That this House has considered flood preparedness in Norfolk.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am delighted to have secured this important debate on flood preparedness in Norfolk, and I am pleased to see colleagues from across the county and across the parties. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) has long championed the issue, and I am pleased to join him in the fight. The challenges that we face are so significant and have such an impact that we have to come together to tackle them. I am pleased to be able to facilitate that today.
Norfolk’s seas and waterways are one of our country’s greatest treasures. Our rivers are enjoyed by many for swimming, paddling, kayaking and canoeing. The Norfolk broads are a much-loved national park: a unique waterway that nurtures flora and fauna, and keeps alive a great tradition of sailing and navigation. Our coastline and seas are precious for local residents and drive our tourism economy. They even brought a visit from the Liberal Democrat leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who enjoyed a dip in the sea in Sheringham with me during the election campaign.
Norfolk’s landscapes are also low-lying and flat, filled with farmland and floodplains. While that combination of waterways and low-lying land contributes to Norfolk’s being the most beautiful county in the country, it presents a perfect storm for flooding problems. Hundreds of years ago, the Norfolk broads were simply a huge estuary. Work over the centuries has tamed the waterways into what they are today, but without continued work, nature will simply return our area to the North sea. In the words of my local water management director, we have to “make maintenance sexy!” The Romans began the work, and it would be a tragedy if this were the generation that finally gave up. Not on my watch.
There are very few areas of Norfolk that are not afflicted by flooding concerns. I hear worries from residents all over my constituency, from councillors and colleagues around the county, and from the agencies that work so hard to alleviate such problems.
My constituency is a long way from my hon. Friend’s, but it is criss-crossed by rivers. Last month my residents suffered an inundation, when we had a month’s rainfall in one day. Does he agree that one of the challenges is the lack of co-ordination between the multitude of agencies that have responsibility for this area? Does he also agree that the legacy of the last Conservative Government was the underfunding of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and of local planning authorities, which affected their flood prevention activities?
I agree with both of my hon. Friend’s points, and I will speak about them in a moment. My hope is that by solving the issue of joined-up working in Norfolk, we can transport that model to his constituency and elsewhere.
A key motivation of mine in securing a debate on this issue at this time was the important public meeting I chaired recently in Hickling. Nine different agencies sent their representatives to share the work they are undertaking to prevent flooding in the area. They also told us of their personal fears and frustrations. They spoke of the challenges with the funding system and our changing climate, and of the regulations and responsibilities that are stymying their ability to make change.
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. He is right that there are a multitude of agencies that have partial responsibility, creating a network of overlapping duties and responsibilities. We are lucky in Norfolk that we have the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance, under the capable directorship of Henry Cator, a constituent of mine. Will the hon. Member take this opportunity to congratulate the alliance and Mr Cator, and will he focus on the absolute importance of strategic dredging, particularly in the Norfolk broads?
I thank the hon. Member for his work on flood prevention, and I absolutely echo his sentiments. I will be quoting Henry Cator in just a moment. He was on the panel I mentioned, and I pledged to him and others that I would support them in tackling all of this. That meeting allowed the agencies to hear directly from local residents about their experience and knowledge of the area, developed over decades, and to factor it into their plans and ensure that the community and relevant agencies work in lockstep as they bring forward a more flood-resilient future for the affected broads villages.
Residents of North Norfolk have endless stories of how flooding has impacted them and their community. I heard from a business owner in the boating industry who has spent £40,000 fixing the impact of flooding on the marina that she manages. Another local business estimates that it lost out on £140,000 of revenue during a period when it could not operate because of flood damage. Even the most basic things are made harder: one resident apologised to me that their response to my invitation to the meeting I mentioned was delayed because their driveway was flooded and impassable for the postman.
In the short term, we must look at the fundamental issues across all levels of government that have allowed the situation to get as bad as it has. The agencies I met with are working incredibly hard, but they can only work with what they have. A major issue that many of them face is that their funding settlements are rarely delivered more than one year ahead.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I also live far away from Norfolk, but Somerset obviously has a record of flooding—in fact, it is named Somerset because it was the county where people lived in summer. Environment Agency data shows that 2,692 properties in my constituency are at risk of flooding, and unless basic maintenance is conducted on drainage and flood-defence systems, the figure will continue to rise. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the Environment Agency to have a £34 million deficit in its maintenance budget?
I totally agree. Lots of money is already there, not to mention the stuff that is missing, but we have to use it in a more joined-up and strategic way. I could go on, but I will return to my speech.
The projects that need to be undertaken to make a real difference will take time, but they will have a huge payoff. Being forced into short-term thinking means that the responsible agencies cannot make secure plans to take the strategic actions they need to. I hope that the Minister will consider changing the arrangement to give the responsible agencies the ability to set longer-term budgets. That would be a huge boost to their medium and long-term planning, and could get off the ground so many vital flood-alleviation projects that are being stalled by the current funding set-up. As the chair of the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance succinctly put it to me:
“Prevention is a lot less expensive than flooding.”
In fact, every pound spent on prevention prevents a further £14 of damage. I hope that the Minister will seriously reflect on that, particularly in the light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke).
Frustratingly, in many cases, it is not just the money that is lacking, but the necessary power to make change. The responsibilities and powers are broken up and siloed across councils, agencies and statutory bodies; all of them have expertise and experience, but it cannot be easily shared between them. I ask simply but kindly: why does it take nine months and two public meetings to decide what to do and how to spend the money we already have? I would love to tour my constituency bringing the kind of meeting I mentioned to every community, but that is simply not the most effective way of delivering the action that residents are crying out for.
The Netherlands has a Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management: a clearly responsible Department with the power to tackle an issue that is fundamental to that nation. We must accept that Britain floods—it always has done. A joined-up approach, with a clearly responsible body, is the only way we can ensure that powers are collected sensibly to allow for funding and direction decisions to be made in the best interests of communities.
I thank my hon. Friend for giving some excellent examples, particularly from the Netherlands, which is wonderful at water management. Like him, many across my constituency have to deal with the impact of flooding year after year. Does he agree that to tackle flooding, we must improve the management of land upstream, including the restoration of peatlands, heathlands and native woodlands, and that our farmers are great allies in this quest?
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In my experience as a county councillor over the past seven years, I have seen changing attitudes in the farming community, with farmers having moved from wanting to get the water off their land and into the river system as soon as possible, to wanting to build attenuation methods upstream and upland to help prevent flooding further downland, but they face planning barriers and all sorts of other hurdles that make that practically unviable.
I want to touch on the issues faced by our farmers in North Norfolk. As well as talking to me yesterday about inheritance tax changes, many farmers raised concerns about how flooding impacts their land. Access to the farming recovery fund seems, to my farmers and me, to be scattergun and confusing; the restrictive criteria mean that some are receiving payouts for land that has hardly been touched by flooding, while not receiving anything for land that has spent months underwater, simply because they are either lucky or unlucky with DEFRA criteria and algorithms.
William, a farmer in my constituency, told me yesterday that he had 30 acres of potato crop waterlogged for months on end, and totally unharvestable. He lost £100,000-worth of potatoes, but received no payout because he was told his land was not eligible. We know that our farmers operate on the slimmest profit margins to feed our country, and flooding is yet another challenge hammering them and their businesses. Norfolk’s farmers feel that they are being punished by the quirks of the system, and are in the dark about how to get the help that they need.
The Minister has heard me raise a lot of problems so far, but I want to reassure her that the Government can achieve some quick wins. There are some things with simple solutions. First, we need to ensure that the insurance landscape for flooding is viable. I am appreciative of the Flood Re scheme, but we must ensure that it will achieve its mission to create a risk-reflective pricing model by the time it exits the market in 2039, and that it covers all types of flood risk, including coastal erosion, which rapidly eats away at the North Norfolk coast.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this debate. Next door in Suffolk we share the same coast and many of the same problems, being so low-lying. I am sad to say that in Lowestoft we are not adequately protected against severe flooding such as we experienced, to devastating effect, in 2013. Prior to the installation of flood wall protection measures last year, Lowestoft was the only coastal town without any formal tidal flood defences, and we remain very much at risk.
We had a flood barrier project ready to go, one that would have protected 1,500 residential properties and 800 businesses and was an excellent example of partnership bidding. However, East Suffolk council was forced to abandon those plans earlier this year because the Conservative Government had delayed and delayed a funding decision for so long that it was no longer possible to continue. They avoided paying £100 million to complete a project that would have protected our town for 100 years and seen a return of £700 million a year in gross value added. The previous Government ran out the clock on the scheme and kicked the can down the road, as they did with so much else. With Lowestoft due a flood on the scale of 2013 every 20 years, residents are rightly worried. Resurrecting that scheme immediately is sadly not possible, but I am determined that we find a viable way forward.
Without our flood barrier, the advanced plans we have for the regeneration of the area around Lake Lothing are jeopardised, hugely increasing costs for the redevelopment of the former JELD-WEN factory site, which would help us to meet the Government’s ambitious house building targets by adding up to 500 homes. However, the growth benefits of flooding protection measures are not reflected in how our flooding funding formula works. The formula as it exists now effectively protects wealthier areas and leaves poorer areas such as ours to fend for themselves. As such, it essentially bakes in inequality.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on bringing this debate to the House. It is great to see so many colleagues from all parties. If ever there was an issue that unites us all, it is this. At the beginning of my fifth Parliament, I have never seen so many all-party parliamentary groups set up or seen them so well attended—most struggle to find enough Members to be quorate. I have been to four, each with about 30 people from all parties in the room. I welcome what the Minister has said about properly reviewing and getting to grips with this issue and wish her well. She will find a lot of parliamentary support for bold reforming action, which is long overdue.
For me, this began in the inland constituency of Mid Norfolk—the clue is in the name. It has no coast and is largely Breckland; it should be dry. So why am I leading the charge on flooding? It is because in 2020, I and many of my constituents spent the Christmas period using mops and buckets in our houses as great rains swept through. In so many parts of the country, areas that have not traditionally been affected by flooding suddenly are. We set up the Mid Norfolk Flood Partnership with 13 villages, and we set up the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance. I pay tribute to Lord Dannatt, who set up the alliance, and Henry Cator, who now runs it very well. We were in the process of convening Norfolk’s first inland flood summit, which was postponed because of the election. It is very important.
There are 36 organisations in Norfolk alone tasked with and sharing responsibility for dealing with flooding. None of them are able to take responsibility properly. I will be kind, but the buck gets passed. People have had enough. We need a summit in which we, the representatives of the people of Norfolk, can gather with those agencies and get on top of where the flooding is happening, where it is becoming more intense, what is being done about it and prioritised for our county, and the short, medium and long-term plan.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this hugely important debate. I have had the pleasure of serving alongside him not just here in this place but in Norfolk county council, of which we have both been members for a number of years. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as both a serving Norfolk county councillor and a Breckland district councillor. The issues are the same—we are talking about flooding in this case—but the setting is somewhat different.
Flooding is a significant concern in Norfolk, as has been mentioned, and I have been left so frustrated about flooding incidents in my local communities. The time taken to look into some of the causes of flooding and the recommendations for mitigation is woeful. In some cases, it can take up to two years, and often residents are repeatedly flooded before we have seen the reports on the initial incident. It must be said that local councils are woefully under-resourced. They must be given additional resources and powers to respond to the increasing flood risks. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) for mentioning internal drainage boards, which I have already raised in Parliament, because they are an increasing concern for many councils.
In my constituency, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council now contributes the equivalent of 43% of all its council tax income to funding IDB levies—that is incredible. I am delighted to say that, since Labour has taken office, we have seen progress, with additional funding of more than £250,000 for King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council alone. I also welcome the new flood resilience taskforce launched to turbocharge flood preparedness and the delivery of flood defences. I was delighted last week when an extra £50 million was announced for internal drainage boards, which have been neglected for far too long. I am pleased that the Government recognise their vital contribution, which shows Labour’s commitment to the challenge.
Order. I will have to call the Front Benchers at 5.10 pm, so I hope that the two Norfolk Members who are standing can share the remaining seven minutes between them.
5:03 pm
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Let us take a look at how flood prevention actually functions in the area that I and my Norfolk colleagues represent—I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a Norfolk county councillor. Norfolk county council is the lead flood authority, but it does not have the money to tackle the issues that it reports on. The council’s scrutiny committee considered that just yesterday, and concluded that there needs to be a focus on legislation to make it fit for purpose. After every serious event, it writes useful, sensible and impactful flood prevention reports, which outline how to prevent flooding from happening again, but once it finishes its reports, it has nowhere near the necessary money to implement any of its own recommendations.
That set-up would be utterly farcical if it were not so serious. It seems that my residents need all the stars to align to make anything happen, and that will not cut the mustard as water pours into their front rooms and destroys their belongings.
I also feel that we need to place a greater duty on our insurers to carry out the actions in flood prevention reports after incidents occur. Insurers currently put properties back to the state they were in before the flooding, rather than being required to support residents to ensure that the flooding cannot happen again. For example, why are insurers replacing ankle-height sockets in properties they know could flood again, when logic would dictate that they need to be moved higher up to protect them in the future? My residents have been left in a scenario where they know what needs to happen to prevent future flooding, but the actions are not forthcoming. It is totally unacceptable, and I hope the Minister will indicate that she is open to reviewing this area of law, if that is the reform we need to fix these issues.
There is a very real human impact of the failings of this set-up. I have spoken with one of my constituents who has been flooded twice, forced to move out of her home for months, and still struggles to secure the changes she needs to avoid yet more flooding. Anglian Water is responsible for increasing the drainage capacity, the highways department is responsible for trying to redirect the water flow off the road away from her property, and her insurers have to help her piece her life back together again. All those agencies and organisations have been unable to secure funding or have been limited in their powers. She will want to hear from the Minister today an assurance that she will not carry on falling through the cracks and being a repeat victim of predictable problems, and will finally receive the long-lasting solution she needs and deserves.
Whenever we discuss damaging floods, which are becoming all the more regular, we must address the elephant in the room that is man-made climate change. It is no coincidence that we see more extreme weather events, storms and flooding when our climate is being so drastically damaged. If we do not deviate from the course of climate crisis, resilience measures will become obsolete as the emergency worsens. The current modelling on what we need to prevent and alleviate flooding looks backwards at data and trends from the past, but climate change is bringing extreme weather and flooding that we have never seen before. If we cannot handle what has gone before, we do not stand a chance of tackling what has yet to come. We have to incorporate the climate emergency into our thinking on this issue far more realistically.
Norfolk is proudly at the cutting edge of the green energy transformation that we need to fight climate change. We are proud to be playing our part in saving the planet, but if the homes of those working on these projects, and the businesses and suppliers for them, are flooding, and the infrastructure itself is at risk of flooding, we cannot help. We want to play our part and we need the support to do so.
I hope the Government can think holistically when tackling the challenges of flooding. It is not just an environment issue; it impacts our local economy, our emergency services and our health systems. I fear the cost of failure here simply is not understood, but I can assure the Government that they cannot afford it. While we are talking about Norfolk today, improving flood preparedness across the country will positively impact so much more than just the people whose homes and businesses are flooding today.
This challenge is immediate. The time for waiting around and delay has long passed and we are staring down the barrel of a tough—and possibly disastrous—winter. This is not about just protecting the highest possible number of chimney pots, but preserving a beautiful, historic natural landscape and a way of life that has served Norfolk for generations. I hope that as the Government listen to the contributions in this debate and consider their future actions as a result, in the forefront of their minds are the affected residents and business owners, villages such as Hickling and Potter Heigham, and the communities begging us not to carry on with the status quo.
I would be grateful if the Minister could look into a review of the current flooding funding formula. We need to factor in the potential for growth, for unlocking house building and for industrial progress when it comes to allocating funds. If we are able to do that, not only can we save what we already have, but we can build for a better future.
I have prepared a private Member’s Bill to support the Minister; I will be introducing it shortly and I hope it will contribute to the reforms that she is considering. I hope it will be good enough that she decides to incorporate it into her reforms. I will speak in a moment about what that Bill sets out to do but, as with so many public policy problems, it is worth being clear about what the problem is and what is causing it.
First, I want to suggest climate change. Earlier this year, we had the wettest seven months on record, and we have had the wettest past few years on record. That is what is driving the problem.
Secondly, in my part of the world, that problem is compounded by a huge amount of housing. The boundaries changed because about 10,000 extra houses have been built in Mid Norfolk in the past 14 years. Many of them are built on the outskirts of villages, without proper drainage infrastructure, which has meant plugging modern drains into Victorian village drain infrastructure. When there is intense rain, it all merges and sewage starts rising through people’s gardens and lavatories.
Thirdly, I mention riparian rights: we have seen huge confusion about who is actually responsible for maintaining ditches. Fourthly, there is contract farming, or an increase in outsourcing farming to contractors. In the old days on our family farm, in quiet months we would clear the ditches and mend the fences. These days, that kind of stuff is not always in the contract. Ditches are being neglected because of the reality of modern contract farming.
Fifthly, Anglian Water has been focusing—and I will be kind—on supplying water to the east and on mitigating leakage. It is investing billions. Ten years ago, the problem was loss of water, and that is still the case in the summer months. However, in winter, we have a massive problem. We need to make sure that our water companies are investing in the problem in the latter half of the year, as well as dealing with the shortages in the summer. Of course, catchment geography, habitat, and water maintenance and retention link those two issues.
Sixthly, there is huge confusion about responsibilities. Nationally, the responsibility sits with the Environment Agency, and I think its budget is just over £2 billion a year. However, try ringing the Environment Agency about a problem in Norfolk—or, I dare say, in Suffolk; it is lovely to see the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) sneaking into a Norfolk debate to support us. I am talking about organisational responsibility at the top, in an agency that has many other responsibilities, some of which directly go against the interests of getting water off the land and down rivers fast. I am also talking about the situation on the ground. Responsibility for dealing with, mitigating and handling flooding is unfunded, so the local flood authority really has no budget in Norfolk. It has a few powers, which it cannot enforce, and no budget to do it properly.
Seventhly, the real heroes of flood management in this country are the internal drainage boards, who—as you will know, Sir Christopher—have been successfully doing proper local watercourse management since about the 15th century. They have seen their powers reduced and their funding removed. As is so often the way in modern Governments, powers go upstream, to higher and higher levels, with less and less real, practical support on the ground. Those 15 or 16 areas—district councils that are most on the frontline of flooding—are now having massively to support internal drainage board infrastructure investments. We are charging taxpayers hugely in the high flood areas to pay for infrastructure that we are all funding. An Association of District Councils special interest group has been set up to tackle that, and it is helping me with my Bill.
Eighthly, the IDBs are funded by precepts, which is not appropriate for the scale of infrastructure that we need today. Ninthly, there is a huge lack of proper monitoring: one of the things that we will find at the first Norfolk flood summit is that we do not have a map—or certainly no live digital map. Where are the flood hotspots in our county? We are not properly capturing the data, which means that the Minister will not have proper data to support her policy making and the Cabinet Office resilience unit does not have proper data on where that growing inland flood risk is.
There is then flooding on the ground, as we had last year; I will cite one example, at Mill lane in Attleborough. Four people who live next to a culvert have been flooded every year for the past 10 years, and their lives are misery. Last year, for the first time, 100 other houses were flooded because the culvert has been allowed to silt up gradually. Anglian Water handed over its riparian rights when no one was looking about 12 or 15 years ago, and no one was aware that those rights now sat locally in the town. The land-use practice upstream meant that the water was not being captured properly on the farm, and with a whole lot of new housing and climate change, there was then a big problem. It has taken a huge amount of work to set up the local Mill lane flood prevention group, and the community has cleaned out the ditches and dredged the river, with 70 tonnes of stuff taken out. It has been a huge project, for which I pay tribute to the local councillor, Taila Taylor, and others.
We cannot afford to do that in every single place around the country; far better to invest in prevention in the first place. Of course, people who have suffered flooding then hit the next problems: how do they insure their houses? How will we compensate people who cannot sell their houses? How will we ensure that, as others have said, the Flood Re scheme is fit for purpose? This is a huge issue and I know the Minister has gripped it. My Bill sets out four main clauses and four main reforms—I believe I have sent the Minister an early draft, but I will send her a better one. I thank all those colleagues who are helping with it.
Clause 1 sets out responsibilities and makes clear that we need to cascade them down to the ground, as well as making it clearer who is actually responsible for prevention and mitigation. Clause 2 looks at funding and says that some of that £2 billion-odd with the Environment Agency has to cascade down, and we have to support the IDBs and the local flood authorities properly. Controversially, clause 3 looks at liabilities. I want to suggest that, when house builders dump large quantities of housing on the outskirts of villages, it is not good enough just to pipe the drains into the old Victorian architecture. They have to upgrade it, and I think the only way they will do so is if they are on the hook for any downstream flooding that might occur. Clause 4 looks at data monitoring and accountability.
I close by sincerely welcoming the Minister’s very quickly committing to reviewing this issue properly. As well as listening to her officials, who I know will have 101 reasons to take it gently and to be cautious and steady, I urge the Minister to listen to colleagues across this House. I think she will be a hero—there will be culverts named after her for decades to come. I hesitate to suggest this, but it will be one of the biggest issues of this Parliament for our constituents, and the Minister has the chance to grip it right at the beginning and put right something that has been neglected for several decades.
I pay tribute to Welney Flood Watch in my constituency. The team play a vital role, helping residents to know whether the A1101, which is appropriately named the Welney Wash Road, is passable. I was delighted to meet one of the volunteers, Ken, yesterday in Parliament. Without that intervention, residents often get caught out by the changing and unpredictable water levels in that area. That is a fine example of community spirit, but we cannot leave it solely to volunteers to fix the cracks that are so evident in the system and that will become more common because of climate change.
I believe that we in this room have a moral obligation not to leave the planet in a worse state than we found it in. We must protect the here and now. Failure to tackle the root causes and the imminent threats of flooding will cost us socially, economically and environmentally, as has been pointed out. We need only look at areas such as Valencia over the past few weeks to see the devastating impact of flooding, the damage to livelihoods and housing and, in that case, the tragic loss of so many lives.
I know that the Minister understands the importance of the issue; I have spoken to her about it on several occasions. The task at hand could not be clearer. The Environment Agency states that up to one in six UK properties are now at risk of flooding, and it is going to get even worse. It cuts across numerous constituencies, and not just in Norfolk. I am in South West Norfolk, the county’s furthest constituency from the coast, but it is still a huge challenge.
After 14 years of Conservative neglect and underfunding and the forgoing of the scientific warning signs, communities up and down the country have been left unnecessarily exposed to flood damage. The previous Government slashed resources for the Environment Agency, the key agency tasked with flood preparedness and response, by two thirds from 2010, leaving families and businesses to pay the price of extreme floods.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Norfolk for securing this debate and raising this important issue. It is now up to Labour to protect our local economy and the national environment.