Flood Funding

Supplementary written evidence submitted by Defra

At the meeting of the EFRA Committee on 26 March, I said that I would write to you to you and provide further information on a number of points that came up during our discussion.

Q293- Flood Risk Hazard Maps

The flood risk and hazard maps will be available from December 2013. We are currently seeking views about possible phasing the release of information.

Q319 -IDB maintenance Work

The Committee raised a concern about landowners in Internal Drainage Board (IDB) areas having to pay twice for maintenance work - both to their local IDB and to the Environment Agency - and about how those funds were then used by the Agency.

The Environment Agency makes a precept on IDBs for a contribution to the work it carries out in the river catchment for the benefit of the IDB and its charge-payers. This programme of works is managed by the Regional Flood and Coastal Committees, with the funds being protected for spend within that catchment. The programmes of work are published on the Environment Agency website.

I can assure the Committee that funding raised locally is retained by the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee - it does not get surrendered to a national or central pot. Farmers paying a drainage rate to an IDB do not make a separate payment to the Environment Agency; the IDB contributes to the Environment Agency work programme on their behalf.

The Environment Agency has been working with Internal Drainage Boards to improve the reporting of the work it undertakes for the benefit of IDBs, and in 2012 worked with IDBs to pilot a new joined-up approach to setting the proposed local programmes of work. This partnership resulted in a discussion paper jointly authored by representatives of the IDB and the Environment Agency, which enabled the IDB Board to put forward comments for the Regional Flood and Coastal Committee to consider when setting the level of the precept for 2013/14. The Agency intends to roll out this approach more widely to improve partnership working and transparency.

Q322- Environment Agency Maintenance spending

Please see the separate briefing at Annex 1 from the Environment Agency for information on this point.

Q340- Bellwin Scheme

Under the Department of Communities and local Government's Bellwin scheme 85% of costs is the normal rate of reimbursement under the Bellwin Scheme. This rate has been set to give Local Authorities an incentive to control their spending. The Department has allowed funding above this threshold in exceptional cases, such as for the 2007 summer floods where 55,000 properties were flooded. Funding at the 100% rate was applied for the June and July 2012 schemes when 4,000 properties were flooded by particularly intense and concentrated rainfall or unusual cloudbursts.

An extra £120 million will be spent by Defra over the next two years (April 2013 - March 2015) to accelerate around fifty flood defence projects. This combined with increasing levels of external co-funding means that over the current spending period, more will be spent on flood and coastal risk management than ever before. £4 million has been made available to 13 communities through a Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Scheme up to March 2015. The scheme is designed to enable and stimulate communities at significant risk of flooding to develop local solutions.

Recovery grants for infrastructure are not covered by the Bellwin scheme. However, Government Departments do operate emergency funds to deal with specific impacts on infrastructure from any emergency. In the case of the flooding incidents of 2012 no single incident had such a significant impact on infrastructure to release such emergency funds.

Q354, Q367 and Q368 - Sustainable Urban Drainage (SuDs), Water Companies and Planning

Turning to the discussion on Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDs), I can assure the Committee that we are making progress on enacting Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. This will establish an Approving Body in county or unitary authorities. The Approving Body has a duty to adopt and maintain SuDS that serve more than one property where they have granted approval to drainage systems built to national standards.

(Q368 'obliged to connect)

Section 106 of the Water Industry Act 1991 details the circumstances under which a sewerage undertaker can refuse to permit, or set conditions for, a proposed communication with the sewerage system.

(Q367)

The Flood and Water Management Act will amend the Water Industry Act, making the right to connect surface water to the public sewer conditional on the drainage system being approved by the SuDs Approving Body. Sewerage Undertakers, the Environment Agency, Internal Drainage Boards, British Waterways and Highway Authorities are to be statutory consultees to the Approving Body.

When enacted, these provisions will increase the uptake of SuDS in new developments. With regard to existing developments, the Water White Paper Water for Life sets out how the Government intends to encourage the retrofitting of SuDS. The Committee will also be pleased to know that their concerns over the proliferation of impermeable surfaces in gardens has been acted upon, as of 1 Oct 2008 planning approval is required to install in front gardens an impermeable surface exceeding 5m2.

With regards to timing of implementation, in the consultation document of December 2011 we suggested an implementation date of 1 October 2012. Responses to the consultation highlighted a number of issues that required further work before implementation could take place. The Committee will be pleased to hear that we listened to responses from all sectors who called for these issues to be fully worked through to ensure implementation is effective, while avoiding additional burdens which might impact on the drive for growth. Defra officials are engaging with all industry representatives, via three cross-sector task and finish groups, in order to resolve the main issues raised in consultation. This will ensure that the SuDS approval and adoption regime we are introducing works and is supported by local government and the developers which will have to operate within it. Consultation responses from all sectors called for adequate lead-in time to prepare for implementation, our revised timetable for April 2014 implementation allows for this and gives sufficient time for the usual Whitehall and Parliamentary clearances. In addition to the above provisions, it is my intention, as I mentioned in my evidence to the Committee, to use the Water Bill to further encourage the uptake of SuDS by making it clear that, where it is cost-effective to use SuDS to effectually drain an area, sewerage undertakers may fund SuDS through customer bills.

Defra analysts have utilised the available evidence on the cost effectiveness of SuDS measures as part of developing the economic assessment of SuDS policy. We have also commissioned further research to strengthen our evidence base. While we do not have studies that demonstrate the role SuDS can play in flood risk mitigation at a regional level, case studies at a more local level are available and can be viewed on the Defra-funded Susdrain website (www.susdrain.org)

I trust you find this information helpful.

Annex 1 – Environment Agency Maintenance Spending

The Environment Agency’s overall spending on maintaining and replacing assets has reduced over the Spending Review period from £446m (see note 1) in 2010/11 to £386m in 2012/13. Over 95% of our flood risk management assets are still being maintained in target condition and these performed well during last year’s extreme wet weather, protecting over 200,000 properties.

The proportion of flood defences in ‘high consequence systems’ (i.e. those offering the greatest protection to people, property and much of the best quality agricultural land) in target condition improved slightly over the past two years from 97.5% in March 2010 to over 98% at March 2012. We are now seeing a small fall in asset condition as a result of the extreme wet weather and the reductions in overall expenditure on maintaining and replacing assets.

Dredging and watercourse maintenance is just a small part of the Environment Agency’s asset management programme. It is not always the most effective way of reducing flood risk. The Environment Agency prioritises its work to maximise the benefits in terms of reducing potential risk flood damages. The table below shows the breakdown of the maintenance spend in the last four years and forecast for future years.

Environment Agency Maintenance spend (£ million)
Maintenance Activity	2009/10	2010/11	2011/12	2012/13	2013/14	2014/15
Operation of our assets – including water level management, asset inspection and utility costs	43	43	43	43	44	46
Conveyance management – includes blockage removal, dredging, de-silting and weed clearance	39	44	39	45 (see note 2)	30	25
Preventative maintenance on large operational assets such as pumping stations, tidal barriers and sluices	22	22	22	22	21	20
Preventative maintenance on structures and defences	51	59	52	59	51	46
Total EA revenue spend on asset maintenance	155	168	156	169	147	136

Overall spend on asset management, which includes maintenance and capital investment to replace, repair and refurbish existing defences to ensure that they continue to offer the same level of flood protection, was £446m in 2010/11, £367m in 2011/12 and £386m in 2012/13.

The priority for allocation of funding to those areas where the flooding consequences are higher is in line with the recommendations of the 2007 National Audit Office report. In 2006 the percentage of the regional maintenance budget spent in high consequence systems varied between 24% and 67%. In 2012/13, a national average 79% of funding for asset maintenance was allocated to high consequence systems, 14% to medium, and 7% to low consequence systems.

Notes:

1. This table shows our overall spend on asset management, which includes maintenance and capital investment to replace, repair and refurbish existing defences to ensure that they continue to offer the same level of flood protection.

	Capital	Revenue	Total
	Replacement	Asset maintenance
2009/10	273	155	428
2010/11	278	168	446
2011/12	211	156	367
2012/13	217	169	386
2013/14	275	147	422
2014/15	322	136	458

2. Dredging is one activity within the more general heading of conveyance management. We do not collect specific data on the amount of dredging we do because it is difficult to separate dredging from other related activities such as blockage removal and weed control. We provided an estimate in 2012/13 that our dredging investment was between £10m and £20m per year.

3. These figures represent our latest and most accurate overall estimates, which take staff and support costs into account, and cover all maintenance activities. They may differ from some previously published figures, in cases where only ‘direct’ costs were counted.

June 2013