Officers attack new regional flood committee powers

17 June 2009

Senior council officials have attacked the Government’s proposals to tackle ‘blurred responsibility’ for managing river flooding and coastal erosion by making local authority-led regional flood committees advisory.

Peter Jones, deputy chief executive of Gloucestershire County Council, told MPs on the select committee undertaking pre-legislative scrutiny of the Draft Flood and Water Management Bill, that the plans failed to improve accountability and reduce complexity.

‘The current set-up it not a recipe for clarity, with two regional committees, three regions of the Environment Agency (EA), four water boards, six districts and ourselves.

‘Where’s the point of contact where local people can influence decisions? I’m sure that the regional flood and coastal committees will fill that gap.’

But, he added: ‘What future role will they play? Are they going to be adding value or just adding another layer? It’s probably the latter.’

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs maintains that the Environment Agency is responsible for meeting targets, but all of its functions have to be exercised through the regional committees.

DEFRA acknowledged, however, that the regional committees – which have majority local government membership – ‘have ensured a local democratic input into the decision-making process’.

Cllr Andy Smith, representing Suffolk Coastal District Council, urged the MPs to recommend deletion of the relevant clauses in the Draft Bill.

Attacking the new committees, through which the EA would exercise its new executive responsibility, he called for ‘a model that better accords with the “localism” agenda’.

Jones suggested joint management boards, along the lines of the board established in the county, which currently relies on goodwill. ‘The attention the parties give to this will inevitably move away.’

The senior council officials also raised the alarm on the cost of their new leadership role for managing local flood risk. Mark Parker, Gloucestershire’s head of flood risk, said that to cover all the areas of flood risk, the authority would need to produce 34 surface water-management plans at a total cost of around £3M. This was why the authority had, to date, ‘focused on deliverability, rather than on collecting shed loads of data’.

However, a review by Hyder Consulting on lessons learned from the first generation SWMPs recommends that legislation must clearly state that SWMPs exist for all urban areas.

To date, DEFRA has only made a total of £34M available for implementing the recommendations of the Pitt review. Sir Michael Pitt warned last year that this amount ‘won’t be enough’ (Surveyor, 26 June 2008).

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