Future Flood Prevention

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

The financing of flood defences is of absolutely paramount importance to my constituents, as my borough has been hit by flooding on a number of occasions, most notoriously the devastating North sea flood of 1953, which breached the old Canvey Island sea wall defences and caused the loss of life of 58 residents and the evacuation of the entire remaining population. To avert a similar catastrophe, the island is now protected by a concrete wall that runs along its entire 28 km to protect the population of 40,000 from tidal surges. This wall is still judged to be good for a one-in-1,000-years event. I note that the residents of Canvey Island were not encouraged to evacuate because of a threatened tidal surge when those of Jaywick were. The wall is judged to be sound right up until the end of this century provided that there is regular monitoring and maintenance. The concern of my residents is to ensure that the money is always there to make sure that we are upgrading the maintenance.

Notwithstanding how good the sea walls are, Canvey Island and other parts of my borough, including South Benfleet and Hadleigh, still remain subject to a serious risk of surface water flooding, as occurred dramatically in the summer of 2013 and again in 2014, when homes right across the borough were flooded, including 1,000 homes on the island alone. Despite the great sea defences, this is a serious problem for an island that remains 1 metre below sea level at high tide and is entirely flat. It presents a particular problem for effective surface water drainage. There was an absolute outcry in 2014 at the second significant flooding event in less than 11 months. That led to calls for an investigation into whether this could be dismissed as a mere act of God or whether much more serious defects in the water management system were at fault, and what measures were needed to be put in place to assure residents that it would not occur again. I was extremely grateful to the then Cabinet Office Ministers and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who agreed to an investigation by the Government chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, to establish the facts and make recommendations for the various agencies locally. His report found that the coincidence of extreme rainfall, problems with the performance of the drainage system, a power cut, and pumps overheating and tripping out were all foreseeable, although unusual, and many could be avoided in future. Sir Mark made a number of recommendations, the majority of which, I am pleased to say, have already been acted on.

Since those last floods, an extraordinary amount of work has taken place right across Castle Point, with considerable amounts of money spent on improvements and mitigation measures. The Environment Agency has invested large sums in improvements to its eight sluices and 13 pumping stations. In this financial year alone, it has invested over £500,000, including £89,000 on the Benfleet and East Haven barriers, which are key to protecting South Benfleet as well as the island. Webcams have been installed to monitor pumps and ditches. Some £620,000 has been spent on refurbishing 28 floodgates, and the remaining six will be completed by the end of this year.

The county council and Anglian Water have worked hard to map the drainage network underground and to make thousands of repairs and remove blockages in the system, as well as identifying the most serious faults. Anglian Water has invested millions since 2014 and has also been highly proactive in a public awareness campaign locally to raise the critical importance of maintaining free-flowing water courses. The county council is undertaking a huge rolling programme of property-level protection, with grants of up to £5,000 for homes affected by flooding previously.

The improved partnership working of Essex County Council, Anglian Water, the Environment Agency and the Essex fire and rescue service, as recommended by the chief scientist, is exemplary and has even resulted in a national award. Although the investigation focused on the island, improvements in multi-agency co-operation have had real benefits for the entire borough and it is now an exemplar for the rest of the UK.

The partnership has concluded a comprehensive urban drainage study of the problems underground and to model any future problems, to help make sure that this does not happen to my borough again. Proposals include the creation of additional storage ditches on roadsides and open areas, green roofs, water butts, porous paving and increased pipe sizes. It will shortly submit bids for some of those projects to the South East local enterprise partnership and central Government.

Previously, DEFRA Ministers have supported our bids. I hope that the Government will continue that support, acknowledge the economic importance of those bids and stress, not only to my LEP but to others, the importance of flood alleviation schemes in ensuring that communities remain economically viable. It is absolutely essential for the continued economic regeneration of my borough that it is recognised as protected from non-tidal surface water, as well as from tidal flood risk, especially given the increased likelihood of future events.

My borough is grateful for the introduction of the Flood Re scheme, which means that residents are not priced out of insuring their homes. It is not, however, available to businesses in my area. I hope that more work can be done in that regard, because a lot of them suffer great hardship. Nor does the scheme apply to new builds. I urge the Government to do more to ensure that there is better defence of our floodplains from developers and to press planning departments to incorporate more surface water mitigation for developments. Perhaps they could even reverse developers’ current right to connect surface water to the sewerage system, as it does not incentivise them to consider sustainable drainage systems.

I am conscious that time is short, so I will end by encouraging the Minister to visit Castle Point, if she can find the time in her diary, to see the incredible work that has been done in Benfleet and on Canvey Island, and to meet local agencies to discuss what more is needed and how we can further help the borough.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The excitement in the Secretary of State’s life knows no bounds.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

3. What progress the Government are making on putting in place a blue belt to protect marine habitats.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)]

We have already designated 50 marine conservation zones, 99 special areas of conservation and 102 special protection areas within UK waters, so more than 17% of UK waters are now within marine protected areas. A third tranche of marine conservation zones will be designated in 2018, and I am proud to say that that will help to complete the blue belt around the English coastline.

[Rebecca Harris]

I thank the Secretary of State for her reply. As well as the important habitats and wildlife that we have in our domestic waters, including those in the Thames estuary, the oceans around some of our overseas territories are home to hundreds of remarkable species. What action, if any, are we taking to protect them as well?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is quite right to raise those wonderful marine habitats. I am delighted to say that marine protected areas were declared around Pitcairn and St Helena in the past month, and work is in train to develop MPAs around Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, so the UK is set to double these protected areas to an area the size of India by 2020.

Winter Floods 2013-14

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

It is not just me who is upset about it, but my constituents. After the 2012 floods in my constituency, I spoke to a young mother in St Asaph, whose insurance increased from £269 to £1,269 per year and whose excess increased from about £500 per incident to about £10,000 per incident. Hopefully, the issue will be settled by next summer. A cap on the flood element of household insurance of approximately £200 for the lowest band will be introduced, and we are grateful for that. However, in the two years since 2012, my constituents have had to pay enormous excesses and they have had enormous increases in their premiums. They are ordinary people—it is not a rich community. In fact, east Rhyl has an elderly population on fixed incomes, who do not have the privilege of being able to reach into their back pockets and stump up the additional amounts that the insurance companies require. The issue should have been settled two years ago and it has not been, although I welcome the fact that it will be.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about people being unable to cope with the large excesses that they have been charged, my constituency has had two successive floods and a lot of my residents who were flooded last summer did not make a claim. They paid for it themselves and kept quiet about it because they were concerned that it would affect not only their insurance premiums but the potential sale of their houses in the future.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That might be possible if the flood waters just lap over the person’s front garden or run just underneath their floorboards, but it is not possible when they have five feet of water in their house. The floods in my constituency were serious. In St Asaph, a 92-year-old lady died in five and a half feet of water. These are serious issues that require the Government’s serious consideration.

The communities in east Rhyl and St Asaph responded tremendously. One of the few good things to come out of the floods was the community spirit that was engendered. Some individuals were heroes, such as John Wyn Jones. His own property was threatened, but instead of securing his valuables, he was out there on the flood bank warning everyone to get out of their homes. He was washed off the edge of the flood bank into his own estate—thank God it was that way and not into the river—by a one-metre wave.

Among other local residents involved in the aftermath, Colin Marriott has been a fantastic researcher and has challenged the local authority, Natural Resources Wales, the Welsh Government and me with facts and figures, bringing his evidence to bear to ensure that when remedial measures are taken to improve the flood banks in St Asaph, they will be taken correctly. I pay tribute not only to John Wyn Jones and Colin Marriott, but to dozens of other local people in St Asaph who helped during the floods and to the community as a whole, which came together and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The same was true in Rhyl. The town council opened a flood fund and, if I may put it like this, funds came flooding in, to be distributed among people affected. I pay tribute to the mayor of Rhyl, Andy Rutherford, who organised the fund, and to local residents who, again, have been at my heels and at the heels of the local authority, the Welsh Government, the Assembly Member and the councillors. For example, I spoke to Charles Moore on Monday, and he and other residents have been ensuring that we do our jobs. That is why I am in the Chamber today, to do my job representing their views in the Houses of Parliament. What they want to see, however, is not my hot air, or that of Ministers or whoever, but action. The key to that is investment.

Moving on to the points made in recommendations 3, 15 and 16 of the report, which concern river maintenance and natural environmental land management, that is a key to improving flood prevention in an environmentally sensitive and, dare I say, cheap way. I was switched on to this by George Monbiot, in a fantastic article from The Guardian or The Observer. I know that he is not the farmers’ best friend, but what he said in the article about contour planting made sense.

Contour planting is the planting of trees along a contour line of a vale or valley so that when the water falls on a mountainside or hillside and rushes down the slope, it does not go into the river, rivulet or stream and on into the sea, but hits the contour planting of trees or bushes and is then vired underground. George Monbiot, in his article, said that such planting is 67 times more effective in viring water underground than a meadow is. The beauty of such a scheme is that the whole mountainside does not have to be planted; only 5% planting will result in a 30% drop in flooding and in rainwater hitting the rivers further down the valley. Planting the whole mountainside would reduce flooding by 50%, but only 5% planting along a specific contour can achieve massive reductions in flooding in our vales and valleys, such as the Vale of Clwyd.

Contour planting was pioneered by farmers in south Wales, although they were not planning for flooding. The farmers wanted a barrier of trees, shrubs or bushes behind either side of which their sheep or cattle could hide during storms or high winds. They noticed incidentally, however, that flooding was reduced. The idea was therefore pioneered in Wales and we should learn from it. It is a Welsh solution to a UK or even international problem.

I met with the Welsh Minister responsible for flood defences, Carl Sargeant, on Monday, when he visited east and west Rhyl. I mentioned contour planting at a meeting I had secured with him and the Assembly Member, Ann Jones, to discuss the issue in Wales, but it is too important an issue not to have any cross-border co-operation possible between the Minister present in the Chamber and Welsh Ministers. We also need the Environment Agency in England and Natural Resources Wales to co-operate on such schemes, because many Welsh rivers run through England and many English rivers run through Wales. We need a degree of co-operation.

Contour planting definitely needs to be looked at and schemes piloted. There would be an additional benefit for seaside towns with estuaries and rivers in their hinterland. Towns such as Rhyl have failed to achieve the higher European standard for water bathing quality because of the impact of agriculture in the hinterland. I do not want to be too rude, but when horses, cattle and sheep defecate and urinate or whatever, that gets washed down into the river and is smeared along the coast, possibly altering the readings for bathing water quality. If contour planting took place, some of that water would be vired underground and naturally filtered, so that there would be a better chance of seaside towns, many of which are struggling, having better water quality. Many of those towns are there only because of the quality of their water; they were established between the 1850s and 1950s because of the popularity of bathing. If they do not reach the higher standards, the towns will be penalised in economic and tourism terms. Contour planting is a win-win situation and we should at least start to pilot such schemes.

I pay tribute to the Welsh Government Minister, Carl Sargeant, who visited my constituency on Monday. He announced £1.9 million of additional Welsh Government funding for the extension of coastal sea defences in Rhyl. The Welsh Government have already spent £7 million on raising the harbour wall by more than 1 metre. They now hope to extend that by 450 yards towards the town centre. They have also spent £4 million on raising the banks of the River Clwyd. All that is welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I am very sorry to hear that. In the previous year the Prime Minister did not put in an appearance in Somerset, so perhaps it was a case of hitting the right moment and of the strength with which representations were made. Certainly we had the Government’s attention, which had an effect.

To deal first with the immediate response, before I move on to the Government’s response I have to pay tribute again to the huge voluntary effort. People behaved quite extraordinarily in helping their neighbours, and people from further away helped those whom they did not know. There were enormous numbers of charity donations. I spend a day at the Somerset Community Foundation opening letters that were quite heartbreaking, with donations from people who could ill afford them but were giving them because they felt it was necessary to help those in distress. As many people will know, there were donations of forage for animals from farmers in other parts of the country, which were hugely welcome. That has led to the setting up of what I hope will be a permanent exchange, which will be of value.

[Rebecca Harris]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a delegation from Castle Point Motors arranged for a large shipment to go down to the Somerset levels last year, so help was coming from as far away as Benfleet and Canvey Island?

[Mr Heath]

I hope the hon. Lady will accept my grateful thanks on behalf of my constituents, because that was literally a life-saver for people and livestock in my area.

There was, I have to say, a belated response from the military, an issue that might need to be looked at. Perhaps the principal local authority did not ask for help sufficiently promptly, but until the Prime Minister intervened there was also a difficulty with the cost of involving the military. That should not happen. The Royal Marines are on our doorstep, so we do not expect that they will not be able to help when we are underwater. They are well placed to assist and would have been happy to have done so, had they been able to. When they were introduced, they were very valuable.

Local authorities worked extremely well to ensure that people were safe and had alternative housing. Enormous pumps were introduced—the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton drew attention to them in her remarks, and they were quite the biggest I have ever seen. A great benefit of what happened is that we now have proper hard standing, so that those pumps can be deployed at short notice in future. However, that raises questions about some of the rather elderly pumping stations on the levels. Those stations saw their best years possibly 50 or 60 to 100 years ago. How much longer they can continue to do their unsung work I do not know.

After the immediate issues were dealt with, next came the new protections, key among which was dredging. There was a great deal of scepticism in my constituency that the Environment Agency would carry out the dredging it had promised. Such was the suspicion that it was felt that the agency would waft a dredger in the direction of the River Parrett and the River Tone and that would be about all that was done. But it was not; the dredging was done with dispatch and real urgency. The initial dredging has been completed and there is now a study looking at other areas of the river system that will need action. I hope that will go ahead in the very near future.

Where necessary, individual communities were protected. For instance, the ring barriers around Thorney and Muchelney pottery will make a real difference. They are not quite finished yet and we look at the skies with some trepidation, but they are well in hand. The Environment Agency has undertaken asset repairs on a wide scale, including at Beer Wall, and many other parts of the system are now improved.

One of the issues that grabbed the media’s attention was access problems, such as those to the village—then an island—of Muchelney. Although there was not as much water ingress into properties there as there was at Thorney, it was cut off for a long time and people found it hugely difficult to cope with that. The county council is attending to that by raising one of the road accesses to Muchelney. Unfortunately, that work has not been finished in the time scale that we hoped would apply, but we can look forward to that happening soon. We have also had a major resilience study on the greater south-west and access issues.

I turn to the big money issues, including the establishment of the Somerset rivers authority. Crucial to the Committee’s report is how we get local expertise, together with external professional expertise, to work on the entire water system. At one point I despaired that we would never reach the conclusion that we should create a Somerset rivers authority, simply because the Department for Communities and Local Government—there is no Minister from that Department here today, so I can say what I think—said that it could not be done, as the creation of such an authority would set a precedent and the funding mechanism was too difficult. I found that frustrating, so I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs managed to find the immediate funding required, but that prompts the question of where such funding will come from in the future. We can get it going, at least, but it is essential that a sustainable funding system is put in place.

There is the question of how we use the Sowy and Kings Sedgemoor drain complex as a major extension to the drainage system. Again, that involves big engineering issues, but feasibility studies have been done, and I hope that we will make progress on that in the near future.

The biggest project of all is the Parrett sluice—or barrage, depending on what people choose to call it—which will keep the sea out at high tide and ensure continuous flow in the right direction rather than the wrong one. That will help us to keep the water levels lower. So, what is not done? Apart from—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I do. We need a much more aggressive statement of concern from the Environment Agency and, where appropriate, the water companies, that says that there is an issue that the planning authority must address, and the planning authorities would need to respond to that.

The problem is really not that difficult to understand. When the floods were at their worst, I went down a flooded road, Aller Drove, and the one thing that really struck me was that a lot of the houses there were bungalows that had been built in the past 30 or 40 years on what is more than a floodplain—it is an inland sea, on reclaimed land that is below the level of the river that runs alongside them. The same thing can be seen in Moorland village in the neighbouring constituency of Bridgwater and West Somerset. That is nonsense. Even our iron-age predecessors knew how to do that properly. There are archaeological remains in Somerset, in the village of Meare. It is very famous—the Glastonbury lake village. The lake village was completely built on stilts, because people there knew what would happen every winter, and knew that building on the ground was rather futile.

[Rebecca Harris]

I am enjoying and agree with the interesting points that the hon. Gentleman makes. He is absolutely spot on. He spoke about the need for the organisations and agencies to take more account of what people who know the land have to say. Does he agree that sometimes the Environment Agency or the water companies do not object to a local plan for housing on what all the local people know is a floodplain? It is often completely baffling to local people that their better knowledge of such issues does not seem to be taken into account.

[Mr Heath]

I am still a great believer in folk memory. People who have been around for a few years can point to where the water level reached in their grandad’s day, because we remember that sort of thing. We can say, “You build there, and it may not be this year or next year, but some time, you will be underwater. You either need to find a different site, need to construct your building in a different way, or need a mitigating factor that provides the protection that is needed. It is not for the Government eventually to come and bail you out when you have built a stupid building in a stupid place and it is underwater, so get it right in the first place.” The other side of the coin applies in terms of lack of water, and I hope that the Minister may accept the representations made by the water companies for more of a statutory interest in planning when they feel that there is a danger to their water supplies from various forms of construction or utilisation of land resources.

If we get these things right, we will be moving in the right direction. I turn to my biggest concern. So far this year, I have not had to put on more than my wellies—on my feet at least—in order to visit constituents. Wellies have been sufficient, but last year, they were not; I needed a boat. That may all change this weekend—who knows? The Somerset levels will always flood, and anyone who thinks that what has been done will prevent them from flooding does not, I am afraid, recognise the nature of the landscape and the environment. However, as I have said so many times, there is a world of difference between 3 feet deep for three weeks and 10 feet deep for 10 weeks, and that is what we are asking the Government to deal with.

The Government have done a very good job in recognising the concerns that I and my neighbours in Somerset have been raising over the last year. Having spoken on this subject 18 times, I think, in the last year, I would love to think that this may be the last time I will have to. However, the Minister can be absolutely assured that if the race against time to get the remaining things in place is lost, and if we have major flooding again in Somerset and people are forced out of their homes and trapped on islands created between the villages for the third year running, I will be making a lot of noise about it, as will my constituents, and we will want to know why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I would like to reiterate what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to add my congratulations to the Select Committee on this report. My constituency did not suffer in the particular winter that it refers to. We survived the tidal surge because we have the best tidal defences in the country. However, we have had serious problems with surface water flooding. There was a small, very localised amount of flooding last winter, but it was a particular issue in August 2013 and again in July 2014. We believe that well over 600 properties were affected. It is impossible to get the correct figure as a result of the enormous reluctance of people to admit that they were flooded, because of the fear of the impact that that would have on both their insurance and the value of their homes, but we have had two very significant flooding events. Much in this report is of considerable relevance to the experience that we have had in my constituency. After those dramatic events, it became clear to all my residents that not enough maintenance had taken place in previous years and, in their view, the various organisations responsible were not working together in the way in which they should.

I place on the record again my great gratitude to the Department, both for its own review of my flooding event and for allowing the chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, to do an independent review of what had happened. That was critical to restoring the confidence of my residents and, I think, had quite an impact in terms of ensuring that the various agencies stepped up to the plate on this occasion. I have to say that they have done that. There is still work to do, but a huge amount of work has been going on regarding the maintenance of watercourses around my borough. That has brought to light a lot of problems and inadequacies underground. There is the problem of appalling connections; there are people whose drains are not connected to anything at all.

The issue raised in the report about awareness of responsibility and confusion over maintenance responsibility was writ large in Castle Point. Shockingly, we discovered that quite a lot of the organisations—the county council, the Environment Agency and the water company—were not aware who owned which part of the stock. If someone is not sure whether they own a particular bit of stock, it is probably quite unlikely that they have been maintaining it properly. Some of my residents’ suspicions have certainly been found to be right and we are getting, I am pleased to say, to the bottom of it.

It was likewise with private landowners who have a riparian responsibility. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) mentioned, it was quite a shock to some of them to discover that they had responsibilities; they did not realise that. I am very grateful to my local county council, which has put in some gratings and grilles to try to protect parts of the watercourses to ensure that debris is not flushing through to people’s private properties. It is sometimes very difficult for them to deal with the problem.

We definitely need greater understanding not just among organisations and agencies but among the public of the importance of watercourses and whose responsibility it is to keep them clear. Frankly, I suspect that gangs come from London and fly-tip in Castle Point, and they have absolutely no regard for the fact that dumping an old sofa in what looks like a dodgy old ditch is quite likely to cause someone to flood down the line in a couple of days. We have lost touch with our understanding of the land and the importance of watercourses, and we need to bring that back. I know that the Environment Agency has great difficulty in trying to deal with the culprits who do fly-tipping, but they need to be educated about the damage that they could be causing to people.

There is now much more partnership working in my borough, I am delighted to say. The organisations are talking to one another. They are doing their gully cleaning and what have you in consultation with one another, and a lot of progress is being made.

We now have the Canvey urban drainage survey, which is a comprehensive survey of all the problems—largely underground—on Canvey Island. An unusual feature of Canvey Island is that it is below sea level, in effect, at high tide, surrounded by a fantastic flood defence wall. There are 45,000 people living there, which causes particular issues for water management. The physics make it quite important that we get things right, so the programme is an important one. I am in the strange position of being quite enthusiastic when I see it raining, because although I worry about my residents flooding, I know that the more rain we have, the sooner we will get the answers to our queries from the testing and telemetry that is going on underground to work out what is happening with our watercourses. I suspect that we will be able to come cap in hand to the Department with a bid for funding when we have the results of that survey later this year.

I am enormously grateful for the Chancellor’s announcement in the autumn statement of more than £20 million for flood defences in Castle Point. I find myself in agreement with the Committee when they talk about loosening the rules governing what is maintenance and what is capital spend. That money is notionally capital spend, although there are some capital projects that one can undertake that lead to better maintenance, such as automatic dredge clearing and telemetry. The Environment Agency could be quite clever about that. It is sometimes hard to say what is capital and what is maintenance, but we need ongoing maintenance.

[Mr Heath]

I make the observation from my years of leading a county council that sometimes a certain fuzziness in that definition is helpful. Being able to wrap up some revenue expenditure as capital or capital expenditure as revenue, depending on the rules applied by the Treasury that year, is extraordinarily helpful in making sure that whatever needs to be done is done.

[Rebecca Harris]

From the point of view of my residents, whatever needs doing should be done, and as much fuzziness as possible would be appreciated. I have seen evidence of some fuzziness, which I am grateful for, from the various agencies already. We are, none the less, grateful for the money.

A DEFRA report mentioned the need for tree planting to mitigate the situation. That is not, strictly speaking, relevant in my area but, in some cases, the removal of large numbers of trees to build housing developments has clearly altered the water table. In my constituency, a housing development in Kiln Road, Thundersley seems to have altered the water table greatly. That was not anticipated during the planning process and therefore not taken into account. That reinforces the need for a firm statement from Government, the Environment Agency and other agencies to the effect that before housing is put in, the flooding capacity must be looked at carefully. Such consideration must cover both the urban drainage capacity and the network that it will be looped into—which may be totally inadequate, however good the standards are on a new estate—and whether the development will change the water table. In too many of the numerous housing developments in Castle Point, such things have not been taken into account, much to the cost of my residents.

I hope that the Minister will make a statement on the progress with Flood Re, because it is critical. Residents have told me, as we have already heard, that even though a considerable amount of flood alleviation work has been done in their area, and even though they have been grateful recipients of the protect and renew grant—because they flooded last summer as well—and have made considerable improvements to the flood-worthiness of their property, they are still being told that they have to pay enormous premiums and increased insurance costs. One constituent told me that her insurer had withdrawn from the ABI over Flood Re and would not be part of the scheme. That is an enormous concern to me, and it will be a major problem in an area such as Castle Point. I would be grateful if the Minister could give us an update on the progress of negotiations over Flood Re, and tell us whether he is aware of the issue that I have raised.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

I conclude by saying that I am very encouraged, oddly, by how much progress has been made by the Department and the Environment Agency in their understanding of the importance of flood risk as a result of the devastating and horrendous events that have occurred, which have really upped everyone’s game and focused attention on the issue. We have been talking about climate change for years, but we are increasingly addressing the other side of the question, namely that if we are going to get climate change, we need to adapt so that it does not damage our residents’ lives and security. I am delighted that we are looking at that as a major issue for the country. I warn that I will keep pressing my local authority, my local council and my water company, as marvellous a job as they are doing, to keep doing more and working harder, because the job is not done yet.

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.