Written evidence submitted by the Committee on Climate Change (FWA0040)

 

 

  1. The Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) of the Committee on Climate Change was established under the 2008 Climate Change Act to advise the Government on the risks and opportunities from climate change and to report to Parliament every two years on the progress being made to prepare the UK for the changing climate.
  2. The Flood and Water Management Act 2010 is a critical piece of legislation that was introduced to implement a number of the key recommendations from the independent Pitt Report on the 2007 floods (Pitt, 2008). In particular, the Act established county and unitary authorities as Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) to take the local leadership role in managing flood risk from surface and ground water, and local watercourses. The Act also included provisions to make sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) the default option for managing surface water in all new development. However, the relevant clauses in Schedule 3 of the Act to promote SuDS were not in the end commenced.
  3. The ASC’s first statutory report to Parliament in June 2015 concluded that insufficient action is being taken in England to manage flood risk, particularly in the context of climate change. Areas of increasing vulnerability included surface water flooding and residual flood risks in general. The Committee’s Evidence Report of July 2016, published to inform the latest UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, identified flooding and coastal change (including from surface water and inadequate drainage) as one of six priority areas of risk in need of urgent further action (ASC, 2016).

These conclusions are discussed further in the sections that follow.

  1. Local sources of flooding are significant and are likely to increase despite current action

4.1  The Environment Agency reports that 2.5 million households in England are currently in areas at risk of flooding by surface water (Environment Agency, 2016). On average, surface water flooding accounts for more than £300 million in damages to property per year (Sayers et al., 2015).

4.2  Climate change is expected to increase the risk of surface water flooding. The average annual damage caused by surface water flooding is expected to increase by at least 40% by the 2050s, assuming current approaches to local flood management continue (Sayers et al., 2015).

4.3  New development is adding further pressure to local drainage infrastructure. The Pitt Report identified two fundamental barriers to the widespread uptake of SuDS in new development.  These were the automatic right developers have to connect developments to the existing drainage network, and difficulties agreeing who should be responsible for maintaining SuDS once designed and constructed. These barriers remain unaddressed (ASC, 2014).

4.4  Whilst DCLG is currently undertaking a review of SuDS implementation, developments of less than ten houses are exempt from the limited SuDS requirements within the planning system introduced in April 2015 (Defra, 2015a). Whilst the new policy created an “expectation” that SuDS are implemented in all developments of more than ten houses, less than half of the practitioners interviewed for a recent report by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) believe that such developments include SuDS (Grant et al., 2017). The true figure is unknown as the data are not collected, though the current DCLG review may help in this regard.

  1. Lead Local Flood Authorities have been slow to implement the Act, and to an extent statutory duties remain unfulfilled

5.1  Defra’s post-legislative scrutiny concedes that whilst progress is being made, the Act has yet to be fully implemented. For example, the requirement on all LLFAs to produce a local flood risk strategy has still to be met.  At 31 March 2016, more than five years after the publication of the Act, only 114 out of the 152 LLFAs in England had completed and published their strategy (Environment Agency, 2016). Only five LLFAs had published their strategies by 2013 (Environment Agency, 2013), and only 59 were published by March 2015 (Environment Agency, 2015).

5.2  Furthermore, the content of the local strategies is not in line with the Act’s requirements. 85 of the 90 strategies assessed independently for Defra did not include a cost-benefit assessment of the actions needed to meet the plans’ objectives. 35 out of 90 strategies did not specify how and when such actions would be implemented (Maiden et al., 2017).

5.3  Other key functions of LLFAs have also yet to be fulfilled. In 2015, almost half of LLFAs had not developed the required asset register, and half of the registers that had been developed did not include relevant assets owned by third parties (Maiden et al., 2017). Knowledge of third-party assets, which could include local SuDS features and water company drainage assets, is particularly important for managing surface water flooding.

5.4  Defra’s post-implementation scrutiny report on the Act states that “it was always anticipated that the full objectives of this Act would be achieved over a considerably longer timeframe than six years”. The Act did not specify timescales for compliance but, for example, the Government expected local strategies to be produced “within a reasonable period of time from the commencement of the legislation” (Defra, 2015b).

5.5  Defra’s scrutiny report also concludes that it is too early to assess the impact of not implementing Schedule 3 of the Act. However, as mentioned above, the failure to commence Schedule 3 means the main barriers preventing a wide uptake of SuDS in new development remain unaddressed (Grant et al., 2017).

  1. There is no evidence that implementation of the Act has led to a reduction in flood risk

6.1  The evaluation report commissioned by Defra points to progress being made by Lead Local Flood Authorities in understanding and managing local flood risk, including as a result of developing surface water management plans and local flood risk management strategies (Maiden et al., 2017).

6.2  The evaluation report also recognises the important roles played by the Environment Agency and the Regional Flood and Coastal Committees. The Environment Agency’s strategic overview role is important to ensure there are nationally-consistent approaches to project appraisal and the allocation of taxpayers’ funding to schemes, and to develop and support strong local partnerships. Regional Flood and Coastal Committees are also key to ensuring there is a degree of local democratic input to decisions on scheme priorities and funding within each area, and to coordinate interventions and investment within catchments and coastal zones.

6.3  However, neither the evaluation report nor Defra’s scrutiny report provide evidence that implementation of the Act has led to a material decrease in local flood risk. There is no monitoring and evaluation of this.

6.4  The ASC’s 2015 progress report to Parliament (ASC, 2015), recommended that the Government develop an action plan to tackle surface water flood risk by the summer of 2016. This recommendation was accepted in the Government’s response.  A three-page action plan was finally published as Annex D to Defra’s post-legislative scrutiny report in January 2017. The action plan includes a short list of high level actions, with no timescales for completion.

6.5  The action plan focuses on stronger partnership working at the local level, the Environment Agency providing more support to improve the quality of LLFA strategies, and measures to help projects identified within strategies to gain funding. However, there is no requirement for LLFAs to report on the impact of the strategies in terms of local flood risk reduction.

6.6  Without such information, it is not possible to assess whether the Act has been successful, and whether another widespread flood like in 2007 is more or less likely to happen as a result of the activity undertaken since.

  1. References

ASC (2014) Letter to Rt Hon. Elizabeth Truss MP, DEFRA Secretary of State in response to the Consultation on delivering Sustainable Drainage Systems. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/letter-consultation-on-delivering-sustainable-drainage-systems/

ASC (2015) Progress in preparing for climate change 2015 Report to Parliament Committee on Climate Change. Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 59(1) of the Climate Change Act 2008. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/reducing-emissions-and-preparing-for-climate-change-2015-progress-report-to-parliament/

ASC (2016) UK Climate Change Risk Assessment Evidence Report. www.theccc.org.uk/uk-climate-change-risk-assessment-2017/

Defra (2015a) Non-statutory technical standards for sustainable drainage systems. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sustainable-drainage-systems-non-statutory-technical-standards

Defra (2015b) Letter from Dan Rogerson to Council Leaders on Local Flood Risk Management Strategies of the 4th March 2015.

Environment Agency (2013) Managing flood and coastal erosion risks in England, 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flood-and-coastal-risk-management-national-report

Environment Agency (2015) Managing flood and coastal erosion risks in England, 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flood-and-coastal-risk-management-national-report

Environment Agency (2016) Managing flood and coastal erosion risks in England, 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flood-and-coastal-risk-management-national-report

Grant, L., Chisholm, A. and Benwell, R. (2017) A Place for SuDS? Assessing the effectiveness of delivering multifunctional sustainable drainage. CIWEM report http://www.ciwem.org/suds/

Maiden, T., Anderson, M. et al. (2017) Evaluation of the arrangements for managing local flood risk. DEFRA’s Joint Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme, project number FD2680. http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=19219

Pitt, M. (2008) The Pitt review: learning lessons from the 2007 floods, Cabinet Office. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100807034701/http:/archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/pittreview/thepittreview/final_report.html

Sayers, P. B., Horritt, M. S., Penning-Rowsell, E. and McKenzie, A. (2015) Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017: Projections of future flood risk in the UK. Sayers and Partners LLP report for the Committee on Climate Change. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/sayers-for-the-asc-projections-of-future-flood-risk-in-the-uk/

 

 

February 2017