Up to eight lead local flood authorities in England have still not adopted final statutory flood risk management strategies, Transport Network can reveal.
Under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) are required to develop, maintain and monitor strategies for managing local flood risk.
A year ago, a report from the Environment Agency (EA) disclosed that the strategies of 12 of the 152 in LLFAs in England were at the ‘in progress’ stage, meaning that they had neither published a final strategy or drawn up a draft.
Research by Transport Network has established that four of these councils have since adopted strategies. These are the London Boroughs of Haringey and Islington, Gateshead and the Isles of Scilly.
Councils that have recently consulted on drafts include Derby City Council, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Herefordshire Council, Redcar and Cleveland, Bexley and South Tyneside.
In addition, Barking and Dagenham launched a consultation on 29 March, just before the reporting date of 31 March. Barnet Council will launch a public consultation on a draft shortly.
Defra states there are three positions a flood authority can be in. These are:
- having completed and published its strategy
- having completed or undergoing a public consultation on its draft strategy
- in progress
Environment department Defra told Transport Network that it has been monitoring progress of the 12 authorities that reported their strategy was still ‘in progress’ as of March last year.
A spokesperson said: ‘We believe that there are now fewer than six lead local flood authorities whose strategies are still “in progress”.’
However, the spokesperson declined to name the councils in each category, stating that data for the EA’s next national report on flood and coastal erosion risk management, which will be as of 31 March 2017, will be collected over the next few weeks.
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