Future Flood and Water Management Legislation

Memorandum submitted by Essex County Council (FFW 15)

Executive Summary

This document consists of Essex County Council’s response to the EFRA Committee’s request for views on the state of Flood and Water Management Legislation.

The key concern for us surrounds the relationship between the governance of surface water flooding and coastal and fluvial flooding. We believe that for reasons of greater effectiveness and to reduce bureaucracy that it would be valuable to combine the management of both these functions into one committee within an administrative area. That is to say that the committees should be based on sensible groupings of Lead Local Flood Authorities and have clear responsibility for tackling all forms of flooding in the area rather than have Regional Flood Coastal Committees alongside new Surface Water partnerships.

We also advise about the difficulties of districts making key staff with large amounts of local knowledge redundant before new funding has been identified which might have prevented it.

Full Response

1. The key issues covered by the consultation into the draft Flood and Water Management Bill and the Walker and Cave reviews are: funding mechanisms- especially concerning the general drainage charge and the levy to the Environment Agency- and the provision of powers to make flood risk run-off a statutory nuisance.

2. The General Drainage Charge collects approximately £500,000 in Essex alone for use towards flood defences which is a significant revenue source for capital improvements. Discussions with the Country Land & Business Association show that they are generally pleased with how it works. They feel it is transparent and so are confident it is being spent on their priorities. For this reason Essex County Council is supportive of it continuing. However we feel that, to recognise the new obligations to deal with the risk of surface water, the revenue from the General Drainage Charge should be available not just for coastal and fluvial management but for surface water as well. This may involve splitting the money with local flood partnerships or it may be a question of ensuring that surface water alleviation schemes are considered by Regional Flood and Coastal Committees.

3. The levy to the Environment Agency can currently only be used for coastal and main watercourse flooding. However there does seem to be some confusion as there have been incidents of it being used for surface water alleviation. Allowing it to be spent on surface water alleviation as well would give it greater flexibility, particularly in situations where the division between surface water and fluvial is not easy.

4. We strongly support the introduction of a statutory nuisance power as it enforces the message that preventing surface water is a responsibility not just of the council but of individuals. In a two-tier system it makes sense for district councils to have this power as they deal with other related statutory nuisances. However given that overall management of surface water risk lies with the county council, it’s important that the county has some way of ensuring district councils use these powers. This is one of the reasons why Essex County Council would support all flood management funds to come through the county council and distributed to other flood risk management authorities in exchange for services.

5 .In terms of further required policies to ensure that flood and water management is delivered in the optimum manner, Essex County Council believes that the current dual system of Regional Flood and Coastal Committees and local flood partnerships for surface water both adds unnecessary bureaucracy and decreases joined up thinking around flood issues. Essex would strongly advocate a single member led flood committee which could cover both the fluvial and coastal responsibilities of the RFCC and the surface water responsibilities of the Lead Local Flood Authority. This would decrease the amount of bureaucracy for both the Environment Agency and the Lead Local Flood Authority and ensure that there was one place where elected members were responsible for flooding.

6. The current system of Regional Flood and Coastal Committees is unwieldy. The Thames RFCC has over 90 members making it extremely difficult for authorities, particularly small authorities and those on the periphery to make themselves heard. If there were instead a series of single committees based on administrative regions (e.g. Essex and the two unitaries Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock) rather than catchment areas, this could create a more effective way of managing the resources for flooding.

7. As with all local authorities, and indeed the water companies, SuDS remains the largest concern and headache of the issues related to the Flood and Water Management Act. Essex County Council echoes the concerns of many others in pointing out the importance of a sustainable funding system for adoption and maintenance of SUDS, of the need for some SUDS guidelines as soon as possible and the difficulties of managing the approval process, particularly in a two-tier setup.

8. Essex County Council is also concerned that much of the expertise and local knowledge of drainage issues remains at the district level. This is absolutely right and practical. However the need for cuts and particularly the removal of funding for drainage from the districts means that many experienced drainage staff are at threat of redundancy but the county council does not currently have either the resources or the power to persuade the districts to keep the staff. This may lead to them being expensively re-hired either by the district or the county in a year’s time.

October 2010