Flood planning? What flood planning?

by Jo-ann Hodgson in At home on 07.05.08

After last year’s floods, people in vulnerable areas of Britain may be holding their breath to see what this summer will bring.

Perhaps not too reassuring, then, that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee (Efra) has said the UK is still not prepared for similar flooding.

Efra have warned that the extra £800million pledged to improve readiness is not enough and that recommendations made in the Pitt Review may be impossible to implement unless the government addresses a shortage of engineering skills.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn responded by pointing out that the government has doubled spending on flood defences in the last ten years and is increasing it by around another 200million by 2010/2011.

However, the committee said the flood defence measures focus almost entirely on river and coastal defences and not on the type of flash floods and localised flooding that affected more than 55,000 homes and businesses in 2007.

Last summer demonstrated what happens when drainage systems fail to cope with rainwater run-off from concreted areas. The Efra report criticised the fact that no organisation had responsibility for dealing with surface water at a local or national level and said it was hard to see who was responsible for the drainage system.

“Our report has shown how confused and chaotic was the infrastructure when it came to preventing and dealing with surface water flooding,” said Michael Jack, the committee’s chairman.

Benn has pointed out that changes to planning laws will make it more difficult for homeowners to concrete over their front gardens and that the right of new developments to automatically connect to the public sewerage system is being reviewed. But that hasn’t been enough to silence the critics.

“The public will not forgive the government if it is not seen to be responding to the lessons learnt from the floods of last summer,” Jack added.

IMAGE by Flickr user Random Dave