Winter Flooding (Preparation)

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing this important debate. As we have heard, surface water flooding has affected the constituencies of many hon. Members. Many residents across the country, including a huge number of my own residents in Castle Point, are deeply concerned about the prospect of the wet winter that has been predicted.

In August 2013 there was severe surface water flooding across my constituency, and my residents were told that it was a one-in-100-year event. Many hon. Members will have seen the flooding in my constituency on 20 July 2014, which we were told was a one-in-319-year event. One of my constituents remarked to me that his maths is not very good but that something did not add up. We clearly need to consider the fact that the national weather patterns are changing due to climate change, and that such rainfall events will be more frequent in future. We desperately need to ensure that we are prepared.

I thank the Minister for seeing me so swiftly after the flooding in July, and I thank the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, for delving into the preparation and responses of the various flooding authorities in two reports that quickly issued recommendations. I am very pleased to say that my local agencies are taking action to implement those recommendations, and it was an enormous help for my constituents to know that an independent person was looking at exactly what happened, because many agencies were involved, and getting to the bottom of why the flooding happened is crucial to ensuring that we address it in future.

As many as 500 properties are thought to have been affected in Castle Point this year, but that number is much larger than the official figure. As many hon. Members will have experienced, flooding agencies find it very hard to get an accurate number for flooded properties because many people do not wish to declare the damage that they have suffered for fear of being unable to sell their property or of the effect on their insurance premiums. I already have residents who are being quoted insurance premiums with excesses of £10,000 to £20,000 because of the flooding they experienced, which is effectively making many of my residents unable to insure their properties. That is causing enormous concern.

There were cases of flooding across my constituency on that day in July—Rayleigh road, the avenue areas of Hadleigh and around the bottom of Woodside hill in Thundersley—but the majority of flooded properties were on Canvey Island, which suffered rainfall of almost 220 million gallons in a little under four hours. Canvey Island has some of the best tidal defences in the country, and the sea walls and barriers that protect the island and the low-lying parts of Benfleet saw off the great tidal surge that affected many other areas last November. DEFRA has invested millions in sea defences on Canvey Island over the past decades, which is of course very welcome, and I will always fiercely lobby for that investment to continue, but the rainfall event in July exposed a surface water drainage system that has clearly suffered from decades of local under-investment, illegal tampering and appalling connections made by various developers over the years.

After the event in July, I was shocked to learn that the various flooding agencies with responsibility for drainage did not have a clear picture of the drainage systems and assets on Canvey Island or who is responsible for them. That might be an unintended consequence of shifting responsibilities and ownership by various agencies over the years, but the serious, practical consequence was that some drainage assets had clearly not been maintained by anyone for years. Therefore, no one knew the level of risk or strain on the underlying infrastructure. I am grateful that we are now seriously looking at the situation, and an integrated urban drainage study is being undertaken not only to plot the assets but to work out who is responsible for them and how they work, but that will take some time.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making some important points. Does she agree that it is important that local authorities have an insight into the situation when considering permitting further developments and when setting their community infrastructure levies, which they now do themselves? That would ensure that local authorities set the levies at a level that is sufficient to ensure that new developments are able to contribute, including off site, to the surface water drainage systems, which will be required to take a greater strain than would otherwise have been the case.

[Rebecca Harris]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and it is a critical concern to my residents. When more development is proposed in areas where we clearly already have an inadequate system, improvements will have to be made that guarantee that there will be no further strain on the infrastructure before we allow that further development to take place. In county areas such as mine, the county council must take some responsibility for the problem of surface water flooding.

It is hard for people to make preparations for a crisis if they are not entirely sure what resources they have to hand or how effective they are. My residents have a real fear every time it rains, although they can see an enormous amount of work being done. Nobody should have to live with that level of fear.

We must get an accurate picture of the drainage network’s capability if we are to upgrade it, which is why I support my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, who spoke about the need to provide local sources of funding to prevent surface water problems. If there are problems, people need to be able to access local funding quickly.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

The Environment Agency has spent £750,000 on measures to protect Gloucestershire. Does my hon. Friend agree that that activity and the activity of drainage boards and councils, taken together, represents sensible agency co-operation, which is critical to preventing flooding in the future?

[Rebecca Harris]

Absolutely. Many organisations deal with our water drainage networks, but the most important and critical point is to ensure that they are working together and that somebody is taking leadership of that. One of the firm recommendations in Sir Mark Walport’s report is that somebody must take a firm lead. We must not allow crazy situations to occur, such as when a county council cleans out its drainage pots, finds another blockage and says, “I’m not doing that; it’s someone else’s responsibly.” Organisations must work in concert; otherwise the system will not work. A blocked drain is not a drain any more.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

We are very clear that we have lead authorities, but, for example, when my constituency was flooded, each of the authorities looked to the others for co-ordination. We know that Lancashire county council is the lead authority, but on the day everybody looked to each other and nobody delivered. It was the firemen who rescued my constituents, and they were the only people who came out of the day with honour. Local authorities will not provide sandbags, and do not engage in fixing the problem. Everybody wants to lead, but nobody wants to do.

[Rebecca Harris]

I recognise that situation, which is why I was interested to see that recommendation 7 of Sir Mark Walport’s report states:

“The Natural Hazards Partnership should use the Canvey Island event as a case study”

for modelling future events. We should also recommend that the lead authority must know what its role is. I, too, wish to put on the record my praise for my fire service, which was sill pumping out people’s houses and doing its damndest to support my constituents at 2 o’clock in the morning. I am grateful to it.

Two measures are absolutely necessary. First, the different agencies must work together effectively to ensure that their response to flooding and the maintenance of the drainage network is co-ordinated. There should be no buck-passing or pointing at other organisations. I am pleased to say that following the Government’s report, co-operation has vastly improved in Castle Point and agencies are working together to overcome problems. However, as the hon. Lady said, that should be common practice.

Secondly, constituents need support to proof their properties against flooding. The repair and renew grant is a sensible, successful measure introduced by the Government for victims of the floods last winter and spring. Unfortunately, my constituents did not benefit from it, because the flooding events fell outside the time scale of the grant period. If the grant were extended and the hundreds of families in my constituency who suffered flooding this July and last August could access that support, they would have peace of mind and further damage to their homes would be prevented. It would be enormously beneficial in helping them to reinsure their homes with evidence that they are less at risk.

I am extremely grateful for the chief scientific adviser’s report on the flooding event in my constituency. He further recommended:

“The Met Office and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology should review the likelihood and impact of extreme weather events looking into the future, and provide a clear approach”.

We must not keep talking about one-in-300-year or one-in-100-year events. We must look at what is likely to happen in the future and ensure that our infrastructure and defences are able to meet the potential events. We must look at the hazards that will be caused by the overall rainfall effect. Anybody who has had flooding in their area should look at the chief scientific adviser’s report to see how it applies to them. I am delighted to say that it is now a case study for how we should do these things in the future.