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Flood and Water Management Bill

I come from, and represent, a very wet place. Flooding is something that we in the levels of Somerset have to deal with regularly, and certainly on an annual basis. Indeed, many of the village names in the area—Isle Abbots, Isle Brewers and Muchelney, which means "big island"—reflect the history of the place and the fact that those were island communities surrounded by wetland. We know what flooding is about. I am increasingly worried about the fact that these one-in-25-years, one-in-50-years and one-in-100-years events are now happening regularly. That leads me to suppose that the assessments based on historical data need to be revisited. I welcome the Bill not least because, as the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said, the definition of flood risk—and therefore that which informs strategy—will, I hope, allow us to provide a comprehensive response to flooding difficulties. I suggest that those difficulties fall into three principal areas—prevention, mitigation and resilience, and response—and I want to deal rapidly with all three. Many people will consider prevention to be a matter of flood defences, which can go so far but are not the answer to all our flooding problems, whether in terms of engineering or costs. They might play a part in the response in some areas, but we cannot approach the problem simply by building higher and higher walls and bigger and bigger flood defences. The maintenance of ditches—or rhynes, as we call them in Somerset—to allow service water to flow away and to increase the capacity of watercourses is also important, but again those who consider the maintenance of waterways and drainage to be the answer are deluding themselves. The requirement goes far beyond the capacity even if the maintenance is perfect, which it certainly is not. I have my criticisms of highways authorities not paying attention to, for instance, road drains and the effect of constant service dressing, which often reduces ditch and drainage system capacity, but nevertheless I think we need to look at the matter anew. We certainly need to consider the control of flow. We desperately need the co-ordination of agencies such as the Environment Agency and local authorities, but we also need to incorporate the highways authorities, developers and the Highways Agency, which is responsible for major trunk roads, such as the A303, which is a major flood concern in my constituency. In some places, its construction allows too much water to pass underneath, and in other cases, it holds it up and produces some of the problems, as was the case in the villages around Wincanton and Anchor Hill at Holton. Bridges have the same capacity issues, and we have talked already about the vulnerability of bridges. That should not come as a surprise. I remember that, when I was a lad, the bridge at Pensford, which is probably in the Minister's constituency, washed away. It was a major issue at the time. Bridges are a vulnerability; but often they are pinch-points for water too, because the arches under them do not provide sufficient capacity. We need therefore to look at the management of water flow and bridge capacity. I would also like a much greater emphasis placed on the whole river catchment area approach, which we started experimenting with on the River Parret, in Somerset, way back in the early 1990s when I was a county councillor. That is the only way of managing water flow effectively through a whole river catchment area. Planning in connection with mitigation and resilience has been mentioned already. I made the point that we do not plan properly, but I was not just talking about building houses in the wrong places. We have a wonderful supermarket on the flood plain in Frome that was put there by a Government inspector against the advice of local people and authorities. It has impervious surfaces, of course, and a flood alleviation scheme attached to it. We hope that it will be successful, but nevertheless it is a risk. I simply do not understand, however, why we do not build houses more resilient to flooding. It does not take a genius to realise that if the garage or wet rooms, such as the utility room or kitchen, are put downstairs and rooms that might be damaged by water are put upstairs, the house will be more resilient to flooding. Foundations, too could be lifted by just 2 or 3 feet. I know of a house in Queen Camel that is subjected to regular flooding, but which does not flood, despite the fact that the neighbouring houses do, because its foundations are 3 feet higher than those of the surrounding houses. It is a very simple recipe. We need to consider community defences more and to encourage communities to take their own action where they can. The community of Stoney Stratton, in my constituency, knows what the problem is, where the water flow is and how to deal with it; what it does not have is the advice to help it to do it and the necessary resources which, as a community, it is prepared to provide via the parish council. I hope that we can encourage more local activity of that kind to provide that resilience. We also need much more local and voluntary effort, which will require advice and co-ordination. There are some wonderful initiatives in my constituency—for instance, in West Camel, which is regularly flooded, but where people are now fitting water gates at the doors of their properties. They are fitting pumps that are responsive to flooding and provide that initial help at the point at which goods are salvageable. They are also using waterproof paint for surfaces up to the flood level in houses. That is the sort of initiative that ought to be taken in flood-vulnerable areas. There is good practice out there and good advice at the household and community levels. When people take such measures, that ought to be reflected in the insurance premium, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said. I want to deal now with the response. The emergency services must have the training to enable them to cope as best they can. We should remember that in rural areas it is often retained fire officers we are expecting to do such work. Warnings are important. More localised forecasting would be extremely helpful, as would having audible warning systems, not just the phone line, which has been successful and which I welcome. For a flood event in the middle of the night, it would be great if people knew that there would be a siren or even that a police car or a fire engine driving through the village with its siren going meant that they had to be on the alert for difficulties. Local readiness, encouraging volunteering, identifying vulnerable people in a parish council area and developing cascade systems are also important, as is developing community resources, even if that just means having a single dinghy available, so that people know where it is, who has to be collected and what the response has to be. Those are all things that need to be encouraged in the strategies. Lastly, I want to deal with those resources that one might term community resources, including local authority buildings such as schools. I have already mentioned the Countess Gytha school in Queen Camel, which has repeatedly flooded and which I visited again yesterday morning. We need to have a new school. The school must be re-sited. We have the site; what we do not have in the local authority is the cash to make that happen. If we are taking flooding seriously, local authorities must have the resources to take sensible actions and find better sites for key buildings such as schools, hospitals and elderly people's homes, rather than simply continually decanting children out and refurbishing buildings. However, that needs co-ordination between the Secretary of State's Department and other Departments, so that those resources are made available. I will be seeking a meeting with the Minister for Schools and Learners in the near future about that school, but I wish I knew that I had the support of DEFRA in saying that this issue—ensuring that community facilities that are regularly at risk of flooding will be supported by the Government's funding mechanisms to be moved to more appropriate places—is an urgent matter. The Bill is a start in the right direction. I can see it has enormous potential in developing the strategies, but there is a huge array of issues that it needs to encompass if it is to do so successfully.