding
and who can articulate it as no others can. Thank you very much
for your contributions.
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