Only if proposals are backed by more cash, warn contractors

WHY IT took 12 months and an independent review for the country to be told that it wasn’t ready for the deluge of last summer is a question only the government can answer.

The cause of the torrential flooding that left 13 people dead surfaced almost immediately from the sodden wreckage.

Despite homes and businesses being battered by water damage in Gloucester and Hull, the latter briefly declared the forgotten city, neither of their flood barriers were breached.

So a year on, nobody is shocked to hear Sir Michael Pitt, who was comissioned by the the government to lead the review, call for a shake-up to the management of the country’s drainage systems.

The report calls for the Environment Agency to take overall responsibility for inland flooding, and should direct local authorities to draw up surface water management plans.

The move will clear up the complicated issues surrounding surface water management ownership – currently divided between several bodies including water companies, local authorities and drainage boards.

Flow of funding
Despite making good ideas, local authorities feel the review has been undermined by the treasury, says Dr Andy Johnston, head of the centre for local sustainability at the Local Government Information Unit. “It is quite telling that there is not much in there about hard money coming in,” he says. “Everybody is a bit disappointed in that.”

Although acknowledging a review would not normally decide a spending plan for government, Johnston says the big message that came out of the Pitt Review is that there needs to be new money.

Last year Defra announced that the government funding for flood and coastal erosion risk management would rise from its current level of £600m, to £800m in 2010- 2011.

In February, Hilary Benn pledged to spend £34.5m of that over the next three years to carry out Pitt’s recommendations.

Vanessa Goodchild-Bradley, policy consultant for the Local Government Association (LGA) said the figure would fall short of what is needed.

“We generally agree with the recommendations, but in terms of an investment strategy to take it forward, £34.5m for all those authorities over three years is not actually going to be enough. We’ve actually got to have a lot more than that.”

The Civil Engineering Contractors Association has echoed similar remarks. It has embraced the call for a 25-year plan – which gives contractors the incentive to invest in flood-risk technology – but has warned the government that what contractors need now is a clearly set out spending profile over 25 years.

It has suggested that issuing local authorities responsibility for surface water flooding would require additional funding.

A spokesman added: “It would be logical to assume that they’re going to need additional funding.”

Self financing
Giving local authorities responsibility to draw up surface water management plans has raised the question over whether authorities should up-skill their current workforce or continue to contract work out. “I think quite a few authorities will feel the need to have their own teams to manage this,” says Johnston.

“Certainly that is what we are already seeing in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire. They’re beginning to recruit flood management teams – so they’re spending money on in-house recruitment. My guess is that if flooding is a big issue for you, almost an election issue, then [local authorities] will want to show they have in-house teams.
 
“I think local authorities who see themselves as low-risk will probably be happy to continue contracting work out.”

That’s not to say authorities will be looking to build up engineering teams to go out and deliver flood defence work, warns Johnston, “They’ll be looking to pull together strategic teams with engineering knowledge that can guide flood defence work.”

Pitt says local authorities can raise their own funds locally. He talks about authorities extending home improvement grants as a way of suring up houses and developments in flood risk areas.

In February, Gloucestershire County Council added a 1.1% flood levy to the council tax, which will raise £2.3m to investigate and tackle flood prevention and drainage works.

There is also the Community Infrastructure Levy, which authorities could use to raise more funds through. “There are all sorts of potential options out there,” says Johnston. “Pitt isn’t particularly directive over that and there is a general trend in local government anyway to look at more imaginative funding sources across the board.”

Sustainable drainage
Pitt has urged the government to resolve the issues surrounding the ownership and maintenance of sustainable drainage systems. Pitt has recommended it should be resolved by 2008, with legislation in place by 2010.

Alex Stephenson, director at Hydro International, says there is a fair amount of scepticism as to whether the government can put this in place by the given timescales.

“If they put responsibility into the hands of the local authorities, that to me makes sense,” he says. “It goes back to how things were 20 or 30 years ago.

“Since that time responsibility has been moved away from local authorities and they have lost a lot of their expertise. Most local authorities had a drainage engineer division that knew about the local problems, so the move back to that would be good. The problem I can foresee is that responsibility would suddenly be dumped on to local authorities without the necessary support, funding and expertise.”

Paul Shaffer, Ciria associate, says it’s looking for some form of leadership from the government in taking forward sustainable drainage systems, such as green roofs and run-off detention basins.

“The biggest challenge will be this whole thing about stakeholders in water assets, says Shaffer, and spatial planners, landscape architects, and engineers moving towards something that’s fairly new.”

He says there are some local authorities that have the opportunity to mentor others.

“Leeds, Bradford, Ipswich, Oxford and Cambridge have shown they have the appropriately skilled people and have an appropriate approach to taking sustainable drainage forward,” he says.

Stephenson too, says he has seen some authorities with a proactive approach to sustainable drainage systems. “Quite often it is maybe down to one or two people in a local authority. One that springs to mind is Gordon Hunt at Oxfordshire County Council. “It has been ver y proactive and has got over a lot of the legislative hurdles by just getting on with it and trying things out. It’s had an awful lot of installations of sustainable drainage schemes and they’ve learned a lot from it.”

He says that if the £34.5m was spent educating people and encouraging good practice within local authorities, it could go a long way. “You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money to get things moving,” he says.

Pitt has advised the government to act swiftly arguing that his recommendations are both realistic and affordable. He said: “Waiting for another serious event is a dangerous strategy of luck; we need to act now to protect our future.”