The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has published its report on ‘Flooding: Cooperation across Government’, criticising government for its lack of a long-term strategy to deal with flooding while urging ministers to ensure better monitoring of planning conditions for schemes in flood risk areas.
The Committee writes:
‘Nationally significant infrastructure is not currently protected to a consistent standard. Infrastructure companies should be mandated to report their target resilience level, why this target is appropriate and what progress they are making to achieve it.
While there was national policy in place to plan for future flooding events this did not always translate through to the local level. Government should, in the short term, provide more support to local authorities to enable them to adopt a plan and, in the medium term, support and encourage local authorities to develop joint local plans that properly take account of flood risk management.
In 2013/14 almost 10,000 properties were built in high flood risk areas. We are pleased to hear that Environment Agency advice on whether, or how, to build in high flood-risk areas is almost always followed. But we are concerned that this is not systematically monitored, reported or followed up through the planning system. Similarly, the number of local flood plans under the National Planning Policy Framework and flood strategies is worryingly low. We are concerned that local councils are not receiving the support they need to develop them and ensure they are fit for purpose.
Despite sustainable urban drainage systems being widely acknowledged to be an efficient way of dealing with surface water, successive governments have been reluctant to mandate them as the default option in new developments. We are disappointed that the Government has kicked this into the long grass by commissioning another review. This is an issue that now requires action.
There is currently a lack of transparency demonstrated by the Government’s unwillingness to publish the results of past reviews and to track in an open way how it has implemented them. Greater transparency will also be necessary from Government and the Environment Agency over the allocation of flood defence spending to ensure there is no actual or perceived unfairness in allocating money. It is critical that the Government undertakes its current review in an open and transparent way to allow stakeholders, including Parliament, to monitor its progress and hold it to account.’
