Flood Insurance

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing this debate. I am grateful for the chance to speak, because many of my constituents, especially in Paulsgrove, Cosham, Drayton and Farlington, have been affected by these issues.

We have good sea defences in Portsmouth, but we have a very dilapidated sewerage and drainage system that has caused many of the problems on and around the Portsdown Hill area. A programme of works is now in place to rectify those problems, and so far we have been able to protect local people from the increases in their insurance premiums as they have had to submit repeated claims for repeated flooding and sewerage leaks.

I agree with many of the points that have been made, and I will not go over them again. I wish to touch on two additional issues that add insult to injury. The first of these is planning. Planning applications are approved even when the new build is on a serious floodplain. An applicant for a dementia care home in my constituency attempted to placate the planning committee by saying—I kid you not—that because the building was high-rise, if there were a flood the residents would be able to get to high ground. The application was approved. The advice of local planning committees and the Environment Agency is often ignored, or their decisions overturned.

I hope that there could be an incentive for a slightly more responsible stance on these issues. There is a gap in the market for an “Environment Agency Says No” website, so that whether it is a house or a care home place being purchased, the consumer would be able to check whether the agency has given the site and the development the thumbs up.

[Nicola Blackwood]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points about Environment Agency approval of floodplains. She began by talking about dilapidated sewerage systems. Does she agree that we need to include Thames Water more in decisions about planning, because a lot of our drainage systems are causing problems with surface water flooding?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend is right. The Environment Agency has told me that it would like to be more involved with such planning decisions and there are many other organisations that we should take advice from.

The transparency that I have described would not deal with current cases, but it would head off future grief by providing an incentive for developers to behave more responsibly.

The final issue that I will touch on is compensation for deliberate flooding. There have been cases in my county, although not in my constituency, of landowners having their land flooded deliberately by the local authority to prevent greater damage elsewhere. That is quite understandable, but in such cases the landowner should be able to access some form of compensation. I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on that.

Finally, I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton and all Members who have made possible this timely debate on an important issue.