Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY
27 JUNE 2007
Q60 Mr Dunne: I am sure all Members
of Parliament would be keen to encourage take-up of awareness
amongst the general population. Undoubtedly in my constituency,
which has suffered particularly badly, I anticipate there will
be an increased interest in this service. I would urge you to
do all you can to publicise it. Could I also point out that in
connection with this week's events, in Ludlow I understand that
the warning code was issued at 12:20, 20 minutes after midnight?
Of course many of the means of communication would not actually
be of much use; not many people are on their emails at 20 past
midnight, unlike many MPs who are. I just urge you to reconsider
your cover in high risk areas at times of the night like that.
Just turning to the Severn Basin, I am aware from appendix 1 that
you have a pilot plan now completed and approved for the Severn
Basin and that also the responsibility was taken over for critical
ordinary water courses for the Severn and its tributaries. Are
you aware whether the River Teme and the River Clun were a part
of your responsibility or not?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
River Teme certainly is.
Q61 Mr Dunne: Could I ask you to
confirm that to me? I believe the Clun is now part of your responsibility,
but I would like you to confirm that[6].
If so, what does this mean in relation to responsibility for clean-up
costs where you are responsible for maintaining the ordinary water
course and flooding occurs? Does it have any impact?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Is
this clean-up of the floods?
Q62 Mr Dunne: The impact of the floods
for waters where you have responsibility.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
do not have any responsibility.
Q63 Mr Dunne: You have no responsibility?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: No
responsibility.
Q64 Mr Dunne: We have had a useful
note from the NAO which indicates that of the high risk category
defence systems 46% are not at target, that is 18 individual systems.
What are you proposing to do about those systems, particularly
where there has been evidence, as this week and last week, of
system failure?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
are not aware of system failure in our systems in your constituency
at the moment. We know that the bridge collapsed, but that was
not one of our flood defence structures.
Q65 Mr Dunne: Excuse me, just to
be clear then, incidents like the collapsed bridge had not been
identified as at risk under your management.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
am assuming that the bridges are the responsibility of the Highways
Agency or the local authority and therefore would not be seen
as a flood risk management structure of ours. It may well be that
as part of their contingency planning, they should have taken
account of that, but this has been a very high impact event and
we know quite often from our own work that the ability to predict
the impact of floods in these structures is comparatively unpredictable
when we have these high levels. Our knowledge of your systems
is that all of your high risk systems were actually up to standard.
If you have different information from that, perhaps we should
write to you.[7]
Q66 Mr Dunne: Could I ask you to look
at the material that the NAO have provided for us by constituency,
which indicated that 46% within the high risk category were not.
In relation to the pressure on house-building, which we know is
nationwide, you are a statutory consultee for planning applications.
What evidence do you have that concerns that you express to planning
committees about new housing applications are respected and if
they are not, what are you going to do about it?
Dr King: Firstly, we saw considerable
strengthening of the legislation in 2001 with the introduction
of PPG25 and we report annually on local authorities' performance
and identify those local authorities that went against our advice.
We saw consistent improvement year on year and if you look at
2005-06—which is the latest figure we have as we are just
"QAing" the most recent data—ten major developments
went ahead against our advice. From December last year, we have
seen a strengthening again with the introduction of PPS25, that
not only made the Agency a statutory consultee but also gave us
the power to request call-in.. The PPS25 has strengthened in a
whole variety of different ways and we will Report on that at
the end of the year. We have seen an improvement.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
one thing we do need to be aware of in terms of the Planning Bill
when it comes through is that the high level planning statements
have got to be flood risk assessed and indeed strategically environmentally
assessed, if they are going to be valid. If we simply see the
high level planning statements as a means of ignoring some of
these real risks to property and people, it would not be a good
idea.
Q67 Mr Wright: May I start at the
beginning? Paragraph 1.1 states: "Large parts of England
are at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea. Areas particularly
at risk include the Humber corridor". Yet we turn to appendix
1 on page 28 and Hull and Coastal Tributaries Catchment Flood
Management Plan is not going to be approved by the regional director
until July 2008. We have seen real devastation in Hull over the
past week and I understand that somebody has died as well. Why
are you not doing more to make sure there is a coastal management
plan in place there?
Dr King: The first point I should
like to make is that we shall certainly deliver all of the catchment
flood management plans by December next year and hopefully before
that. Catchment flood management plans and shoreline management
plans are a very important part of strategic planning but they
are not the sole tool that we have at our disposal, nor does it
mean that in the absence of catchment flood management plans that
there is no activity because schemes do go ahead and have gone
ahead in the absence of the catchment flood management plan. We
do have a Humber strategy that has approved in principle some
£232 million over the next 25 years, so quite a lot of strategic
planning has already gone in. Certainly we have not delivered
the catchment flood management plans, but it would be wrong to
think that that is the sole tool that we have in terms of our
strategic planning.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: By
way of illustration, we were looking recently at those local authorities
with the highest proportion of their population in flood plain
and at risk and Hull has one of the highest proportions of its
population in the country in the flood plain but was one of the
best protected. Alas, some of the things we are seeing at the
moment are not because we do not have defences, but because we
have just seen an event that is very, very extreme.
Q68 Mr Wright: It has been mentioned
by the Committee Members before, but is it not the case that with
climate change, with greater unpredictability, things that would
have been classed as a one-in-100 chance are now going to be much
more frequent? I am very much struck by the fact that you are
saying spending cuts have had a direct impact on your ability
to carry out flood defence and maintenance, yet it seems to me
the whole theme of this Report is that you are not focusing on
the high risk areas. You are doing it along the traditional way
that you have done before and you are not focusing on the areas
most at risk. I do not get any sense of urgency that you are going
to focus on those high risk areas. How do you answer that?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Until
about three years ago we had no means of moving money across the
country or really shaping priorities because they were very much
shaped by independent local flood risk management committees.
Now that we have had for the last three years the ability to move
money, we are steadily moving our funds towards high risk systems
and the highest priorities. Indeed at the moment we are only spending
about 8% of our maintenance funding on low risk systems and some
of that funding is because, if we do not do some of the low risk
system work, it can have an impact further down the river. For
example, if we do not clear weeds in a low risk system and they
then all go down the river and catch on the trash screens of the
high risk systems, we immediately start to have problems there.
Now that we are able to make these movements between capital and
maintenance and move money across the country between different
parts of the country, we are able increasingly to focus on those
high risk systems.
Q69 Mr Wright: Is organisation hindering
you? Figure 4 on the right hand side, "Flood risk management
activities", says: "...general supervision over matters
relating to flood defence" seem to be the responsibility
of the Environment Agency and yet the Report says that many of
the difficulties arise from the fact that a lot of flood defences
are owned by third parties. The Secretary of State in his statement
to the House yesterday said the local authorities are responsible
for the short- and longer-term recovery effort in the affected
areas. Mr Curry talked about joined-up government. I do not get
the sense that there is an element of joined-up thinking with
regards to this. The Committee considered and produced a Report
on water management and I would have thought the Environment Agency
would have been much hotter in trying to get water companies,
in line with Ofwat, to deal with deficiencies in pipes, because
that must have a risk. I would have thought you would have been
having much closer liaison with local authorities to make sure
things were in place. Dr Pugh mentioned urban areas. I had a flood
in Hartlepool three or four years ago, exacerbated by the failure
of gulley cleansing. You do not seem to be talking to various
agencies. Local authorities do not seem to be talking to you as
much as they should. Why is that, because you are compromising
people's homes here?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
work very closely with local authorities and traditionally the
focus has very much been on the major floods from rivers and from
the sea. It is only as increasingly we have had these stormy events
and also as a result of development and more concrete, where drainage
is becoming a major problem which it was not previously, that
we really started to press for these long-term drainage plans
to become statutory, to become part of legislation so that we
can ensure that the local authorities, development bodies, planning
authorities and the water companies work together to resolve the
problems of flash floods and inadequate drainage.
Q70 Mr Wright: Do you think the Environment
Agency needs more powers to compel these third parties to do more
for flood defence? Paragraph 2.7 mentions the River Thames legislation
and obviously I understand the importance of London as a commercial
and economic centre, but do you think that should be used so that
you can actually force local authorities or water companies to
do more?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Generally
speaking when we are talking about third parties local authorities
and water companies are not the issue. It is individual private
land owners who have properties on the edge of rivers, part of
whose property forms the flood defence there and often it is quite
difficult to track down who is actually the owner. Once we have
done that, we need to make sure that our systems inform them of
any deficiencies. We have done that on a risk basis to date. We
want to up the pace of that and then we need to find out whether
the very modest levers we have at the moment and indeed persuasion
can make those third party owners who are not willing to bring
their defences up to standard and who are part of high priority
systems and are a real part of that risk, to take action. If we
cannot get them to take action, we may well have to call for further
powers.
Q71 Mr Wright: I think the theme
of this Report is that you do not concentrate on risk areas or
high risk areas. Paragraph 2.11 states quite starkly: "There
appears to be little relationship between the amount of revenue
funding allocated to each region in England and risk of flooding".
The Chairman mentioned this as well. Again, I do not see any evidence
that there is a relationship between mitigating actions commensurate
with the level of risk.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: May
I turn you to table 11, which is a quite difficult table to understand
because it is about proportions of maintenance expenditure? You
need to take the grey bar, which is high risk systems, and the
bright blue bar, which is non-system specific maintenance expenditure,
together. Many of these bright blue bars are high risk systems.
Q72 Mr Wright: Why is that not identified
as such then?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: The
definition of a non-system specific maintenance is that it covers
a number of systems, so it is difficult to chop it up and decide
how to apportion it across systems. Some of it will be on medium
and low risk, but not much. Most of it we are pretty sure is high
risk stuff.
Q73 Mr Wright: In my own area, the
North East, 24% is on the high risk, but there is an enormous
amount in terms of the bright blue bar. Can you reassure me that
work is being done with regard to flood defence maintenance that
is directly proportionate to the level of risk?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: It
is not yet completely proportionate to the level of risk because
we are moving towards that as we are able to understand the level
of risk, as we know about our assets better and also as we are
able to move money.
Q74 Mr Wright: That is hardly reassuring
is it?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: If
you take the bright blue and the grey, with the exception of one
region, we are now spending in excess of 74% of our maintenance
funding on high risk systems.
Q75 Mr Wright: How do you know what
is being done anyway because paragraph 2.13 says: "We were
assured that the issues identified during the inspection were
dealt with" but there is no audit trail. There is no saying:
"Yes, that has been done; we have mitigated the risk through
this action". You say that your systems are adequate: your
systems are rubbish.
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Our
systems are improving; they are not rubbish. They are good and
improving and Tim will tell you how.
Mr Kersley: I am just going to
reinforce the point that local records are held to confirm that
that is the case, that the work has been carried out where it
was directed to be carried out. The problem is that we did not
have a means on our asset register to hold a centralised record
of that and we have plans afoot to insert a field in the database
to enable that to be locked off and centrally recorded.
Q76 Mr Bacon: I did not hear the
answer to the question which Mr Dunne asked about what your budget
is now. You turned to Dr King and it sounded like you said £500
million, but then it sort of trailed off. Did you just mean £500
million?
Dr King: It is of the order of
£500 million.
Q77 Mr Bacon: Could you turn to page
13 where there is a figure 7 listing various different kinds of
expenditure? Development control and regulation is £12 million;
building new and replacement defences, £162 million; then
maintaining existing defences is £176 million; administrative
costs, £64 million; flood warning and incident management,
£39 million. That adds up to £453 million and it says
at the bottom: "Figures only include expenditure funded by
the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and exclude
`local levy' expenditure funded by local authorities through the
Regional Flood Defence Committees". Am I to take it then,
because paragraph 1.8 refers to £483 million, not £453
million, that the money funded through regional flood defence
committees is the difference, the £30 million? Is that correct?
Dr King: It is in the order of
£25 million from the local levy.
Q78 Mr Bacon: So if we look at paragraph
1.8 it says "Expenditure by the Agency on flood risk management
has increased ... to £483 million in 2006-07 (including the
local levy)" you are saying the local levy in that sentence
is £25 million.
Dr King: Around £25 million
Q79 Mr Bacon: Not £30 million.
Dr King: It is in the order of
£25 million.
6 Note by witness: The rivers Teme and Clun
are main river, and therefore our responsibility. Back
7
Note by witness: We do not hold such data at parliamentary
constituency level and the information provided to the NAO was
given by Environment Agency totalling data Area by Area. Within
the West Area of Midlands Region, there are currently 34 High
Risk Systems, of which 59% are at target condition. Back
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