‘Joined-up thinking needed on floods’

YORK: A co-ordinated approach between residents, agencies, councils and the Government is needed to cut flooding risks, a national conference heard yesterday.

The growing threat of flooding needs a “joined-up approach” with no single organisation able to fix it, the National Flood Forum Conference in York heard.

A CO-ORDINATED approach between residents, agencies, councils and the Government needs to be employed to reduce the risk of flooding as such a large problem cannot be tackled alone, a national conference heard yesterday.

The growing threat of flooding needs a “joined-up approach” with no single organisation able to fix it, industry bodies and residents affected by flooding agreed at the National Flood Forum Conference in York.

Delegates called for funding for local decision-making and for agencies to work more collaboratively and more closely with people whose homes flooded.

While austerity was a factor in slow responses to deluges, Mark Harris, a former Liberal Democrat leader of Leeds City Council, said authorities would never have had the money to prevent disasters, as funding is allocated by the Government and councils do not have enough freedom to spend it.

He said some people expected councils to solve the problem without taking any responsibility themselves, adding: “We’re increasingly into a something-fornothing mentality.”

Sarah-Jayne Robins, the chairwoman of Todmorden Flood Group, said grant funding had helped but it “doesn’t go very far”.

She added: “The council doesn’t always know what’s happening on the ground. What the council thought was needed and we thought was needed were different things.”

She said there should be a specialist role at councils to listen to residents.

Julie Foley, the Environment Agency’s director of flood risk strategy, highlighted research that showed more than a third of people who had been flooded suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder 12 months later.

“The long-term impact on people’s mental health is significant,” she said.

Delegates who had been flooded suggested introducing a system similar to energy performance certificates, which are produced for every home on the market in the UK.

These could help people understand the flood risk when they buy a home and encourage them to take action to improve it.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, the Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, said this was a “really good idea to explore”.

She said: “This is something we discussed at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Flood Prevention last week.

“One of the things that we clearly identified was that a lot of people buy their homes in good faith and find that it floods.”

She also called for the Environment Agency to be given the power to veto development, and added: “There are some areas which are still being developed, which really shouldn’t be built on.”

Another issue the Government could to do more on was preventing surface area flooding, according to Andrew Russell from the Committee on Climate Change, who said the causes of this type of flooding were often overlooked.

Rebecca Gow, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave a pre-recorded speech via a video in which she assured floodhit members of the public the Government was “not standing still”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed he was told to stay away from flood-hit communities during recent devastation when he appeared on ITV’s This Morning yesterday.

Appearing to pass the buck to the Environment Agency and the emergency services, he said: “They said to us, ‘all you’ll do is distract us and the business of dealing with the immediate crisis’.”

The long-term impact on people’s mental health is significant.

Julie Foley, the Environment Agency’s director of flood risk strategy.