Examination of Witness (Questions 69-100)
DR ANDREW
JOHNSTON
8 DECEMBER 2009
Q69 Chairman: Good morning. Welcome
and thank you for coming. We are getting a lot of interest in
this inquiry on adaptation and we are looking forward to what
you have got to say. We are all quite tight for time, as you probably
are as well, so we have got about 30 minutes or so to go through
this with you. Could I start by asking why you think that many
local authorities are rather badly prepared to respond to the
challenge of climate change?
Dr Johnston: I think there is
a whole suite of reasons for that. First and foremost, there is
probably an intellectual confusion. We have just started a learning
network for elected members to discuss the adaptation agenda and
it was clear there was a lot of confusion between adaptation and
mitigation. Mitigation had a lot of the big press and people understood
what was going on there, but members had not quite drawn the distinction
between adaptation to the inevitable impacts of climate change
as opposed to some of the things they can do in order to mitigate
it. That was the starting point and I think that is a general
reflection on society, to be honest. More specifically, if you
look at the channels through which local government creates intelligence,
namely through think-tank work and national governments, I do
not think we are currently getting clear messages coming down
to local authorities that this is what the adaptation agenda is
really about, this is where you should focus your attention and
here is some resource and support to help you on particular initiatives
to get you started. Those very clear signals which local authorities
are used to getting around important agenda are not currently
coming through around adaptation to climate change.
Q70 Chairman: Do you think there
is a particular weakness with elected members?
Dr Johnston: I would not say that,
no. One of the pleasant surprises of running the learning network
that we did for about 30 elected members from across the country
was the high level of awareness and sensitivity and that they
knew they should be doing something about adaptation to climate
change. I am not sure you would necessarily find that across society
or the rest of local government where people are focused on their
specific service provision priorities, et cetera. I was pleased
that we had the meeting—they were the converted I suppose—they
were more aware than I was expecting.
Q71 Chairman: Is there anything that
central government should do to try and address this area in terms
of raising awareness about adaptation issues within local government?
Dr Johnston: Yes. Starting from
the political perspective, I do not think there have been the
debates around adaptation to climate change that you would hope
there would be. I think this Committee is a really useful start
to that process which I believe will grow and grow over the next
couple of years in terms of importance. One of the things that
I am interested in trying to develop is different solutions and
different political solutions. What is the Conservative take on
adaptation to climate change, what are the Labour and the Liberal
Democrat takes? Where are the new ideas coming through and how
do we debate and discuss which of those ideas are currently best?
That is not happening at the national level, in my view, so consequently
it is not happening at the party conferences. I went to all three
party conferences and there were not massive debates about adaptation
to climate change. There were elements of it, heat wave, flooding,
things like that, but most of the debates were about mitigation.
Q72 Martin Horwood: This is half
a question and half a point of information. I declare a party
political interest, I guess, as a Liberal Democrat. I have to
say we did pass adaptation policy quite specifically in Zero
Carbon Britain two years ago. That is the party I know about,
so I hope you were right in what you said about the other two
parties. That debate is happening at national level sometimes,
and maybe you just do not know about it.
Dr Johnston: I suppose my response
would be that I was at the Liberal Democrat Conference and obviously
trying to seek out events that were around adaptation to climate
change and there simply were not that many. Most of them were
on the policy that was being posed at that particular conference,
which was around biodiversity and local management of natural
resources, which is very closely associated.
Martin Horwood: Adaptation policy was
specifically adopted at the previous year's conference. You just
need to go a little careful in your judgments.
Q73 Colin Challen: The LGiU[1]
has argued for the creation of Local Management Adaptation Boards.
What do you think are the benefits of such a proposal?
Dr Johnston: A lot of the reason
we have suggested this has come from the experience of trying
to think through governance structures for managing flooding.
We have done a lot of work on the Flood and Water Management Bill
lobbying for local government to have coherent structures in place
in order to live up to the responsibility that they will be given
under the Bill. What we found with flooding, which is an area
which has a fair bit of a track record to it, was there is still
an enormous amount of confusion and uncoordinated responsibilities.
The example I always like to give is a big river joining a small
river with a road going over the top and a culvert. The big river
is the Environment Agency, the small river is the district council,
the road over the top is the Highways Agency and no-one knows
who owns the culvert, yet it is the county council, the responsible
lead local flood authority, which has to sort out the mess. Taking
that as a starting point, it seemed to me that a much more slimmed
down and coherent decision-making structure would be the best
way of dealing with this. When you look at the broader, less tangible
aspects of the adaptation agenda, that seems to me to reinforce
the need for a coherent and simplified decision-making structure.
Q74 Colin Challen: Typically, what
would happen after the floods, say, in Cumbria? Would people get
together at the national and local levels to analyse what happened
and how their responses could be measured against certain criteria?
Dr Johnston: Yes, they would.
Cumbria was unfortunate enough to have floods a few years ago,
so has been able to learn those lessons and put them in place.
What we are seeing is a much better, coordinated and joined-up
response in an area that suffered from flooding a few years ago
and has now suffered again. The impacts of climate change are
slightly more random and you cannot rely upon the fact that people
have learnt from previous experiences about how to deal with future
experiences, and I think that is why we need something a little
more structured to help that process.
Q75 Colin Challen: You are saying
the coverage nationally in our response at the moment, even in
the absence of these Adaptation Boards that you propose, is patchy
but many local authorities, perhaps—not pinning the blame
all on them—if they have not had previous experience will
think, "It is not a priority for us"?
Dr Johnston: Yes.
Q76 Martin Horwood: Can I ask a question
specifically on that issue? I do not want you to think I am on
your case today but it seems to me you are being a little unfair
now on the Government because in the Floods Bill that has come
before Parliament they have proposed a much more streamlined responsibility
on flooding which does beg the wider question of whether or not
these Adaptation Boards would not duplicate something which could
just be given as a lead responsibility to local authorities. What
do you think of the structure that is proposed in the Floods Bill?
Dr Johnston: My understanding
of what is suggested in the Floods Bill is responsibilities, not
structures. The structures are for the local area to decide. I
suppose what I am saying is the experience that we have had working
with local government is the structure which they prefer to put
in place is something which is much more streamlined and pulls
together all the disparate bodies in a particular geographical
area. My understanding is that the Bill will not stop that happening,
but it certainly is not something that is suggested in the Bill.
Q77 Colin Challen: Total Place is
considering how a "whole place" approach can lead to
better services. Should adaptation have been included in the pilots
for this Total Place programme?
Dr Johnston: Clearly I am going
to say yes, I wish it had been, but I understand the reasons why
it was not. Total Place is a relatively new idea working its way
through and it is understandable that a lot of it is focused on
core services with a long history behind them. Fair enough on
that front, but as Total Place rolls out and becomes much more
comprehensive across local strategic partnerships then you do
need a strong voice for the adaptation discussions to actually
get a seat at the table because the pooling of these budgets will
inevitably lead to directors of core services having a very strong
voice in those discussions about where money is allocated and
the adaptation debate without that strong voice could potentially
lose out.
Q78 Colin Challen: We used to have
a civil defence planning regime and at county council level they
used to have centralised, if not bunkers then certainly departments
which dealt with that kind of contingency. Do we still have that?
Is there still an infrastructure in place where you have emergency
planning as a priority?
Dr Johnston: Local Resilience
Forums are at the very heart of that process. One of the suggestions
in the paper is that one approach to adaptation is to look at
that Resilience Forum model and see how it can be expanded and
developed to deal with some of the main issues around adaptation.
At the moment, the scope of the Resilience Forum is quite tight,
it is around risk assessment, identifying the big risks and then
managing the emergency services as they respond to particular
disasters, so long-term planning in advance and then the long-term
recovery that comes after a particular event is not really part
of the Resilience Forum's scope, although there is no reason why
it could not be.
Q79 Colin Challen: If there is an
emergency will people have—I know this is all jargon—a
one-stop-shop for emergencies? This Total Place and so on sounds
fine, but will people be confused still after this has been brought
in about who is in charge in a local emergency?
Dr Johnston: Inevitably, because
these events go all the way from a global perspective down to
a specific impact on your house and then a long time afterwards
various services being involved in helping recover from whatever
happened, it is very hard to see one organisation being able to
be the one-stop-shop for that. I do come back to the idea of the
Local Adaptation Management Boards as being an opportunity to
at least bring all of the players who are involved in that long
chain of events into one decision-making body so that they can
come up with a structure which works best within a locality.
Q80 Colin Challen: How happy are
local authorities with the National Indicator 188? Is it helpful
to local authorities or is it a bit of a tick box exercise, do
you think?
Dr Johnston: My understanding
of the uptake of NI 188 has been that elected members' and senior
decision-makers' engagement has been low with NI 188. There are
specific officers who are the ones who lead on either the adaptation
agenda or the climate change agenda or the reporting framework
who tend to have led on putting together the evidence for the
processes that NI 188 asks for and then reflecting those back
on government. We are not hearing that it has been a stimulus
for political debate or radical changes in decision-making.
Q81 Colin Challen: If you are looking
at preparations for emergencies, we can see how you could measure
outputs but perhaps measuring outputs or outcomes could be rather
more problematic, for obvious reasons. Do you think perhaps an
output- or outcome-based approach should be looked at?
Dr Johnston: I think we have to
get to that point for two reasons. The first one is that quite
quickly we need to move to having far greater clarity about what
we mean by adaptation to climate change and, therefore, that means
we are able to identify and assess what it is that we hope would
be happening within localities to tackle that. The adaptation
agenda has to move on relatively quickly and get to the point
where it knows what outcomes it is looking for. Also, from a local
government perspective I think what local government would want
is help from government in the general direction that they should
be heading, but they do not want a process-based indicator which
tells them exactly how to do it.
Q82 Colin Challen: Less than 40%
of local authorities have included NI 188 as a priority in their
current Local Area Agreements. What can be done to increase the
number that are prepared to prioritise adaptation in local area
agreements?
Dr Johnston: I would suggest it
is actually quite hard without the demand from the electorate.
The framework for which these indicators and particularly the
local area agreement indicators are to sit within is the sustainable
community strategy, the story of place, which is something that
local authorities pull together with the people who live within
the area. The LAA[2]
framework is to reflect the priorities of the people within a
particular area. For adaptation to find its way into those 12
indicators then it has got to be seen as the solution to the problems
that the electorate have been putting forward as part of that
process. The long-term answer to whether an indicator on adaptation
would find its way into the LAA is if the people think it is important
enough then it should do. The alternative is there is a top-down
incentive from national government: "If you took on NI 188
we would smile upon you under these particular circumstances".
I think I would prefer the former, but the latter would be quicker.
Q83 Colin Challen: If it is driven
by the electorate then it may only be driven after the event,
which is too late, so perhaps we should have a requirement to
set targets on adaptation.
Dr Johnston: I would not have
a difficulty with a local area deciding what it is going to do
about the adaptation agenda and being held to account for that.
In Cumbria, for example, it would be relatively straightforward
to identify their adaptation priorities and to say to government,
"We will increase our preparedness for these risks and that
is our big adaptation measure for the next year, or two or three,
and we are happy to be judged on that"
Q84 Colin Challen: Defra has excluded
for the time being local authorities from the reporting requirements
in the Climate Change Act. Do you think that ought to change,
that there would be benefits if that requirement was initiated
or would the benefits be outweighed by the cost of yet more reporting?
Dr Johnston: That is a tricky
one because obviously there is a case for, "Why isn't local
government reporting in the same way as other parts of the public
sector" and inevitably the private sector is involved with
water companies, et cetera. It would be helpful to have that co-ordination.
However, a lot of time and effort has been invested in NI 188
as it exists and, despite my earlier criticisms, it has been extremely
useful in a technical sense in doing the local risk assessments,
in identifying what the big problems are and coming up with suggested
strategies for taking them forward. My feeling at the moment is
that I would be looking for a long-term change around this, but
not a short-term shift to the duty which would mean that a lot
of work that has been put in by local authorities would effectively
be wasted.
Q85 Martin Horwood: Can I ask you
specifically about the UK Climate Impact Projections which were
issued to local authorities in the summer. What impact do you
think they have had on local authorities? Do you think local authorities
need more support to make best use of them?
Dr Johnston: Surprisingly little
impact, I have to say. I was one of the people who were waiting
with bated breath for the projections to come out because I thought
this would turn the debate and we would have a completely different
attitude to adaptation after these scenarios came out. Unfortunately,
that has not been the case and the evidence that is coming through
from local authorities is they are not using the scenarios or
their capacity to work on the scenarios in anything like the numbers
that we hoped would be the case. There is a disappointment there.
Obviously there is a need for further work in terms of the interface
between the data and the potential users. At the moment there
is a training programme going on for local government officers
to get engaged, which is obviously a good thing, but it seems
to me if this is going to make a real difference everybody needs
to be looking at these scenarios, the community, industry, everyone
needs to be looking at them, talking about them, discussing them,
and that does not seem to be happening.
Q86 Martin Horwood: From my local
experience, I am not aware that they have penetrated through even
to elected members, let alone the wider public. Do you think we
need to have a different way of delivering information or does
it just need to be about more guidance on what you are supposed
to do with this information and how to use it or implement it?
Dr Johnston: I think the former.
Providing more guidance does not feel like it is going to be the
answer, to be honest, there has been plenty of guidance and exhortation
out there. Changing the interface so it is more user-friendly
would be something which would be useful long-term, but short-term
I think what is going to have to happen is whoever does really
understand how to use UKCIP[3]
and produce useful data out of it has to do that and provide that
data for local authorities. So local authorities to be provided
with scenarios for their areas which they can take from there,
as it were.
Q87 Martin Horwood: Can I ask you
about your suggestion of a Climate Adaptation Trust at national
level? You do seem to be keen on setting up a lot of new bodies
and structures at a time when most of government is going in the
opposite direction. The obvious question is how much do you think
it would cost to run and establish this?
Dr Johnston: The first point on
that, the Local Adaptation Management Boards are about removing
tiers of decision-making around adaptation and streamlining, so
it is not about a new structure, it is about removing tiers. The
Climate Adaptation Trust—I do make the point that I use
the terminology for effect to get people to understand what I
am heading for. You can see from the rest of the paper that we
can see this being part of the Carbon Trust or the Energy Saving
Trust or part of Defra. It is a brand more than necessarily a
whole new organisation. The point being, there is a whole raft
of functions which we list around the adaptation agenda which
are to do with stimulating business, people understanding more
about what is going on. Things that the Carbon Trust and Energy
Saving Trust do for mitigation are currently not being done for
adaptation, so somebody needs to step in and do those.
Q88 Martin Horwood: It is an interesting
slightly philosophical debate, I guess, but the Carbon Trust,
the Energy Saving Trust and others have a very clear focus on
mitigation that is quite different in many ways from managing
environments to adapt to climate change. For instance, would it
not be more logical to extend the responsibilities of UKCIP and
give them a more proactive adaptation agenda as well as just looking
at the impacts?
Dr Johnston: Our starting point
was the same as the Chairman's: what is going on in the round;
what are the debates; what is happening; what is the level of
awareness; and how do you get to that point. On how do you get
to that point, our feeling was more to do with the strategies
which are being employed currently by the Carbon Trust and Energy
Saving Trust about behaviour change in society than they are about
where the strengths of UKCIP are, which is providing the evidence
and information to understand what is going on. We need both obviously,
but it seemed to me the better skills match for a strategy for
an Adaptation Trust would be the Carbon Trust and the Energy Saving
Trust's work.
Q89 Martin Horwood: On an issue like
flooding we have already got the National Flood Forecast Centre
where you have got the Environment Agency and the Met Office working
together. It is not obvious that those kinds of skills on hydrology
and landscape are particularly present in the Carbon Trust or
that family of bodies, but you think there is a skills match,
do you?
Dr Johnston: In terms of the list
of activities that we have outlined there, I think the skills
match is closer to those organisations. I make the point later
on, and I think you ask questions, about skills gaps generally
around this area, and there are vast skills gaps and that is why
part of the role of any new body would be to stimulate interest
and fill those gaps.
Q90 Martin Horwood: My point is on
that specific example of flooding and landscape. I think the Met
Office and Environment Agency might take it amiss if you say there
is a skills gap, I think they think they have got the skills.
You are setting up something that seems to be under a separate
structure. Are you sure there is not a risk of having too many
of these things and too much duplication in the end?
Dr Johnston: There could be. I
come back to the basic point that there is a gap. Taking flooding
as the example, the Environment Agency are doing a lot of really
great work, especially on the technical and evidence side of things,
things have really stepped up working with the Met Office, et
cetera. I know they were very pleased with their performance up
in Cumbria, which was a step up from the Gloucestershire floods
of summer 2007, so that is all going extremely well, but I think
they would also acknowledge the fact that they do not have the
capacity or even the inclination or part of their mission to work
on future solutions to the flooding problem in Britain, stimulate
new technologies, stimulate people to get together to pool resources
to make things happen. All of that softer side, if you like, is
not currently part of the Environment Agency's remit but my feeling
is if we are going to adapt successfully we need both to be going
on.
Q91 Mark Lazarowicz: The Local Government
Association has said local government should be responsible for
taking local adaptive action but should not be expected to meet
all the costs, which is perhaps not surprising. What are the principles
that we need to use to decide who does pay locally? For example,
how do you take account of the fact that clearly some authorities
may require very large-scale adaptive action but may be quite
small authorities with small resources?
Dr Johnston: In terms of the broad
strategy you need to have a mixture of funding for vulnerability
and then wider funding for resilience. It is the mixture of the
two that we need to put together. In the example where a small
local authority has lots of vulnerable groups, clearly that strategy
is around national government being able to identify where the
vulnerable groups are and allocate resources per the vulnerable
group rather than necessarily the geographical location. That
underpins things, but there is a broader resilience issue here
that is something we do need to find new sources of funding for.
In terms of the flooding, things that we have been looking at
are the use of bonds, funding leases, the use of the business-rate
supplements, looking at differences in insurance values and whether
or not that can be a benchmark for giving loans to property owners,
for example. We do need to unlock new money around this whole
area and in order to do that we have to use different financial
mechanisms that are to some extent based upon partnership. If
a business community or a community wishes to join with the state
in order to improve the resilience of their particular area then
we need to find mechanisms that will help them to do that.
Q92 Mark Lazarowicz: Is that not
going to cause a problem? You might have some areas where businesses
are stronger and are more economically successful areas that can
raise money in that way and others that may not be successful
may still have very large needs for adaptive action. Does that
not to some extent require some centralised funding regime as
well and is that not going to make it more difficult for local
government to be the ones taking responsibility for local adaptive
action, or is it simply a case that big schemes should be funded
centrally and local schemes funded locally? How would you go about
that?
Dr Johnston: Something similar.
I would say big and vulnerable. Clearly there is a national imperative
there to make sure that something happens, but small, local and
where groups are not necessarily at immediate threat but feel
that they want to take control of their own responses to adaptation,
those should be local responses. The situation you have outlined
where different things will happen differently across the country
is localism and people decide priorities within a local area.
Q93 Mark Lazarowicz: Okay some things
can be done locally but can you not see circumstances where perhaps
on a particular river or water course one authority does something
in its area which then has a negative effect on the ones downstream
because it may not be able to do it there? Surely there has to
be a bit more co-ordination than leaving it very much up to a
local level in this particular area because of the fact that consequences
can be in more than one area? Clearly if there is a very local
problem that is something the local authority or local community
can deal with but it is not one which is too easy to do on a local
basis everywhere, is it?
Dr Johnston: Not everywhere, and
I return to the earlier discussion with Colin Challen, hence the
idea of the joint management boards because particularly for flooding
these are catchment-based organisations in order to work properly,
and so you have vertical integration within a local authority
area but you also have horizontal integration across local authorities
within a catchment, so you get the joining up of policies and
strategies, so one local authority does not put a housing development
on their plot of land which actually makes things worse for people
further down stream.
Q94 Mark Lazarowicz: What are the
common discussions that are taking place, which I assume are taking
place, between central and local government about how adaptive
action should be funded? Are you aware of that? Maybe it is not
in your remit.
Dr Johnston: I am not really aware
of those discussions, to be honest.
Q95 Mark Lazarowicz: Maybe that is
for the LGA or the LGiU, I do not know.
Dr Johnston: Probably. We know
that the Adapting for Climate Change Centre has about £9
million of funding and that feels like about a tenth of what would
be required to make a significant difference to adaptation in
the UK.
Q96 Mark Lazarowicz: Are there any
particular barriers to local authorities funding adaptive action
at present, other than just lack of money—organisational
barriers, planning barriers, something like that for example?
Dr Johnston: I think there are
significant what I would call governmental structural barriers
which are to do with local authorities generally being able to
make decisions which affect their local area across the board,
and they do apply in terms of adaptation to climate change as
well in so much as, for example with flooding, the Environment
Agency tends to decide where most of the cash is going, and not
necessarily to the local area. Then the heat wave side of the
adaptation agenda is a slightly different set-up in so much as
there is a big lack of knowledge there, and so support is required
for local government but, again, the anticipation will be that
the national house building standards will come down and they
will tell local government exactly what a resilient house looks
like within their area. In terms of any local authority taking
a lead on these things, it is still quite difficult given the
fact that it is very difficult for them to come up with local
planning by-laws and local building regs and things like that
and actually take a lead and take it forward.
Q97 Mark Lazarowicz: Are there risks
that competing short-term priorities could squeeze out investment
in longer-term action?
Dr Johnston: Absolutely. We know
that local government is looking at something like a 20% squeeze
on finances next year. Inevitably ideas which have not even started
yet may not get the support that they may have done in better
times. If you are looking at cutting existing services, it is
very difficult to justify new services coming through.
Q98 Mark Lazarowicz: And is there
a possibility that some local authorities at least might be put
off from taking adaptive action if they see central government
meeting the cost of clearing up the effects of extreme weather?
If others are going to do it then why should they do it? Is there
a danger that that might happen?
Dr Johnston: I do not think so,
to be honest, because despite the fact the Government is stepping
into and putting a lot of money into recovery from the Cumbrian
floods, for example, we know that there are significant long-term
impacts from weather events of all sorts which government funding
does not cover and which the local authority has to pick up and
take into the future and the health sector has to pick up and
take into the future. Things which are not talked about in terms
of these events are for example the effect on the mental health
of people who have been impacted by these events. The Government
is not swinging in and paying for that, for example.
Mark Lazarowicz: I can see that from
experience of my own constituency, in fact.
Q99 Chairman: The Greater London
Authority has a climate change duty requiring it to mainstream
climate change adaptation across its strategies. Do you think
it would be helpful for other local authorities to have the same
thing?
Dr Johnston: Not yet I think is
my response to that because until government is completely clear
about what it means by adaptation to climate change, it makes
it very difficult to have a duty on local authorities to actually
deliver on this thing. As an example, in a different part of the
LGiU we are also working on the power to promote local democracy,
which was in previous legislation, and that is also extremely
difficult for local authorities to understand and take forward
because it is such a nebulous concept. While adaptation is still
a nebulous concept I would say no. When it becomes clearer and
people have a much better idea of where things are going then
maybe. For the time being we would argue that powers to locally
adapt would be much more useful than a duty to have adapted in
some way.
Q100 Chairman: A lot of what we have
been discussing in the last half hour is process and technical.
One of the reasons perhaps that some elected members do not get
very excited about this or interested in it is that there does
not appear to be a big political question that they need to be
addressing. Do you think that is a problem?
Dr Johnston: I think it is a problem
but my feeling about where that will go is the security agenda.
Many councils now are talking about climate change mitigation
as an energy security issue and that is something which has much
more resonance locally than climate change, is it man-made, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You can put all those debates to
one side and you can talk about what a local authority member
is doing for their constituents in their area, and it is around
security and safety and "that's why you voted for me in the
first place." I think we can begin to get a narrative going
around adaptation to climate change in the same way, that this
is about the long-term security and resilience of the area where
people live. If you talk about it in those terms, then I think
you will begin to get purchase from local authority members rather
than talking about this abstract concept of adaptation.
Chairman: That is very helpful; thank
you very much. We have to draw it to a close because we have a
couple more witnesses to come now. Thank you.
1 Local Government Information Unit Back
2
Local Area Agreement Back
3
United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme Back
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