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Floods (Carlisle and the North)

I am pleased to place copies of the reports by the Environment Agency and that collated by the Government Office for the north-west in the Library of the House. I welcome these reports on how the flooding in Carlisle and across the north of the country in January was handled. I hope that they will provide people in Carlisle in particular with a picture of how local services coped and the lessons they have taken away. A major storm produced exceptional amounts of rain over a 36 hour period, leading to overtopping of defences and flooding of some 3,000 properties. Two lives were lost and many residents were evacuated. I had the opportunity to see for myself the floods' devastating effects. These reports show how flooding came from both the rivers and from surface water routes. This combination can result from very heavy, localised rain falling over short periods of time—it was also a feature of recent flooding in North Yorkshire. In our new strategy for flood risk management, ““Making Space for Water””, we have announced our intention to undertake some integrated urban drainage pilots to investigate how these complex issues can be better managed in the future. The conditions as experienced in January also make the provision of timely warnings extremely difficult, for example in some parts of Carlisle where flooding from surface water sources preceded overtopping of the river defences. Nevertheless, the Environment Agency is reviewing with other bodies involved what improvements can be made to warning systems. For our part we are taking forward the recommendations in these reports on strengthening resilience to flooding events through improved cross government and agency co-ordination under a new flood emergencies capability programme, which will look at the key issues that local responders have identified as needing further attention. The reports identify a number of areas where the local emergency services and other responders can themselves build on the experiences of January this year and it is important that we should take on these lessons more widely, so building our overall capability for managing flood emergencies in the future. It is also important that all services, utilities, business and householders who are at risk should do what they can to strengthen their resilience to flooding, especially as we are likely to see a greater frequency of such events in future years given the expected impact of climate change. In addition, the Environment Agency has already announced plans to promote a flood defence scheme for Carlisle. The agency has revised the plans it had in mind before the flooding occurred in the light of the events of January, and start of work on the new defences is scheduled for spring 2006.