MPs have called for a statutory duty to be placed on councils to deal with their surface water, but have warned the necessary staff and skills may not be in place to do so. An Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report into last summer’s flooding echoed calls from Sir Michael Pitt’s flooding review, saying it should be the duty of local authorities ‘to ensure its area is, and continues to be, effectively drained of precipitation to an agreed national standard’. But the report goes on to say that if the national shortage in flood risk engineers is not addressed, ‘much of the Pitt review may be impossible to implement.’ The committee called on the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Environment Agency to come up with a strategy to combat this. The report also slammed ministers who suggested that all would be well because of an increase in flood protection spending to £800M by 2010/11. This figure, the report says, will not be adequate, and also, does not kick in for another two years. It said the Government should accept the Pitt review’s interim conclusion that authorities compile a register of all main flood risk-management and drainage assets, ‘including an assessment of their condition and details of the responsible owners.’ This information should then be available to the public as a Web-based resource, and local authorities should provide information through a ‘one-stop shop’ telephone number. The committee suggests that upper-tier local authorities should take the lead, but parish and town councils should also be involved. It concluded that the EA must retain strategic national control of surface water flooding, but the Government had to be careful in piling additional responsibilities on the already-stretched agency. • Flooding. : www.parliament.uk/ parliamentary_committees/ environment__food_and_rural_affairs.cfm.