Written evidence submitted by Ewan Larcombe
(1) Summary—This submission seeks
to consider some unresolved flooding and flood management legislation,
policy and practice issues. In particular the Flood Risk Regulations
2009 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 suffer shortcomings
due to time pressures caused by potential EC infraction and Parliamentary
wash-up procedures. The main themes are "the duty to maintain
watercourses for flood water conveyance purposes", the reduction
in the probability of flooding, "the active involvement of
interested parties" in the flood defence process, and the
variation from "investment in flood defence" to "cost
of consequences".
(2) Introduction—A significant number
of people are at risk of flooding and this country has experienced
some severe flood events in recent years. The cost of the 2007
summer flooding was about £3 billion and if opinions are
to be believed, the probability of flooding occurring is increasing
over time.
(3) Probability in lieu of risk—I
prefer to use the word probability rather than risk in order to
avoid confusing the likelihood of the event occurring with the
consequences associated with the event itself. In my opinion the
objective should be to reduce the probability of flooding.
(4) Flood water conveyance capacity—Surely
the primary purpose of a river is to carry water from the land
to the sea, yet in practice watercourse conveyance capacity is
ever-decreasing due to lack of maintenance, with many backwaters
totally abandoned.
(5) The Thames—In my area continuous
River Thames dredging took place after the 1947 flood event. Unfortunately
since responsibility for the Thames transferred from the National
Rivers Authority to the Environment Agency in 1995, the specially
designed and built equipment has been disposed of, operators terminated
and disposal sites closed, all without consultation. This is in
spite of hydraulic model research evidence from HR Wallingford
concluding that increased levels of Thames dredging would be required
after construction of the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation
Scheme (now called the Jubilee River).
(6) Critical Ordinary Watercourses—To
make matters worse, since the Critical Ordinary Watercourses were
re-designated as Main Rivers in about 2005, the responsibility
for management of those watercourses was transferred from the
Local Authority to the Environment Agency who then abandoned maintenance.
(7) Duty to maintain the watercourse—The
Environment Agency is responsible for the Thames and has a legal
duty to maintain the Thames for navigational purposes and also
the power (but no duty) to maintain the Thames for flood defence
purposes. I believe that the organisation/person responsible for
the management of a watercourse should have a duty to ensure that
the flood water conveyance capacity of that watercourse is maintained.
That duty is surely an investment rather than a cost and may be
accomplished by way of riparian responsibility and actions.
(8) The gutter analogy—If the gutter
on my house is overflowing and rainwater is damaging my walls,
I fix the problem by cleaning the gutters and down pipes. If my
front drive is flooding because the drainage on my property is
blocked, then I unblock the drains. If the road outside my property
is flooding then I contact the appropriate responsible authority
(possibly a number of times) and the problem gets fixed. If the
local water course is blocked—then nobody wants to know,
and you are just run around in circles between the EA and the
authorities. The system for watercourse condition monitoring and
maintenance surely fails due to lack of legal duty to maintain
watercourses for flood defence purposes.
(9) New legislation—This problem is
not improved by the additional powers and responsibilities imposed
on the lead local flood authorities by the Flood Risk regulations
2009 No 3042 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Directive
2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks came
into force on 26 November 2007. This Directive now requires Member
States to assess if all water courses and coast lines are at risk
from flooding, to map the flood extent and assets and humans at
risk in these areas and to take adequate and coordinated measures
to reduce this flood risk. This Directive also reinforces the
rights of the public to access this information and to have a
say in the planning process. In particular, it places duties on
the Environment Agency and local authorities to prepare flood
risk assessments, flood risk maps and flood risk management plans.
(10) Legislative shortcomings—Unfortunately
delay in transposing the Directive into UK legislation revealed
the possibility of compliance failure and left the Government
open to infraction and significant reputational harm. As a direct
consequence of this failure the Flood Risk Regulations 2009 No.3042
were printed on 13 November 2009, laid before Parliament on 19
November 2009 and came into effect on 10 December 2009. In my
opinion this legislation was rushed through Parliament with insufficient
debate or scrutiny which led directly to shortcomings in the transposition.
In particular the Flood Risk Regulations 2009
fail to reflect the requirements of the Directive as follows:
Article 10 (1)—In accordance with applicable
Community legislation, Member States shall make available to the
public, the preliminary flood risk assessment, the flood hazard
maps, the flood risk maps and the flood risk management plans.
Article 10 (2)—Member States shall encourage
active involvement of interested parties in the production, review
and updating of the flood risk management plans.
The Flood Risk Regulations merely state in Part
4, para. 27 s 7 that:
"the Environment Agency and each lead
local flood authority must consult the following about the proposed
content of a flood risk management plan:
(a) authorities listed in regulation 36(3)
that may be affected by the plan, and
(b) the public".
Thus the Environment Agency and the newly created
lead local flood authority firstly ignore the option to engage
with interested parties at an early opportunity (thus failing
to exploit potential synergistic benefits) and secondly the so-called
"public consultation" then becomes just a rubber-stamping
exercise.
(11) The use and role of IT—I believe
there is a need for a publicly accessible, web based register
of all watercourses, complete with detailed maintenance regime,
maintenance record and responsibility. The public should be able
to input both photographs and text to the register.
(12) The role of Parish and Town Councils
in flood defence—These are the people in the front line
of flooding. They know the area, the problems, the history and
what to look out for. Their intimate knowledge and geographical
proximity to the problem is priceless. They need to be involved
in the flood defence process. In addition I believe there must
now be a legal duty on Parish and Town Councils to regularly monitor
and record the condition of the watercourses and local infrastructure
on their patch. That is not to say that they need engineering
knowledge, but more that they have a feel for what is important
and the ability to pass that information on to those in authority.
On the understanding that "prevention is cheaper than cure
but 100% prevention is unrealistic" there are some helpful
measures that Parish and Town Councils can take that involve negligible
cost to the Treasury purse. These measures relate to flood prevention
and preparedness, warning, event and recording, and finally the
recovery process.
(13) The Flood Action Group—A web
based asset register has been suggested but an electronic register
alone is insufficient to deal with the problems of lack of drainage
maintenance. The duty to monitor and keep the register up-to-date
should begin at the lowest level of local Government. These are
the people who live in the area and are interested in the welfare
of the local people. Every Parish or Town Council should set up
a Flood Action Group to create and maintain a flood plan, a watercourse/drainage
asset register and a critical infrastructure register. The Flood
Action Group would regularly monitor state of all assets (watercourses
and drains) and critical infrastructure within parish and monitor
groundwater levels if appropriate. They could communicate with
adjacent authorities both upstream and down stream, and submit
regular status reports to Borough Council/Unitary Authority and
website.
(14) The lead local flood authority—The
lead local flood authority could maintain a web based schedule
of drainage assets, complete with maps and plans, ownership details,
within banks capacity, maintenance responsibility, maintenance
records and schedules for planned maintenance. Also a record of
flood event details to include flow and level measurements. The
website needs to be publicly accessible—so that public can
both read and add text/photos if required.
(15) The role of the insurance companies—The
insurance companies (and thus the policy holders) are now paying
more as a consequence of the failure of the Environment Agency
to maintain the conveyance capacity of the watercourses. The insurance
companies now continue to increase both premiums and excess for
flood insurance. Maybe the insurance companies should be supplying
engineers to inspect and report on flood defences in the same
way that they do on ships, lifts and cranes. It is the Environment
Agency who has neglected flood defences, not the local people.
4 October 2010
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