To consider the verbal report of the Cabinet Member.
Minutes:
The Cabinet Member for Environment Infrastructure and Climate Change introduced the county Flood Risk Manager who delivered a presentation to the select committee on the council’s statutory functions and responsibilities.
The Cabinet Member explained that due to climate change rainfall events that overwhelm drainage systems is becoming more frequent and that this is no longer just a winter issue. She acknowledged that a significant challenge is run-off from private land leading to localised flooding of highways and when highway gullies are also damaged or full of silt this can exacerbate the problem.
The Flood Managers presentation addressed the efficacy of existing highway gully maintenance policy and persistent blockages; the Councils response to emergency flooding; the Councils role and responsibility under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010; poor land drainage management; the Council’s infrastructure management and forward strategy in a period of housing growth and collaboration on flood management.
The County Council is a Lead Local Flood Authority. A duty is to produce a Strategy setting out their direction. We have various duties and powers . The authority works closely with key partners – the Environment Agency and District and Borough Councils, drainage boards, water companies and the County Councils own Highways services. He explained roadside ditch responsibilities and that the local landowner (sometimes different to the person farming the land) had responsibility for hedges and ditches. He explained that gullies will often connect into sewers or ditches and that the problem may be a blockage further in a drainage system (rather than the gully).
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The Chairman acknowledged that grip cuts were sometimes used by farmers to alleviate run off from fields but this was not their purpose and poor land maintenance was a significant contributor to flooding. The Flood Manager suggested that heavy traffic loading was also a contributory factor – increasingly large vehicles regularly passing through country lane, impact on the verges. He agreed with the Chairman in general and suggested there were many contributing factors and to acknowledge that there are many considerations when farming land.
The authority did have enforcement powers but the Flood Manager said that they would only take action where there was a clear risk of house flooding as the legalities were onerous.
The Assistant Director explained that the highways service had moved away from a blanket approach of emptying all gullies annually to collating an inventory of gullies which could then be managed on a risk based approach. GPS data was used to create a better understanding of for example, silt build up, and enable the operational resource to be better managed. This approach provides an optimum routine maintenance solution for approximately 95% of the councils highway gullies, but that around 5% of gullies had historic and continuing problems and there was a backlog of gully and wider highway drainage repairs (representing about £20m) which was being addressed by a progressive repairs and renewal programme.
Members agreed that flooding issues were often the cause of concern at parish councils and a diagram of accountability and responsibility would be helpful to them. A Member asked about access rights to private land. The Flood Manager said that it was difficult to justify access onto farmland unless flooding was very bad. In the first instance, they would write to a landowner.
The Flood Management team worked proactively with landowners and encouraged a preventative approach – there may be questionable land practices which they can work with. In the future there may be grants to help farmers deal with specific flooding issues as part of Central Government’s new Flood Risk Management Strategy. Post Brexit there was likely to be greater emphasis on more environmentally sustainable farming practices. Collaboration and coercion were considered better than a legal route. An increasing amount of land was now subject to short term farming tenancies and in these sometimes drainage was overlooked.
The Cabinet Member maintained that the service wanted closer cooperation with community groups and parish councils and there were good examples of this already happening (e.g. the Marchington road closure Model).
A Member suggested that sometimes a problem was not with the gully but further away from the highway – a collapsed drain for example – often difficult to diagnose. The Flood Manager said that responsibility would lie with the landowner whose field the collapsed drain was under.
A member pointed out that gully emptying was an issue in urban areas also and he asked about supporting local residents. The Flood manager said that his role was investigating under section 19 (of the Flood Water Management Act) with the threshold set in our local strategy at where 5 or more properties which had been affected by internal flooding. In the past year there had been vastly more instances relative to previous years.
The Cabinet Member assured members that they would see an improvement in flood management – working closely and creatively with partners and the Highways authority and benefitting from additional allocated funding.
RESOLVED: That the Flood Management update be received.