Summary
Some 2.1 million properties, affecting 4.3 million
people, are in flood risk areas. The widespread flooding across
the Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside in June 2007 and in the
South and South West of England a month later, demonstrated the
real danger, damage and misery such events cause. The temporary
closure of road and rail links and the loss of mains water and
electricity supplies in some areas showed the vulnerability of
our key infrastructure to flooding.
The Environment Agency is the principal authority
responsible for managing the risk of flooding from main rivers
and the sea in England and Wales. It took the Agency six years
to complete its first six Catchment Flood Management Plans (which
set out a long term strategic plan for how flood risk should be
managed in a catchment or river basin). The entire programme of
68 plans is unlikely to be completed until December 2008. In addition,
early reports suggest that 80% of flooding in the June 2007 event
was the result of urban drainage system failure, but there is
little evidence of co-ordination between the Agency and other
organisations on how to manage the impact of such volumes of rainfall.
Drainage lies outside the Agency's remit, but it is taking part
in a £1.7 million pilot project, run by the Department, to
identify the best ways to prepare long term (25 year) drainage
plans.
Despite an increase in funding from £303 million
in 2001-02 to £550 million in 2005-06, spending fell to £483
million in 2006-07 (an increase in real terms of some 40% in five
years), the state of flood defences in England has not improved
markedly. The funds available for starting new defence schemes
are limited, as most are already committed to ongoing schemes.
In 2007-08, only 33 new projects are expected to start, at a cost
of £20.2 million, with 84% of funds utilised on existing
schemes. Some flood defences remain in a poor condition and over
half of the high risk flood defence systems, such as those protecting
urban areas, are not in their target condition, with consequent
risks should a flood occur.
The Agency was not able to show that its maintenance
teams were deployed efficiently or that they focused their resources
on high risk flood defence systems. The Agency maintains 62% of
the total length of raised defences and 37% of the 46,000 flood
defence structures. Flood protection also relies in part upon
defences owned by private landowners, but whilst the Agency inspects
third party maintained defences, it does not necessarily notify
the relevant parties of defects identified during its inspections.
Taken together, the problems set out above played
an important part in contributing to the Agency's failure to protect
homeowners sufficiently from flooding in summer 2007. The Agency
estimated that an additional £150 million a year was needed
to bring flood defence systems up to their target condition. On
2 July 2007, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs announced that by 2010-11, total expenditure on
flood risk management would rise to £800 million. Whilst
an independent inquiry into the summer floods will seek to establish
the causes and adequacy of actions taken in response to the floods
in summer 2007, the onus is on the Agency to assure homeowners
that the additional funding will be used cost-effectively to minimise
the likelihood of similar events in future. The Agency could make
more effective use of the funding already available to it:
- through better prioritisation aided by enhanced
management information systems;
- by better targeting of resources available based
on flood risk in different parts of the country; and,
- by reducing the programme and project development
costs when constructing defences.
The Agency also needs to improve its longer term
strategic planning. On the basis of a report by the Comptroller
and Auditor General,[1]
we examined how well the Agency carries out its role to protect
people and properties from the risk of flooding, and whether it
adequately monitors and maintains the standards of existing flood
defence systems.
1 C&AG's Report, Building and maintaining river
and coastal flood defences in England, HC 528, Session 2006-07 Back
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