ADA (Association of Drainage Authorities) FRE0132
Written evidence submitted by ADA (Association of Drainage Authorities)
Ian Moodie MSci, Technical Manager, ADA; Eur Ing J Innes Thomson BSc CEng FICE, Chief Executive, ADA; Andrew McLachlan, Chief Executive, Yorkshire & Humber Drainage Boards; and Peter Bateson BA FCCA MBA, Chief Executive, Witham Fourth District Internal Drainage Board
Environmental Audit Committee
Flood resilience in England Inquiry 2024/25
About ADA
ADA is the membership organisation for drainage, water level and flood risk management authorities throughout the UK. Today ADA represents over 230 members nationally, including internal drainage boards, regional flood & coastal committees, local authorities and national agencies, as well our associate members who are contractors, consultants and suppliers to the industry.
Our purpose is to champion and campaign for the sustainable delivery of water level management, offering guidance, advice and support to our members across the UK, and informing the public about our members’ essential work.
Our Response
Whilst ADA’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s call for evidence is pertinent to all ten of the questions raised by the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, for brevity and to avoid undue repetition we have organised ADA’s response under the six headings below and reference the questions from the Committee’s Call for Evidence Terms of Reference that each heading seeks to answer:
1. Strengthening and coordinating flood resilience
2. Maintaining flood resilience assets and systems
3. Monitoring flood resilience
4. Resources funding and support for flood resilience
5. Flood resilience in the planning system
6. Nature based solutions
Summary
ADA’s primary concern remains with the maintenance of existing flood resilience assets and systems across England, including the condition of main river assets and flood embankments in lowland areas. ADA’s members remain concerned that the Environment Agency is significantly under resourced to adequately maintain these assets and keep them within a good condition.
Evidence
1. Strengthening and coordinating flood resilience
1.1. Moving towards resilience | As we face evermore intense and persistent weather events as a result of climate change, there has been a move within the flood risk management sector away from resistance measures to towards resilience.
1.2. ADA particularly supports the creation of more resilient systems, assets and landscapes with effective funding and support to those who contribute. However, we do not believe that a move towards resilience should come at the expense of reducing standards of defence or as an excuse to inadequately maintain systems and assets. Instead we should be looking at offering broader solutions that enable assets and landscapes to operate in a multifunctional manner to better manage water as both a resource and flood risk, and quickly recover from extreme events.
1.3. ADA welcomed the finding within the National Infrastructure Assessment 2018 that a nationwide objective for a minimum level of resilience wherever feasible should be set. It is noteworthy that the National Infrastructure Commission’s own social research showed that 59 per cent of people thought everyone should receive the same level of protection, even though in some areas it would cost more, with only 16 per cent against. ADA agrees that a national standard should not be statutory or imply a right to compensation if not achieved.
1.4. Integration with water resources | It is essential that flood resilience policy in England should be considered alongside water resource policy in the future. Water companies should be strongly encouraged to build a collaborative approach with other risk management authorities, both in terms of the management of flood risk and water resources. The work of Water Resource East is one such example. In lowland areas, internal drainage boards have been trialling a more extensive approach to retaining water safely in peatland areas through Defra’s LAPSIP scheme (Lowland Agricultural Peat Small Infrastructure Pilots) during 2024/25. We also strongly argue that the time has come for IDBs to be empowered through adjustment to legislation to act as water resource managers – see 1.15, 1.16 and 1.17 below.
1.5. Cooperation between Risk Management Authorities | England has a well-developed system of governance arrangements between a range of risk management authorities operating at a national (Environment Agency), regional (Regional Flood & Coastal Committees, Water Companies) and local level (Internal Drainage Boards, Lead Local Flood Authorities, District & Borough Councils). England’s governance systems were most recently strengthened following the floods of 2007 and the Pitt Review through the Flood & Water Management Act 2010. However, aspects of FCERM in England are overly centralised, require greater resources, especially at a local level, and need to strengthen cooperative working between Risk Management Authorities. There is opportunity, for example within the Environment Agency, to re-distribute resources from national centres to Area operational teams.
1.6. Public Sector Cooperation Agreements (PSCAs) | ADA has been working for many years with the Environment Agency, internal drainage boards and local authorities across England to encourage closer partnerships in flood and water level management. The aim is to achieve better and more efficient working practices that utilise local skills and expertise. In the main IDBs, EA and local authorities can often be found working well together in their local area.
1.7. ADA strongly supports the existing arrangement for Public Sector Cooperation Agreements (PSCAs) between Risk Management Authorities to allow two public sector bodies to set out how they will deliver public tasks of mutual benefit together. Each agreement places both parties on a sound legal basis to efficiently deliver river and coastal maintenance works and provide mutual assistance during flood events and subsequent flood recovery works. There is opportunity for significant increase in the use of PSCAs.
1.8. Water and sewerage companies often sit apart from the other risk management authorities, because they are commercially regulated companies with limited direct accountability other than to their arms length economic regulator (Ofwat). Water and sewerage companies currently lack a robust technical regulator, and lack serious requirements to follow local and national FCERM policy, or cooperate and share information fully with other RMAs.
1.9. Local authority resources | One area that Government particularly tried to strengthen in the Flood & Water Management Act 2010 was the role of local government in FCERM. County and unitary councils became Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFA) under the Act with responsibility for the overview of surface water flood risk within their respective areas. Unfortunately this expanded formal responsibility for FCERM and change in emphasis between the two tiers of local government coincided with austerity measures being imposed on local government and resulted in a reduction in delivery capacity of district councils to deliver flood risk and land drainage works.
1.10. A number of LLFAs also report a significant divide between their FCERM responsibilities and capacity, alongside the gradual decline of specific flood and drainage expertise and staffing levels. To try and counter this, there have been positive examples of other RMAs sharing their expertise and resources with LLFAs. For instance IDBs in Lincolnshire undertake consenting functions on behalf of Lincolnshire County Council, as do the Bedford Group of IDBs for local authorities that they work with.
1.11. A review of the functions, powers and resources of county and district councils to carry out flood risk management work and better integrate with the delivery by other local risk management authorities would be welcome. ADA agrees with the LGA that the development of a formal mechanism for sharing expertise and experience of flood risk appraisal approaches could help authorities with less experience of delivering FCERM projects and encourage greater collaboration. For further information see the recommendations of the Surface water and drainage: review of responsibilities (2020).
1.12. Facilitating greater local choices | Whilst it is agreed that national funding should be spent in accordance with national priorities, some funding within the FCERM budget is derived locally or regionally. Examples include, Precept funding paid annually by IDBs to the Environment Agency, and Local Levy paid annually to the EA by LLFAs. Both represent funding that should contribute towards local priorities based on local choices made through the existing RFCC system. ADA supports RFCCs and the EA taking a local choices approach that positively engages with those who contribute such funding allowing the EA, IDBs and local authorities to mutually agree local priorities for spending.
1.13. ADA is concerned that the Environment Agency is not routinely sharing schedules with IDBs about how precept money has been spent in past years, nor how it proposes to spend it in the coming year or years. This information would be a helpful aid to partnership working to have better transparency and joint decision-making on how that money was being spent to benefit local priorities. Unfortunately, at present that is unclear and there is a feeling that some of this locally derived funding may be transferred to other projects that do not benefit the local area.
1.14. IDBs provide an effective local accountability model | Ever since Roman times, efforts have been made to control the water, protect the land, and shape our water landscape in lowland areas. Early on, people realised that they would be better off working together than going it alone. They pooled their resources, reclaimed land, dug new rivers, and built new embankments. This required rational collective action and they formed drainage boards to negotiate the works and their maintenance. In doing so they laid an important foundation for the democratic governance of water, and the public water management authorities that continue to this day. The principle of collective responsibility for local water management endures at the heart of IDBs today. It remains more efficient to build and maintain our water environment together, and to delegate the design and execution of works to professional well governed local organisations.
1.15. Enhancing the role of IDBs | Today there is a need to further evolve the role of IDBs to ensure that they continue to enable local lowland communities to come together democratically to understand and direct the future management of water levels that they need to sustain the homes, businesses and environment of their local aquatic landscapes. To do this IDBs will need to step forward to meet the significant economic, spatial, and climatic challenges that their communities face today. Whether that is adapting to heavier rainfall events or prolonged period of drought, adopting more energy efficient means of pumping to reduce carbon emissions, making the case for the necessary capital investment, or adequately regulating the expansion of new development where it impacts on water management. If IDBs can harness their experience to embrace a broader role as water level managers within our lowlands for all of the beneficiaries of their work, then there is a wider argument for maintaining and transforming our lowland water management assets and systems, not only to reduce flooding and evacuate water, but also retain water safely to conserve the resources of our peat soil, wetlands, and water supplies.
1.16. ADA would support legislative change to further underpin IDBs’ governance role within lowland water level management, including a change of their collective name from internal drainage boards, to water management boards, or water level boards. We would also welcome support from government to encourage and enable IDBs to grow in scale by coming together where they have common cause with their neighbouring or nearby boards within our river basins, and also enable the creation of new or expanded internal drainage boards where locally supported. We think that this would also enable greater subsidiarity within the flood and water level management of lowland landscapes, a move in keeping with the direction of the government’s recently published English Devolution White Paper (2024).
1.17. To this end ADA has been working closely with Defra on The English Drainage Boards (Alternative Valuation Calculation) Regulations 2024. IDBs use a land valuation calculation to apportion their expenses between landowners and local authorities. This is based on historic ratings data which is missing or incomplete and is preventing new IDBs from being created and existing IDBs from expanding their boundaries. To address this, the government has made a technical change to the Land Drainage Act 1991, via the Environment Act 2021, setting out a new valuation calculation which enables the use of more up-to-date data from the Valuation Office Agency. This approach will apply to drainage rates and special levies, to ensure consistency in the apportionment of expenses. ADA strongly supports the enabling of these regulations at the earliest opportunity.
1.18. Regional Flood & Coastal Committees (RFCCs) also provide an effective means for local representation in funding decisions around flood risk management. Whilst IDBs annually contribute to RFCCs through precept funding, there is currently no formal mechanism for them to be represented on these committees. As such consideration should be given to the criteria for EA appointed members on the committee where there are a larger number of IDBs within an RFCC area, e.g. the RFCCs for Wessex, Anglian (Northern, Great Ouse, and Eastern), Trent, South East, and Yorkshire.
1.19. ADA would support further empowering RFCCs to make greater local choices based on local priorities. It is important that the history of flooding, its frequency, duration and consequence are suitably weighed within the consideration of risk. We would support additional advice and support for RFCCs that could enable them to prioritise schemes that:
2. Maintaining flood resilience assets and systems
2.1. England has some extremely well engineered flood risk management assets, this is our strength, however the principal weakness is the maintenance of these assets. There is a huge backlog in maintaining existing flood adaptation/resilience assets in England, which goes back to policy changes implemented in the mid-1990s. The problem is now so significant that hundreds of millions of pounds will need to be spent on capital interventions to bring many of these assets up to a serviceable condition. This is a real case of a missed ‘stitch in time’ unravelling over the past 25 years.
2.2. Maintaining the system | Much of England’s national approach to managing flood risk has been focused around defending people and property and away from looking at other wider impacts to the landscape, infrastructure and the rural environment. This approach has downplayed the valuable role of maintaining assets and systems, and looking at the whole hydraulic system of our catchments, which if in better condition may, in some cases have better accommodated recent rainfall events, or expedited swifter recovery from flooding in others.
2.3. Consequently, the Environment Agency has increasingly focused on maintenance spending on flood risk assets within high flood risk and high consequence river systems within or close to areas of population. According to their own data, the EA currently manages ~42,000km of main river, of which ~13,000km are deemed by the EA to be of low flood risk consequence. England has a total watercourse length of ~302,400km. Of the ~42,000km of main river, ~9,300km relates to watercourses which are less than 2m wide and ~1,600km of low flood risk consequence systems managed by the EA sit within Internal Drainage Districts.
2.4. The current approach and separation between long term capital investment in FCERM schemes versus the uncertainty around revenue funding for FCERM activities by the Environment Agency presents a real risk that new assets are being built at the expense of allowing existing assets to deteriorate with increasing risk of failure. ADA members regularly highlight the poor condition of lowland main rivers, especially in more rural areas, in terms of siltation, trees and other vegetation substantially reducing their capacity and creating pinch points and blockages that may back up a system and exacerbate flooding elsewhere. They also highlight unrepaired damage to main river and coastal embankments, especially where the EA classify the risk as low in terms of numbers of houses protected.
2.5. Taking a catchment-based approach, all water managers accept that as a society we cannot simply stop maintaining sections of watercourse whilst continuing to maintain other sections of the same watercourse. Such a piecemeal approach would not provide the best outcomes either in terms of flood risk management to society, or for water quality and biodiversity, and we have started to see catchment-wide failures of some defences, such as embankments within the lowland River Witham catchment in Lincolnshire.
2.6. Rather than just not maintaining certain assets and systems, ADA supports efforts for closer working between the Environment Agency and other risk management authorities towards transferring low and medium consequence systems and assets to others to operate, manage and maintain, especially where those risk management authorities own systems, which are dependent on the condition of a main river or flood defence assets.
2.7. Failure of channel embankments | ADA is concerned about the apparent increase in sudden failure of embankments along arterial Main Rivers in lowland areas during 2019, and 2023/24. For example the embankment failure on the Wainfleet Flood Relief Channel, Lincolnshire in June 2019 and on the Barlings Eau and many other lowland tributaries of the River Witham, Lincolnshire in both 2019 and 2023/24.
2.8. These Main River arteries flow across lowland areas, such as the Fens, carrying water from higher land in an embanked channel above the height of the surrounding land and communities. Failures in such systems, even where areas are sparsely populated, can represent a significant risk to life, and result in prolonged flooding, with substantial repair and recovery costs. These costs affect the communities impacted, the Environment Agency who manages these assets, and also local RMAs such as IDBs whose pumping and water control assets defend the low-lying community may be put out of operation as a result. ADA is concerned that there has been a lack of adequate focus on maintaining these critical embankments in a good condition, both in terms of channel capacity and embankment stability.
2.9. Whilst the Wainfleet flood event in Lincolnshire of June 2019 is an example of such an embankment’s failure, the resulting Action Plan developed in response by local RMAs and the community hopefully points to an effective way of addressing such concerns within a local partnership. ADA would welcome a similar partnership approach to be proactively applied by Defra and the Environment Agency to other lowland areas and rivers where there are local concerns about the condition of assets and rivers, before a flood event actually occurs. Linear assets such as embanked lowland watercourses need to be allocated sufficient funding for maintenance, including multi-year cyclical works, such as the management of vegetation and removal of silt in lowland channels where capacity and conveyance are critical to their function.
2.10. Rebalancing spending | Within the flood defence grant in aid provided to the Environment Agency by the government there is a need for a rebalancing of spending between capital and revenue budgets to recognise the increasingly important need for us to properly manage and maintain our flood risk assets and systems.
2.11. The Environment Agency has, over a number of years, been slowly starved of funding for operational maintenance and that must be reversed. Internal drainage boards in turn have found it increasingly difficult to do their jobs properly, because they cannot discharge the necessary volumes of water into main rivers or their districts have become increasingly inundated with flood water, both made worse by inadequately maintained main rivers. In making that rebalance, we would without doubt also see water quality and environmental improvements with more operational staff monitoring and managing our water courses on the ground.
2.12. Transferring assets and systems | ADA sees substantial opportunity in the local operation and delivery of FCERM, especially within systems with lower consequences to people from flooding. Local delivery offers the potential for better value for money, greater local accountability and delivery, and lower costs proportionate to the risk associated with these lower consequence systems and assets. At the same time, this means local Environment Agency staff can focus their own efforts on the remaining high consequence systems and assets in their area, and having better capacity to do that critical work with the existing resources that they have.
2.13. ADA considers that, using a simplified “Mechanics of Government” approach, the proper transfer of assets between public bodies represents a sound investment for the future, providing long-term savings. So where assets or watercourses have been under-maintained over a period of years, it is appropriate that investment is made to either put such assets back into a good condition or defray the cost of the receiving authority to do so. ADA asserts that this approach ultimately represents better value for money to the taxpayer, as the alternative would result in further deterioration and greater costs and potential liability for the EA in the future.
2.14. Transfer powers | ADA is seeking new legislative powers for assets, land and property associated with a flood and coastal risk management function to be transferred between risk management authorities to facilitate changes in the management of systems over time. This would ensure that the best authority to deliver and fund necessary work is in charge of these assets.
2.15. Currently, the existing legislative framework requires Risk Management Authorities to sell such property at commercial value, despite an asset or land having a specific purpose or function to manage flood risk. This currently acts as a barrier to Risk Management Authorities wishing to ensure that the most appropriate and cost-effective Authority manages and maintains these assets. This is currently creating additional costs for the taxpayer. There is precedence in other sectors for the simple transfer of assets between public bodies, for example between local and national highway authorities ( see 2.17 below ).
2.16. The problem was demonstrated during the River Maintenance Transfer Pilot project to de-main the Snow Sewer Drain and transfer the EA Pumping Station located in Owston Ferry, Lincolnshire to the Isle of Axholme and North Nottinghamshire Water Level Management Board, which was completed in 2019. The embankments of the Snow Sewer Drain were owned by the Environment Agency and were a flood barrier that compartmentalising the lowland landscape into flood cells, the embankments were also managed as a local nature reserve. Yet the land was initially valued as though it was productive arable land and the pumping station building as though it could be repurposed into other uses. The IDB was initially expected to pay the EA for the value of a potential, which could never realistically be realised.
2.17. To resolve this problem, ADA proposes that the Flood & Water Management Act 2010 should be amended to grant a new power on Risk Management Authority to transfer land and property associated with flood and coastal risk management to another Risk Management Authority without cost. This is analogous with the powers bestowed within Part XII of the Highways Act 1980 to transfer land and property associated with highways between highways authorities owing to a change in highway status.
2.18. ADA recognises that care will need to be taken to ensure that incidental economic activities, such as the leasing of grazing rights on flood embankments, can continue so as to help defray the costs of managing and maintaining such assets. ADA would also assert that if an RMA were in the future to sell land or property associated with flood and coastal risk management commercially any profit derived should be reinvested in flood risk management or returned to the exchequer.
3. Monitoring flood resilience
3.1. ADA is concerned that the focus by government on the outcome measure to deliver homes better protected fails to adequately value the benefits to non-residential property, whether that is businesses, public infrastructure, hospitals, or agricultural land. It also does not adequately take account of properties that have become less well protected over the period due to factors such as housing development, climate change, and the condition of flood defence assets. This provides an inbuilt disincentive to invest in the management, maintenance and refurbishment of existing assets and systems over new projects. Therefore, rebalancing outcome measures towards the actual economic benefit provided to the receptors of flooding will be critical to finding suitable measures to represent the value of maintaining existing assets and managing flood risk systems throughout whole catchments.
3.2. Current measures also under-represent the contribution of risk management authorities who have delivered works or programmes of work using local sources reduce flood risk without drawing on FDGiA. For instance there is very limited appraisal of the national value provided by the water level management works undertaken by IDBs that are largely funded locally through drainage rates and special levies.
3.3. The present system can be difficult for such communities to secure grant in aid. We believe that whilst the appraisal method set out in the Multi-Coloured Manual is reasonable, the weighting factors introduced through policy outcomes (Outcome Measures) do not always drive the best behaviours in scheme design and can result in inequitable investment in FDGiA for small, economically vulnerable, and rural communities, especially within extensive lowland areas, as it remains too narrowly focused on the number of homes better defended.
3.4. Whilst balancing the continued need to invest in reducing residential property flooding, ADA would much prefer to see a multi-benefit model based on the hydraulic catchment, that give a greater weighting to the direct, indirect and consequential impacts on local economies and infrastructure.
3.5. Addressing multiple forms of risk | Current methodologies within appraisal guidance struggle to grasp the impact on an area or community of the cumulative impact of flood risk from different sources, particularly in areas where there is overlapping fluvial, surface water, and coastal flood risk, such as extensive lowlands like the Fens or Humberhead Levels. The system has become reliant on benefit apportionment where the tangible benefits from reducing flooding within a given area are apportioned to projects tackling a specific form of flooding, whilst other significant types of flood risk remain without recourse to FDGiA support. Consequently this can often promote the delivery of nationally backed schemes above locally perceived priorities in some instances. This can create a significant barrier to engaging with local communities and promoting better understanding of the risks posed where vulnerable communities are subject to risk from multiple sources of flood risk. It also may use up the flood risk benefits in an area on a scheme that may have found it easier to attract partnership funding from commercial sources than the remaining more local schemes. In turn this perpetuates an unhelpful competition between local and national RMAs where they are delivering different types of scheme. For example, fluvial, surface water or ground water schemes, where all three may be needed in combination to manage accumulated risk to communities, and where the impacts of both are indistinguishable in all practical respects on the ground. The same circumstances can also arise where large scale coastal schemes overlap with areas of benefit for smaller fluvial or surface water schemes, including the capital refurbishment/replacement of existing critical assets that have come to the end of their operational lifespan.
3.6. ADA would support measures that strives to remove the need for benefit apportionment between schemes within a given place. Particularly, where schemes seek to address different or multiple forms of flood risk within a catchment/place. This could be delivered through placing a greater decision-making role for RFCCs with regards to FDGiA investment. ADA is also supportive of catchment based programmes of investment, where suites of projects supported by local risk management authority partners are brought together, to maximise these benefits, increasing local support and funding opportunities. Examples include the Steeping River Action Plan (https://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/Flood2019), Isle of Axholme Strategy, and formative Future Fens – Flood Risk Management Programme (www.ada.org.uk/future-fens).
3.7. Appraising benefits to linear infrastructure | The current methodology does not properly weigh the value of reducing flood risk to linear infrastructure such as roads, rail, gas and electricity. Yet it is often the cost and impact from failures to these linear systems that is highlighted during flood events in terms of human and economic costs, and have much wider impacts to communities far beyond the directly flooded area.
3.8. This could be delivered through placing a greater decision-making role for RFCCs with regards to FDGiA investment. Larger scale catchment FCERM programmes, such as ‘Future Fens’, the Isle of Axholme Strategy, and the Humber Estuary Flood Risk Management Strategy: Summary Strategy and Business Case (2014) appear better able to appraise the economic importance and value of linear infrastructure. Consideration should be given to the methodologies utilised within these programmes.
3.9. Aging infrastructure, decarbonisation, and climate resilience of infrastructure | ADA is concerned about the growing list of existing flood risk management assets coming to the end of their useful asset life that are in urgent need for hundreds of millions of pounds of capital investment. Their ongoing maintenance in their present condition is often unsustainable and limits the sector’s ability to deliver needed carbon reductions. Furthermore, waiting until emergency intervention is required can significantly increase the overall cost of managing flood risk.
3.10. ADA would strongly support funding criteria to help better manage deteriorating assets more effectively by planning for their sustainable replacement before they require emergency works. Where there is no realistic prospect of securing local contributions for schemes with a high benefit-cost ratio, this fund could be used to ensure important good value for money projects can still be delivered, subject to meeting eligibility criteria. ADA would also welcome it to support FDGiA to ‘invest to save’ by enabling assets to be brought into an operational condition that can then be managed and maintained at the expense of local risk management authorities or others within the local community. This could offer significant longer term savings for the Environment Agency and enable greater local involvement in FCERM decision making. Such funding could also support the decarbonisation of existing assets such as pumping stations and help contribute to the UK’s net zero targets. Much of this work could be funded through a capital refurbishment approach.
3.11. To achieve this it is also important that we measure improvements in energy efficiency and carbon reduction for existing infrastructure refurbished or replaced. This is especially pertinent for the 600+ pumping stations across lowland Eastern England for instance.
3.12. Bureaucracy | Currently one risk management authority (the Environment Agency) assesses and allocates this funding (Flood Defence Grant in Aid) through the Partnership Funding process, and as a result for locations facing multiple forms of flood risk benefit apportionment can be perceived to favour schemes of the national authority at the expense of local economic, social and environmental needs. Consideration should be given to creating a more streamlined and cost effective allocations process accessible to a greater number of local risk management authorities as well as wider contributors. Where other Authorities have the more significant proportion of the investment to make, they should lead on the process.
3.13. Within the current system there is little difference in the weight of paperwork and appraisal required for FDGiA funding for large capital schemes compared to much smaller local ones – this has the effect of discouraging use of FDGiA for schemes that are smaller than £1 million in value, and again those below £100,000. The level of governance is therefore not proportionate to the scale of work.
3.14. There is a perception amongst smaller and local risk management authorities that there are too many people and departments involved within the approvals process. This can lead to delays, moving requirements, inconsistency, and waste of both time and money. The rules in general are overly prescriptive resulting in difficulties in promoting innovative ideas and subject to short notice requests for further information. Determinations for funding currently take a lot longer than they did in the mid-2000s, and can be subject to delays, with the process sometimes challenging for smaller and local risk management authorities to follow.
3.15. Consequently, most schemes take a minimum of a year to gain approval even when the solution is clear to all and there is (as expected and as repeatedly happens) no variance between original scheme and approved scheme. This suggests a lot of time and effort is expended to produce various documentation that show every detail was scrutinised at length, but actually achieves limited value to the project other than suck in significant additional cost.
3.16. Where costs of a scheme are shared between partners the issue is often timing of approval to spend and commitment to money being made available. With partnership funding absolute alignment of approval and spend is often required and opportunities can be missed where this is not possible. The process of trying to align public funds with private investment has proven to be very difficult.
3.17. ADA would support a reappraisal of the current systems and approval stages used by the Environment Agency to prevent duplication. For instance there may be opportunity to significantly simplify and combine the Project Application and Funding Service (PAFS) and the Programme and Project Management Tool (PPMT) into a single system.
3.18. Within this, consideration should be given to the scale and overall cost of each scheme, and consequently the approval steps needed to ensure that a proportionate level of detail is required to vet those funding decisions. Currently it is largely one size fits all and adds significant delays and costs as a result to smaller schemes.
3.19. Valuation of agricultural land | Funding for schemes in rural areas is an on-going concern for ADA. The current methodology and guidance for valuing the benefit associated with a flood defence scheme undervalues the long term benefit to society provided by farmland in terms of the food production and environmental services it provides to the UK economy. The current methodology applies discounted market values, related to government subsidy at an average per hectare amount. This was as a consequence of single farm payments under the European Common Agricultural Policy being paid to land managers largely of the basis of land area. The changes to agricultural subsidy brought about by the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union are now transitioning these payments to land managers to be focused on the delivery of public benefit and ecosystem services.
3.20. ADA would strongly support the updating of the Flood & Coastal Defence Appraisal Guidance Economic Appraisal Supplementary Note to Operating Authorities: Valuation of Agricultural Land and Output for Appraisal Purposes in recognition of the transition of agricultural subsidy for land managers towards payments for public goods and ecosystem services rather than hectarage. ADA considers that the methodology should take account of the true value per hectare of agricultural land taking account of its regional productive capability; and the output per hectare to the food processing and manufacturing sectors as well as its amenity and conservation value to society. A revised assessment methodology for valuing productive agricultural land was recently trialled by partners involved in the Environment Agency’s Future Fens – Flood Risk Management, as part of the programme’s Baseline Report (2020) [publication due May 2021]. ADA would support this revised assessment methodology being utilised within an updated Supplementary Note.
3.21. Section 19 reports | These reports are triggered under the Flood & Water Act 2010 which infers a duty on Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) to investigate flood events that are considered locally significant and to publish a formal report into that event.
3.22. By their nature, S19 reports are politically sensitive, both locally within the communities affected and to the authorities concerned. Looking across the practices of various LLFAs, the minimum number and types of property affected in order to trigger a S19 report varies significantly. ADA considers that firmer national guidance around S19 reports would be beneficial and greater independence introduced to the investigatory system.
3.23. Investigations take too long to produce, and do not go far enough to create Action Plans that give local residents some assurance that accountable steps will be taken to reduce flood risk. Unfortunately, by the time evidence has been gathered, the report has been edited and re-drafted several times, and input received from the various actors/authorities involved, the outcome may avoid the more challenging truths about a flood event. There seems to be too much contemplation of capital scheme options rather than consideration of what could be done to reduce flood risk more immediately and in a sustained manner through adherence to basic maintenance regimes.
3.24. A revised system to log and map all flood events to land and property would perhaps be more beneficial, with more strategic investigations by LLFAs with the assistance of other RMAs being undertaken for larger-scale or repeated incidents. This would be assisted by a streamlined reporting system, perhaps a portal for RMAs to feed information about flood events into. Allowing live information to be captured during and immediately after a flood event, while that knowledge is still fresh and readily available.
4. Resources, funding and support for flood resilience
4.1. Invest to save | ADA has always advocated a strong need to invest in new flood defences, and innovative approaches to reducing flooding, as well as in England’s existing flood risk management infrastructure and maintenance of rivers and embankments. However, emphasis should not only be placed on new flood defences, but upgrading aging ones. ADA continues to make the challenge that nationally, that we need to ‘invest to save’ through a concerted asset renewal or improvement campaign, given the age of some of these assets and watercourses, and the cost of keeping them functioning in their current condition.
4.2. Cross-sectoral funding | Within FCERM funding in England, significant weight is assigned to the protection of people and property, which inadvertently gives advantage to defence-based approaches over adaptive and landscape scale initiatives. This raises an additional concern that floods and erosion risks are still being framed in FCERM in limited terms, treating different forms of flood risk in isolation, with benefits having to be shared between projects and partners, and not considered as part of a wider socio-economic challenge. Often the valuation of benefits to infrastructure, agriculture, business and the wider economy have not been properly considered within funding appraisal of projects as part of the value of better defending homes.
4.3. In the future, cross-sectoral funding should enable much more integrated, collaborative approaches to be delivered at a local scale. The current funding criteria do not recognise the attractive aspect of reducing flood risk that can increase confidence to invest in an area. This consequently can have much broader positive repercussions on employment, reducing deprivation, poverty, and improving mental health. Conversely, perceived flood risk and the cost of flood recovery can lead to business exiting an area, exacerbating the economic struggles of an area.
4.4. Asset Replacement | ADA has also formally challenged Defra about why a new £40 million Asset Replacement Fund has been ring fenced solely based on the Environment Agency’s needs. Defra appears not to have considered the requirements of other RMAs with similarly aging critical assets. Without focussing on the FCERM assets catchment as a whole, regardless of their ownership, we will not achieve the aspiration of our next National FCERM Strategy to better integrate the management of catchments as a whole. An interlinked and interdependent system is only as strong as its weakest link.
4.5. During future rounds of funding it will be important to expand and extend asset replacement funding to other RMAs, such as IDBs that need to refurbish and replace existing pumping stations in lowland England, which are coming towards the end of their operational life. By facilitating innovation through such a fund these stations could:
4.6. Recovery funding | Risk management authorities in England do not have an agreed consistent mechanism for recovering costs and damage to flood resilience assets and systems following major flood events.
4.7. Following major flooding in the winter of 2019/20, several IDBs in Eastern England saw damage to their assets and systems due to the consequences of failures of embanked main river systems [river bank breaches, overtopping and significant bank seepage], but a formal emergency situation was not declared. No funding support was provided nationally by government to IDBs and Bellwin grant was not triggered for local authorities as the threshold for the financial assistance was not passed for those local councils. The Environment Agency received a national grant of £120 million for their own costs from the Treasury.
4.8. The opposite has been true following the floods of the winter of 2023/24, where the EA estimates costs and damage to infrastructure in the region of £200 million but received no additional financial resources from government. IDBs received a package of support of £75 million from Defra, funding originally allocated to Defra’s farming budget but underspent. £25 million has been allocated to flood incident recovery and costs and £50 million to enhancing the resilience of assets and systems.
4.9. The above highlights the inconsistency of approach, and therefore uncertainty of how recovery of assets and systems following flood events will be afforded without impacting the management, maintenance, and future investment in flood defences and systems by those risk management authorities impacted.
5. Flood resilience in the planning system
5.1. Building in the floodplain | In its latest long-term investment scenario publication, the EA said that if current planning outcomes continued for the next 50 years, the number of properties in the flood plain would almost double. It should be the focus of planning policy to significantly reduce the number of properties built on floodplains and where this is not possible impose criteria that mitigate the impact of flooding on new properties.
5.2. The planning process | New development should be built to be resilient from the point of design, not after the first flood event at the cost of the individuals insurance companies. This should be at the cost of the developer, if not the insurers should refuse to provide insurance or make it appropriately expensive.
5.3. The Achilles heel in effectively managing surface water flooding often sits with inability of local planning authorities to be able to impose the necessary water management solutions on housing or business development. It is unfortunate that in many instances, outside of unitary authorities, planning matters typically sit with local authorities that are not Lead Local Flood Authorities. This can result in planning authorities lacking sufficient technical expertise on planning matters. Consequently planning authorities may lack the due regard that they give to flooding matters, given the myriad of wider aspects a planning authority must consider from a development.
5.4. While LLFAs are a statutory consultee to planning for major planning applications, we frequently see that minor development is permitted with almost no consideration to surface water flood risk. Currently, it is for the Local Planning Authority to ensure applications do not increase flood risk on site or elsewhere as per paragraph 163 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Due to the potential cumulative impacts of minor development, IDB officers endeavour to comment on minor developments that could impact the Internal Drainage Districts (IDDs) despite this not being a statutory requirement. The aim here is to promote compliance with paragraph 163 and therefore safeguard the communities within each IDD, as well as to reduce the potential for conflict between the planning process and each IDB’s regulatory controls.
5.5. Sustainable drainage systems |Successive Governments’ have shown a lack of willingness to implement legislation relating to sustainable drainage systems. A workable system needs to be implemented in order to ensure future development can keep pace with the challenges of the changing climate, and by ensuring that SuDS are properly maintained over the lifetime of a development. Also the automatic right of new houses to connect to drainage systems should only be permitted where there is proven capacity to accept new surface water runoff or make provision for its storage and controlled release. To this end ADA continues to support the implementation of Schedule 3 of the Flood & Water Management Act 2010 with adequate provision and guidance for LLFAs and other risk management authorities.
5.6. It is important that the sustainable drainage systems for a development should take account of advice from the relevant IDB where such a development is within an internal drainage district. IDBs will hold specific and specialised knowledge and experience related to lowland water level management within their districts and so their input would be highly beneficial. This is especially important within lowland pumped catchments such as the Fens.
5.7. ADA would welcome further investigation of the means by which IDBs can be routinely consulted by planning authorities about new development within their drainage districts. The mechanism to achieving this could include, but not be limited to, IDBs being named as statutory consultees. Many IDBs have the capacity and skills to be made statutory consultees, but some are smaller bodies. Could statutory consultee status be aligned with an IDB meeting sufficient capacity or skills?
5.8. Outline planning permission | There are concerns that IDBs/LLFA floods teams may not be further consulted or made aware of planning matters that receive Outline or Hybrid Planning Approval, even where they have highlighted concerns regarding flood risk management at that earlier stage in the planning process. This can result in flood risk impacts from new development not being sufficiently considered at later stages in the process, or planning decisions taken that act contrary to the Land Drainage Act 1991. A requirement for consents under the Land Drainage Act 1991 to be agreed with the relevant Risk Management Authority prior to Outline/Hybrid planning permission would avoid this.
5.9. Flood risk as a material planning consideration | Concerns were raised that flood risk is not sufficiently understood or recognised as a Material Planning Consideration by planning authorities. It is felt that stronger guidance and advice is needed for planning authorities in this area.
6. Nature based solutions
6.1. Catchment management | ADA supports a whole catchment management approach in order to effectively manage water both as a resource and as a flood risk. It is important to ensure that throughout a catchment a variety of measures are implemented effectively in the most appropriate parts of a catchment, including those measures termed natural flood management. In England we need to increase and empower local professionals within Risk Management Authorities and communities to manage and operate these catchments together.
6.2. Natural Flood Management | As we increasingly employ measures that utilise habitats as attenuation within the landscape it is important that these are implemented with care. Just as with harder defences it is important for NFM measures to remain effective throughout their lifespan. This means that they must be maintained and managed effectively.
6.3. Some techniques such as the use of woody material to construct check-dams can, if not properly engineered or maintained, become dislodged and add to flood risk downstream. Equally it is important to understand the effectiveness of the NFM techniques being applied, many measures can be effective during smaller scale flood events, but may be ineffective during more intense events or prolonged periods of wet weather, as seen during the winter of 2019/20.
6.4. Although there is an increased focus on these measures, there needs to be more evidence gathered for their implementation in the most appropriate parts of a catchment. Future policies must make the distinction between differing catchments to avoids a one-size solution that is inappropriate in some catchments.
6.5. An example of this would be leaky-dams that slow the rate that water flows through them. These are appropriate in fast reacting upland catchments that need to slow the flow, but would not be appropriate for lowland watercourses.
6.6. It is noteworthy that there are other more resilient approaches that work with nature that can be applied in lowland catchments where there is very little gradient. ADA would particularly highlight the positive measures set out within A Guide to Management Strategies and Mitigation Measures for Achieving Good Ecological Potential in Fenland Waterbodies (2017) published by the EA, ADA, Cambridgeshire ACRE and Fenland IDBs. The uptake of measures, such as bermed/two stage channels, that can create both greater channel capacity and more aquatic habitat within lowland artificial watercourses has often been limited in the past by the cost of purchasing or compensating farmers for the loss of high grade agricultural land. It would be good to explore what agri-environment incentives could be created to enable them to work more closely on such measures with IDBs.
6.7. ELMS | The Agricultural Act 2020 outlines several public goods through which financial assistance will be provided – this includes the management of land, water or livestock in a way that mitigates or adapts to climate change, or helps prevent, reduce or protect against environmental hazards, including flooding. This offers an opportunity to further enhance the role of farmers and the agricultural landscape to reduce the risk of flooding to infrastructure and communities within the Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMs). However, to date flood risk management has not been widely integrated in the discussions around ELMS, which may result in opportunities to further reduce flood risk within the landscape being missed.
6.8. Bufferstrips | Along lowland watercourses risk management authorities and riparian owners routinely undertake a range of bankside mowing and bushing work, desilting and aquatic vegetation management works to carefully manage water levels, retain water safely, and reduce the risk of flooding within lowland landscape.
6.9. The previous Good Agricultural & Environmental Conditions (GAEC) under cross compliance rules followed by farmers in receipt of single farm payments required basic bufferstrips to be applied to all watercourses, but also had a straightforward exemption process for where a statutory authority undertook works interfering with a bufferstrip. However, the provisions for IDBs undertaking the maintenance operations described above on bufferstrips under the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) are currently less clear and have not been effectively communicated to IDBs. Consequently, there appears to have been a marked reduction in land managers placing bufferstrips next to lowland watercourses.
6.10. IDBs strongly favour having bufferstrip options next to watercourses that they manage and maintain, in order to reduce sediment runoff, as long as they are adequately able to continue to carry out their essential maintenance activities within and around the watercourse when necessary. ADA has been exploring changes to the ELMS bufferstrip options to incorporate the channel/embankment maintenance needs of IDBs. Given that IDBs’ drainage districts cover one tenth of England’s land area, and these are criss-crossed by thousands of kilometres of drainage channels, there is much to be gained from having effective bufferstrip options within our lowland landscape.
6.11. Washlands | ADA would support the changes to agri-environment funding in England being used to explore offering the right long-term incentives/compensation to landowners to enable productive farmland to be utilised for flood storage. We think that such funding should be nationally available where the storage provision is agreed and coordinated with a risk management authority, and flood water is stored in a controlled manner that enables flood water to be swiftly evacuated from land after the flood peak has passed. One aspect of funding for such an approach is to recognise that any flood risk infrastructure requirements, such as control structures, embankments and spillways, should be managed by a local risk management authority.
6.12. The Room for the River programme in the Netherlands offers an inspirational example of reengineering for our lowland landscape to create greater flood storage and aquatic habitat, whilst at the same time retaining productive agriculture, communities and heritage. Room for the River has been achieved by national bodies working with local partners in the Netherlands, such as the 21 regional water boards.
6.13. Eurasian beaver | ADA is not supportive of the further release of Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) in England without changes to legislation and adequate procedures that would ensure that Risk Management Authorities can take proportionate steps to mitigate and manage the adverse impacts that can result from beavers’ dam building and burrowing activity on flood risk and water level management infrastructure (e.g. damage to channel and flood embankments, culvert blockages etc). The procedures and regulations will need to be robust and suitably foresighted to consider the impacts that this species could present as it spreads into lowland areas.
6.14. In East Kent where over one hundred beavers are thought to be present within the lowland catchments of the River Stour the local IDB is learning of the impacts caused to water management assets and embanked structures. The primary concern comes from the burrowing of beavers within embankments. There are concerns that as the population grows, such damage will further erode the limited asset maintenance resources of local risk management authorities, including the Environment Agency.
6.15. ADA recognises that there is a widespread societal desire to see the return of this species. Therefore, we want to ensure that England adequately learn lessons from the regulatory procedures that other European countries, such as the Netherlands, have put in place between their Water Boards and Environmental regulators to adapt to living alongside this species in lowland landscapes that require active water level management.
January 2025
19