Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
SIR MICHAEL
PITT
9 FEBRUARY 2009
Q40 Chairman: Gloucestershire on
this list therefore obviously falls into that category. But I
was not entirely clear—and maybe it is my ignorance of the
local government structure in Richmond, Warrington and Thatcham,
as to how it was that they got the nod and the wink whereas I
can see in the case of Hull and Leeds why they might have got
chosen. Have you any idea of what the criteria were for the choice?
Sir Michael Pitt: I do not know
what the criteria were for the choice, except I think it was by
application, and then a choice was made about the councils that
would receive that funding. I think I am right in saying every
one of the six is either a county council or a unitary authority
where there is no county, so they are the upper tier local authority
for that area.
Q41 Paddy Tipping: So what should
I be saying to my local authority in Nottinghamshire? The Secretary
of State is there today at Gunthorpe, looking at good practice.
What should I be saying about bringing forward a surface water
management plan? When should they do it and when will they get
the resources?
Sir Michael Pitt: I think you
should be encouraging your council to get on with this work as
much as they humanly can at the moment within existing budgets
and resources. I would encourage your council to be knocking on
the door of Defra as hard as they can to see if they can get early
funding for their own surface water plans.
Q42 Paddy Tipping: I think that is
part of the reason why the Secretary of State is there today,
because the door had been opened for him! Can I ask you another
question? There are a lot of plans around—catchment flood
management plans, surface water management plans, river basin
management plans—there is a heck of a lot of plans! The
sceptics will say that there is a lot of planning going on, but
what about action on the ground!
Sir Michael Pitt: If we have had
a problem in the past, I think that organisations have not understood
clearly enough why places flood, what the engineering reasons
are for that, and I think we have under-planned in the past. Maybe
we are going in the other direction a bit too far—I do not
know—but I am quite convinced that you do not want to go
out spending money on major capital schemes unless they are properly
supported by intensive engineering studies and planning, to make
sure that money is being well spent and sensibly spent. I think
a lot of people could easily make big mistakes if they have not
got those plans behind them.
Q43 Paddy Tipping: Could we just
switch direction to something I am very keen on, which is SUDS,
which seem to me a more natural way of controlling flooding. I
am not at all clear who will be responsible for funding and maintenance
of SUDS in the future. It seems to me that local authorities where
they are connected with Highways—but then there is a bit
of a black hole. What is your understanding of that position?
Sir Michael Pitt: My understanding
is that that is now being clarified. Where a new development takes
place, and within that development there is a sustainable drainage
system, that will be adopted by the council, by the local authority;
and therefore the long-term maintenance and care of that drainage
system will fall to the council. That seems to be a much better
state of affairs than the one we have at the moment. I am still
not absolutely clear in my own mind what will happen to the SUDS
that have already been built, where effective arrangements for
their long-term maintenance were not established at the time,
and who is going to take responsibility for those. I think that
question is still unanswered as far as I am concerned.
Q44 Paddy Tipping: For new developments,
developers would make, in a sense, a contribution into the future—section
106—for future maintenance—but there is a legacy of
the ones that are currently built, and water and sewage companies
are saying, "it's not me, Guv" and the local authorities
are saying, "it's not our responsibility either". I
think some companies have taken responsibilities for SUDS and
then have gone out of business.
Sir Michael Pitt: I am hoping
that that will be addressed, and presumably it could be part of
the Floods and Water Bill.
Q45 Chairman: As a point of clarification,
is there a requirement anywhere that says that developments over
a particular size, either in terms of commercial coverage or so
many hectares or so many square metres of roof or new hard-standing
have to have a SUDS?
Sir Michael Pitt: That would probably
be on the advice of the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency
of course is consulted on new planning applications for development.
The Environment Agency would use their professional judgment to
decide whether a special form of drainage is necessary for that
particular site. Hopefully, the local authority would take into
account the views of the Environment Agency in determining (a)
whether or not their application goes ahead and (b) what planning
conditions are placed on that development to ensure there is a
proper drainage system.
Q46 Chairman: Another point, arising
out of Paddy Tipping's line of questioning, while we were talking
a moment ago about the importance of the principal authority at
local authority level being responsible for generating a response
to surface water flooding: do you think there is adequate mechanism
for co-ordinating the local authority bit with other agencies
involved in the various plans that Paddy Tipping outlined, because
it seems to me that the inter-relationship between all of these
plans and what they are attempting to achieve is crucial to the
success ultimately of what is going to be the plan to deal with
surface water planning? Who holds the ring?
Sir Michael Pitt: It is probably
not within my brief, but one day perhaps there will be unitary
authorities right across the country!
Q47 Chairman: Where angels fear to
tread here!
Sir Michael Pitt: Probably in
the wrong direction! It is clear that where you have the two-tier
system of local government there is an extra layer of complication
between the district council as local planning authority and the
county council with all its other functions, highways, drainage
and so on. The point you are making is a good one. It is going
to require a considerable amount of skill on the part of councils
to work together in partnership. One of the things that I am very
clear about is that in some areas district councils have a very
good understanding of drainage. They have done work in the past
and have established a track record of being good at handling
drainage and flood risk issues. In those areas I think the county
should have a scheme of delegation to make use of that local expertise
where it exists. It is not by any means universal, but some districts
are very expert in this area.
Q48 Chairman: Is that, Sir Michael,
going to enable the authorities of which you spoke to deal with
things like river-basin management plans and the implication of
the Water Framework Directive, because they are all related, one
to another, and some parts involve the utilities as well as much
as the Environment Agency and local authorities? What I am not
seeing is who is going to make certain of that overview, linking
all the departments together, making certain that one plan does
not contain something that is contradictory to another plan.
Sir Michael Pitt: Local government
is quite good at making sense of that complexity. It is something
it has to do all the time, whether it is in relation to crime
or all sorts of other issues that local government gets heavily
involved in. The ultimate accountability must be clear and must
be sharp. It is the upper tier authority, whether it is the unitary
authority or the county council, that must be accountable for
this work, and that is what is needed to be clarified in law.
Q49 Miss McIntosh: It is important
that households and businesses know that they will live in an
area of high flood risk. You established in your recommendations
nos. 5 and 6 how important it is to develop the tools and techniques
to model surface water flooding.
Sir Michael Pitt: Yes.
Q50 Miss McIntosh: Are you satisfied
that progress is being made along those lines?
Sir Michael Pitt: I think there
is a long way to go, but progress is definitely being made. I
wanted to register the importance of setting up the joint centre:
the coming together of the Met Office with the Environment Agency
in London in a joint office is a huge step in the right direction,
and one of the recommendations that I felt very strongly about
indeed. The quality of modelling, both in terms of forecasting
the weather and the implications of what happens when rain hits
the ground—the hydrology and the movement of water through
drainage systems—is improving all the time. We have not
yet reached a position where the Met Office and the Environment
Agency can predict with the degree of accuracy we would all like
those particular streets and localities that are going to be prone
to flooding in particular climatic situations. I think everybody
is clear that that is the direction of travel and that is where
we have to improve our performance over the next few years and
where further investments must be made. You are absolutely right:
people need to know, whether it is emergency planners, policing
gold command or the general public, much more about the risk of
flooding. Therefore, we need better information on that subject.
Q51 Miss McIntosh: I could not agree
with you more, Sir Michael, but what concerns me is that the Flood
Forecasting Centre—neither in that nor in the Atlantis Initiative
are all the parties you have identified going to be involved.
In that, I mean the councils that you said are going to have to
bash a few heads together and get the county councillors, the
district councillors and parish councillors to work together—the
insurance companies—all those people are doing their own
mapping at the moment and some have been doing since before 1997,
and that is still going on. Is it not important that they should
be included in both the Flood Forecasting Centre and the Atlantis
Initiative?
Sir Michael Pitt: Perhaps I can
refer to the important co-ordinating role of the Environment Agency
here. One of the things we touched on a bit earlier on was critical
national infrastructure and the importance of power and water
companies having better information and more warning about the
risk of flooding. What is happening already on a trial basis but
will happen in due course through the joint centre, is the provision
of much better and more accurate information about the risk of
flooding for those individual really important sites. There is
a very good example of the Environment Agency working well with
its partners. If you take the insurance industry, it is vital
that it has good information about flood risk, because it cannot
make a judgment about premiums unless it knows how likely it is
that a particular property or locality will flood. Once again,
we know that the Environment Agency is working closely with the
insurance industry. You are right that all these things need to
be joined up in some way. There is increasing evidence of joint
working and collaboration across these organisations. The extreme
rainfall alert arrangements that are currently being trialled
are a really good example of where improvements in technology,
better decision-making, is already beginning to happen, and where
that information is being disseminated to other organisations.
We know, for example, that the recent flooding in Cornwall was
particularly helped by more advanced and better information from
the Met Office and Environment Agency than would have been the
case a couple of years ago.
Q52 Miss McIntosh: Do you think it
is right that insurance companies are being asked to pay for this
information by the Environment Agency? If it is a measure for
the public good, should it not be out there in the public domain?
Sir Michael Pitt: That then asks
great questions about the funding of agencies, Government agencies
and the special arrangements around the Met Office and Ordnance
Survey, which are different again. I am not hearing the insurance
companies objecting strongly to the need to make reasonable payments
for that information. That information is pretty crucial to the
way in which they design their funding policies and their charging
policies for insurers.
Q53 Miss McIntosh: In regard to warnings
and publicity you alluded to how it works on the Continent. I
do not know if you are aware that Norwich Union and a lot of local
partners have trialled something that has been rolled out nationally
in Boroughbridge in the Vale of York, which appears to work well;
and it is building on the voluntary wardens and parish councillors
going out. Is that something that you would positively encourage?
Sir Michael Pitt: I do not know
much about that particular project at all, but it is the sort
of thing that I would strongly encourage. Anything we can do to
strengthen the public understanding of risk and flooding, the
better it will be, and the more likely it is then that individual
members of the public will plan more effectively for a future
flood, think about ways in which they can protect their property
and their families, and hopefully make some of the relatively
small investments that could be made to have a higher degree of
protection.
Q54 Miss McIntosh: One last question:
I think it was one of our conclusions, and you identified it as
well, that there is a shortage of sufficiently well-qualified
flood engineers.
Sir Michael Pitt: Yes.
Q55 Miss McIntosh: Do you think we—obviously
it takes time to educate and for people to have practical experience,
but do you think we are on track to have sufficient flood engineers?
Sir Michael Pitt: I think there
is a long way to go. I think the gap is significant. However,
there is a very high level awareness that this has to be tackled.
Q56 Mr Drew: If we look at the national
scene and the issue of—it does not need to be just flooding—obviously
at the moment we have snow but the flooding will follow the snow,
no doubt—where is the Government in terms of having emergency
responses to this notion of a natural hazards team? I suppose
it is a national natural hazards team! I do not know if it is
purely a strategic one or whether these people are doers as well
that you can drop in on the ground. What is your understanding
of this—and where it really matters is to do with planning
and planning statements?
Sir Michael Pitt: We know that
there is a natural hazards team being established within—
Q57 Mr Drew: This really exists,
does it?
Sir Michael Pitt: I do not know
quite whether it exists at this moment in time but I know there
is—
Q58 Mr Drew: It is a bit like the
Cabinet sub-committee; it is somewhere there.
Sir Michael Pitt: —a very
clear intention that there will be such a team. It strikes me
that the role of that team is crucial in terms of looking across
the different sectors to make sure there is appropriate preparation
in all of those sectors. As far as I am concerned, it feels like
a good step in the right direction. More generally, for many years
now there has been local resilience fora and emergency planning
across the board for all forms of natural disasters. Certainly
in my experience, having worked in different parts of the country,
those arrangements are in good shape and are effective.
Q59 Mr Drew: Again, I suppose the
one thing that was the overwhelming worry from what you reported
and what we looked at was the number of critical infrastructure
facilities that actually sit slam bang in the middle of a flood
plain at risk.
Sir Michael Pitt: Yes.
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