Welcome, everybody, to the latest meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into flood resilience in England. I am very pleased to have our first panel with us. In advance of that, there are two members who wish to bring the attention of the Committee to a declaration of interest.

I declare an interest: Siobhan Connor is known to me as a very active constituent in Shrewsbury.

I declare an interest: Mary Long-Dhonau is a constituent in North Herefordshire and is very active in all issues relating to flooding.

I am not sure if that shows that we have a well-connected panel or a well-connected Committee, but either way we are all good friends here. I thank our first panel for coming to give evidence. Could I ask you to introduce yourself and your organisation and, very briefly, in 15 or 20 seconds, tell us your interest in aspects of flooding that you have experience of?

Good afternoon. My name is Graham French. I own and run the Kingfisher Café in Walcott. We have been flooded twice now, once in 2007 and then again in 2013.

My name is Mary Long-Dhonau. I was flooded on many occasions in my former home in Worcester. Since then, I have helped thousands of flood victims with their plight. In the last two winters, I have talked to over 2,000 newly flooded people.

My name is Siobhan Connor. I am chair of Shrewsbury Flood Action Group, which I set up. I have been flooded over 20 times since 1997. I am the third generation of my family campaigning here in Westminster over flooding. I am very active in the community and campaigning as a flood advocate.

Several members of the Committee have had flooded areas within our constituencies, so it is an issue of which many of us have intimate experience. That is a good place to start. Ms Connor, can you briefly describe how being flooded has affected you and how it affects flood victims, both at the time and in the months and years that follow?

For six months of the year, we cannot leave our home. We are on permanent flood alert. For the other six months, we are drying out, and then we are flooded again. This has been the pattern of our lives repeatedly since 2020. Businesses and residents are seeing two or three floods a year in my community of Shrewsbury. This is no way to live. We are in this constant, permanent state of anxiety. There are mental health and emotional aspects, as well as the expense of it. Many of us have every measure of PFR in place. Each year, we all chip away and put some more in, yet we are still flooding and there appears to be no urgency from past Governments or this Government to address flooding as an issue.

Ms Long-Dhonau, we heard there from somebody who has been flooded so many times. Other flood victims may have been flooded only once, but it can still leave lasting impacts. Can you give us a sense of what flood victims go through, both initially and in the years that follow?

I cannot compete with you, but I have been flooded 12 times. Let me set the scene. Everybody has stuff going on in their lives. I had a newly diagnosed autistic son; I was reeling from that, and I was flooded. I met a lady who had come back from her husband’s funeral, and she was flooded. I have met an agoraphobic, and she was flooded. I have met somebody who was receiving cancer treatment, and was flooded. I could go on. I would like you to imagine what it would be like if you went home on Friday and found your home full of filthy, stinking floodwater, with everything that you held dear washed away, even your memories. I lost my little children’s handprints, their hospital memorabilia and their nursery drawings, which I was saving to give to them when they were 18. All my memories of my children have been washed away. You can replace your freezer and your sofa, but not your memories. I can honestly say that everybody I have talked to over the last two winters is truly broken and, like Siobhan, they live in fear of the next flood.

One of the powerful experiences that I have had in supporting flood victims in my constituency, as I know others have, is hearing that when you have been flooded once, you always live in fear that it will happen again. Every time it rains, you are thinking, “Will it be this time?” It affects your whole life going forward while ever you are in that property, does it not?

It absolutely does. I can remember talking to two elderly people who were 89 years old. One of them was disabled. They were away from their bungalow when it flooded, and they lost absolutely everything. When I was on my floodmobile and he came to visit me, he said, “We are going to die soon. We know that, and it will be like we never existed. We do not have a single thing left, and we are too afraid to go back home.”

Mr French, you have been a victim of coastal flooding, whereas the others were referring to river flooding. Can you give us a sense of how the flooding affected you and, maybe slightly more broadly, your community?

I cannot compete with these two ladies, because I have only been flooded twice, but it is still significant, and it was for our community. Of the range of emotions that many people go through, the one that surprised me most was how angry people were. They were looking for somebody to blame, and anybody in authority would do. After that, they felt a sense of shame that they had behaved in that way. My friend here said, “Imagine what it would be like.” I do not think that you can imagine how devastating it really is. She hit on it when she said that it is the personal stuff. Material things can be replaced, but you have a lifetime of memories, and a future. At that time, both appear to have gone. After the flood, especially in the winter during storm season, people are reluctant to leave their homes. They will stay put just in case. They will not go away for Christmas or suchlike, just in case the weather forecasts change and something happens for the worse. I ought to say that, due to our location, we are extremely lucky, because we are very close to Bacton gas terminal, which had signs of erosion around it and was subject to a sandscaping scheme, which has also helped our village. We have benefited from some mitigation, although we still are very keen to watch the weather forecast, just in case.

Since that mitigation, have you been flooded again?

No.

Are you under the impression that that mitigation has saved you from being flooded since then, or have you just been fortunate?

I understand, from a report done by the Dutch engineers who completed the sandscaping project, that they say that at least one major flood event has been averted.

That is excellent. What impact does it have on the community as a whole? If we turn away from the personal loss, which you have all spoken about eloquently, does it have an impact on how your village views itself, in terms of what your community is about and the security of your community?

Yes. There is a keenness in the community for people to get on with their lives and almost put flooding behind them, as far as they can. It is spoken about frequently—I would say almost daily—in our café. Although people want to get on with the rest of their lives, I don’t think they really can, because this comes back to haunt them constantly.

Ms Connor, since being flooded, what steps have you or others in the area been able to take to reduce the impact of future floods? Is there anything that you have been able to do, or is there anything that has been done in your community at all?

I am doing a lot. I am interacting with the flooded victims and businesses, making sure that they know what is available, liaising with flood management, local agencies and water companies, holding public meetings, and identifying the flood map of Shrewsbury so that we can present it to our local authority to demonstrate who has been flooded in order for people to get the grants. Nobody else seemed to be doing that. That was down to me. Agencies did not seem to be taking responsibility for that. I have joined other groups as well. I have a social media presence, including on Twitter. It is quite a full-time job for someone who works full‑time as well. Evidence that I have from working with the flooded community shows that people are resilient in every way that they can be—barriers, non-return valves, pumps, or moving their white goods to waist level—but this is failing us. The feeling is that, on its own, PFR is just a sticking plaster. It does not have any long-term sustainability. People like me, who have every measure like that, and many of the people I have spoken to in order to give evidence to this Committee are still flooding. We need support, because we are doing our bit. It cannot just be a community on its own that should bear the brunt of this.

Absolutely. Ms Long-Dhonau, the Government said in the recent Budget that they are planning to spend £2.65 billion on flood defence. To what extent does that make a difference? What do you want to see from Government?

First of all, I do not want to see the Chancellor cut the flood budget in the forthcoming spending review. There are strong and plausible rumours coming out. Baroness Brown said in the Climate Change Committee that she had heard that the Chancellor was considering cutting the flood defence budget. She would cut it at her peril. It would be an absolute waste of money, because every time there is a flood, infrastructure is damaged. We have seen train tracks going and roads damaged. It is not just the flood victims but the whole wider community and this country that suffer. I would like to see Government raise the amount of money they spend, not cut it. Cutting it would be absolutely reckless.

I hear that, and I am sure the Committee has heard it. There was an initial announcement of £2.65 billion on flood defences and a focus on repairing existing non-working pieces of infrastructure, as well as planning new infrastructure. Is that the sort of spending that you would like to see being committed on a regular basis? Is that adequate?

I would like to see more. The ABI is asking for £1 billion a year. We have to remember that the average flood claim is now over £62,000 and, for many of the people who I have spoken to, it is over £100,000. The ABI and Flood Re are constantly shelling out money, sometimes two or three times to the same property. We need sustained and increased commitment to flood defences, but not just flood defences. You have mentioned repairing existing flood defences. Every time they are challenged, they degrade, so they need repairing. It is also about natural flood management, because we have to slow the flow. We have to work with nature. We have dried-out peatlands, for goodness’ sake. Peat absorbs so much water and carbon that we need to use the nature that we have about us to our benefit. That includes homeowners not paving over their gardens. Only last week, I was at RHS Malvern helping with a rain garden; it just shows how much a little space can be used to work with nature to reduce flood risk.

Yes, absolutely. That is a very well-made point. All of you have reluctantly become flood experts. It was not what you designed, but that is what has happened as a result of what has happened to you in your communities. When it comes to the multitude of organisations and agencies with responsibility—local authorities, the Environment Agency, water companies and national bodies—to what extent is it clear who has responsibility for what? Ms Connor, in that multitude of organisations, is there clarity about who is responsible for what?

There is absolutely no clarity on who is responsible for what. People do not know, with groundwater flood or river flood, whether it is the local authority or the highways agency. People are not clear at all on that, and certainly not in my community in Shrewsbury. When it comes to knowing who to report a flood to, the communication is unclear. Essentially, when you have E. coli in your home and you are flooded, water is water and a flood is a flood. There are about eight agencies that all have a boundary where it might be half on one side and half on the other—“We’re not doing the clear-up after a flood. No, that’s not our land”. It is impossible. When you are faced with silt and dirt in your home, you cannot use the rooms. You are drying out. Then you are trying to find out why raw sewage came into your home and who to go and speak to about it. It is an absolute shambles and a mess.

I have to say that things are an awful lot better since Flood Re came into the market. I remember people ringing me and saying that they could get flood insurance, but that their excess was £30,000. That was before Flood Re. Flood Re has made things a lot easier for people, provided that their home was built before 2009, that they own and live in it, and that they do not rent it out for commercial gains—there are all those caveats. As I am travelling to communities, I am stumbling across a large number of people who were declined insurance pre-Flood Re and still believe that they cannot get insurance, so a bit more education needs to be done with regard to Flood Re. One of the places I visited was a socially deprived area in Warrington. I am very concerned that people there literally could not afford flood insurance. We have to remember that while some of us can afford it—as you know, it is charged according to your council tax band, so charged fairly—some people in social housing cannot even afford to buy flood insurance. It is a choice between food on their plate or flood insurance, and it is food on the children’s plate every time.

Good grief, yes. I recently wrote a blog on my website called “Build Baby Build”. First, we need to make building regulations insist that flood resilience is built into every single property. It does not happen at the moment. Also, very worryingly, local authorities no longer have enough staff or money to challenge building, so inappropriate building is going through at that level because they do not have the capacity. The Flood and Water Management Act 2010 says that sustainable urban drainage should be mandatory in large developments, but that is not happening. We need to stop and think that sustainable urban drainage is mimicking nature, taking the run-off from the roofs and the properties to percolate and be absorbed in the ground. What is happening is that the waste water from new developments is leaving them in two pipes, but then, not very far down the road, it is going into one pipe, leading to smaller communities’ sewage infrastructure being unable to cope. They are making communities flood that have not flooded before. Quite frankly, water companies ought to be statutory consultees on housing developments as well. I have been calling for that for 25 years now, and it has not happened yet. If the Environmental Audit Committee can make it happen, I would be one happy Flood Mary.

The PFR grants, when they are available—some years they are; some years they are not—do not come close. The £5,000 does not come close to hitting the mark of recovering from a flood. You are looking at about £70,000 in total. My barriers alone were close to £18,000, as well as my pump. Nothing is £5,000. We have to pay for a survey up front, which the residents of Shrewsbury have told me is nothing more than someone looking at your location on a Google map on an iPad. We had to pay £500 plus VAT for that survey in order to qualify for the PFR grant. People find it very difficult to apply for them. If you do not have insurance, businesses cannot apply for them, so giving us £5,000 is like giving us £1 towards making your home resilient.

I have. My insurer, Direct Line, is not part of Flood Re, so I have had no help there. Communication around Flood Re is quite poor. For me, it is about constantly renewing and not arguing with whatever their astronomical fees are and with the increase, because I am too scared to leave them, in terms of Flood Re running out. The floods used to be every five or seven years, and you could deal with them and almost forget about them, but we are now filling up to waist level within two hours, three times a year. I am amazed that I am even here to tell the story.

We have done everything we can. This is a family home. It has been in the family for three generations. We have rebuilt our home. We have put another level on it. We have spent and spent on it, trying to make it a house of the future that is flood-proof. The house was rebuilt back in 2003, and never did I imagine that this would be the diary of my life since 2020, dictating where I am and what I can do. We are only here because it is May, the weather is beautiful and we are not flooding. Even travelling and going to work in London impacts absolutely every part of your life.

I have seen both sides of the coin. In 2007, we were insured; we had some rebuilding, and equipment was replaced. In 2013, it was impossible for us to find any insurance, so we had to self‑finance to rebuild, and we are still bearing the cost of that now. I was fortunate enough to have access to a pension that I was able to cash in, so I could inject some funds into the business. I have flood insurance now. Historically, because I have not been flooded in the last seven or eight years, they are prepared to insure me for flood again, but if we were to be flooded, we would be in a similar situation the year after.

Just to clarify that, Mr French, the insurance industry tells us that with Flood Re, flood victims should still be able to get flood insurance. Are you saying that that was not your experience?

No, not for business insurance.

Ms Connor, you mentioned that you organised a public meeting to find 50 other flooded homes in order to access the grant. Could you explain that, in case the others are not aware? What would have happened to your grant if 49 other homes had not been found?

This was following Storm Henk in January. In Shrewsbury, where I live, businesses and residents were yet again hit. We had had Storm Babet the previous October. You only have to look at drone footage that is going around. Shrewsbury was not accessible. The places that flooded before all flooded again while they were recovering. When I contacted the local council and had a flood action group and a multi-agency group with Shropshire council, it was unable to demonstrate that over 50 homes or businesses had flooded in order to obtain the flood grant that these people needed. They needed those three months of council tax grace period to support them. They were not able to live in their homes. Often, they were having to move out. They also needed support in order to put some PFR measures in place. It came to February, and I was getting really fed up. I was going to the Environment Agency and the water company to try to find out who had flooded. It was a case of just saying, on the ground, “I am going to call a public meeting.” It was a cross-party meeting. I invited Julia Buckley to speak. She is now our MP; she was not at the time. I also invited the SVWMS, which is the scheme in Shropshire and Shrewsbury, as well as the Environment Agency, the water companies and the National Flood Forum. Everybody spoke. Over 100 people turned up at the meeting. We printed out letters and forms: “Tick this box if you were flooded in Storm Babet. Tick this box if you were flooded in Storm Henk.” I got over 100 responses just that evening, which gave us what we needed to prove that over 50 residents or businesses were flooded. For the local council, these people now qualify for and can obtain the funding. That is how difficult it is, and it took ages to do.

To be clear, Ms Connor, if only 40 people had come forward, what would have happened to them? Would they have got a grant?

If only 40 people, or even 49, had come forward, nobody would have qualified. That is why the whole funding mechanism needs overhauling and is completely wrong. It should not take someone like me phoning up parish councils, going out to places on foot and knocking on doors that I thought were flooded to find out, “Yes, we have another one.” It was very much like an Alan Bates Post Office movement, just holding a public meeting and identifying a flood map of Shrewsbury, which I seem to have, but I do not know if anyone else has one.

May I say how powerful all your testimony has been? We have all felt that. You have communicated brilliantly just how devastating this is, not just on people’s lives but on their mental health. Thank you for all you have said, and our commiserations for all that you have been through. I have recently had a number of flood events in my constituency. After one in particular, somebody came to me whose garden and house had been flooded, on the ground floor. He did not know whether anybody else in the street was willing to come forward. I did a survey of the street, but people were not willing to come forward. I just wonder whether sometimes people are not willing to come forward because they are afraid that they will not be able to get insurance for their property, or indeed be able to sell it in future, if it is known to be liable to flooding.

That is certainly an issue; I have heard that when speaking to all the flooded people across Shropshire. It is a concern. They do not want to take part, because they are scared that it will be in the search when they sell their property. They feel that the more floods they get, the more it will impact them. It is countrywide, but there is a real issue with obtaining the true facts of who floods and where. These people should be getting the pitiful amount of money that is available: when you are flooded, you really will take anything, because anything is better than nothing.

Ms Long-Dhonau, how aware are people of the risks that they bear from flooding, and of what they can do in terms of making their property more resilient? Do people really understand the situation that they are sometimes in?

Regular floodees are obviously aware, but raising awareness of flood risk is a very difficult thing. It is very little understood. The mentality is, “It won’t happen to me.” Particularly where surface water flooding is concerned, if I got £1 every time someone said to me, “It would be a Noah’s ark flood, dear, if I flooded here,” I would be a very wealthy woman.

You would be able to afford your resilience measures.

I absolutely would. I travel around the country, as I have said, in a floodmobile or flood pod, and it is packed full of property flood resilience measures. If you will bear with me, I want to define what property flood resilience is. It is not just products. It is being aware, knowing your risk, signing up for a free flood warning and then planning what you are going to do when you flood. I lost my memories, so it is really important that you have a to-do list or a flood plan in advance. That comes into property flood resilience as well. I have done a YouTube film showing people how to prepare for a flood by using stuff that you have around your house. I have a kitchen table with two wellington boots, a bucket, a plastic bin on the table legs, and plastic boxes to show people to put their sentimental items in. It is about preparing for a flood as well. There are products that you all know about —flood doors, flood barriers, non-return valves and so on. Very importantly, it is about recoverable measures. I went to Leicestershire, where people were flooded twice. Many people had standard Environment Agency or grant PFR products—flood doors, flood barriers, non-return valves and self-closing air bricks—yet they had still flooded. You have to treat the whole house holistically. A lot of floodwater can get through the walls. You can put waterproof and breathable mortar on the walls. There is a cream solution that you can paint on that will allow the house to breathe but slow down the ingress of water. You can also apply a crystalline slurry where the weakest point is, which is where the walls join the floor. I am not going to bore you silly, but if any of you get insomnia, do read on my website about how to treat a concrete floor to stop it going mouldy. I have had to research everything, because I have had so many questions. If people do not know about the barriers, they are certainly not going to know about recoverability. Let me tell you about recycled plastic kitchens. I had severe kitchen envy when I went to the showroom. One of the largest price tags is for constantly renewing kitchens. If you could have a beautiful, recycled plastic kitchen that you could wash down, sanitise and reuse, that would save an awful lot of money. That is why I was so delighted to help Flood Re launch the Build Back Better scheme. When I travel to people, they are unaware that you can get a quote for a normal kitchen and one for a recoverable kitchen, and the Build Back Better scheme will pay the difference. Likewise with your flooring—everybody loves their laminate flooring. You can get beautiful plastic flooring now that you can pull up, wash under the tap and sanitise, and pop back down again. This is on top of the concrete slab that I have written about how to build successfully, so that it does not go mouldy. There is so much that you can do. Because of climate change, flooding is going to get worse, so we are going to have to learn to live with water. Water does come in, as it did in my own home after I had built back better. I tanked it. I got a cement-type plaster up the walls and on the floor. I could then pump it out, sanitise it, light the fires and carry on living there. We cannot build concrete walls around our entire country, but flood risk management is a jigsaw with many pieces, and our homes and businesses are going to have to adapt to deal with the horrible threat that climate change is bringing us.

Absolutely. I hope that anybody who is watching this has taken note of all the things you have said, because it is a real lesson in what is available and how to combat it. When responding to the Chair, you said that if there was one message that you would like to get across, it was not to cut flood defence budgets. So that it is on the record, is that a recommendation that you would like to see this Committee make in the report that we have to make to Government? Given the potential imminence of the decisions, might it be something that you would ask the Chair to write specifically to the Chancellor about in advance of the spending review decisions?

Chair, will you please write today to the Chancellor and ask her to make an increase to the flood defence budget—not a decrease, as it would be foolhardy and reckless to do so?

If I get accused of prompting the witness, I will plead not guilty.

Yes, indeed. Message received.

Mary, how will the withdrawal of the Flood Re reinsurance scheme in 2039 impact people’s ability to access property resilience measures?

It is already happening. It is happening within the financial market at the moment: long-term lenders are already looking ahead and thinking, “Ho-ho! Flood Re is ending in 14 years.” They are making a long-term lending scheme and investing in the property. The Bank of England has asked them to take note of climate change when making a financial loan. I am getting a lot of people now coming to me, saying that they are selling their property but it has fallen through because the potential lender has withdrawn the offer. What I would like to see—I have written about this on my blogs, so insomniacs, please read—is a Flood Re 2.0. I know that we are bringing in something called flood performance certificates. I sit on the property resilience roundtable, and I also sit with Peter Bonfield, who is doing a review into property flood resilience; I have only just come from a meeting today. We are all working towards property flood performance certificates. I would like to see a Flood Re 2.0 that acknowledges property flood resilience measures, which include recoverability. That is more important to me, so that people can recover and can obtain flood insurance through Flood Re 2.0 with a good flood performance certificate, which you would have.

Siobhan and Graham, what role should local authorities specifically play in supporting flood resilience? How could they better incentivise that resilience action?

Their role is crucial. Flood affects different people in different locations in different ways. The local authority must be aware of vulnerable sites in its district and should be ready to put plans into place. If they are not going to do it, who is? They alone can co-ordinate between the emergency services that are needed. It happens quite well in Norfolk, but I know other areas where it does not happen at all. Their role is crucial.

Siobhan, do you want to follow up on that? From my own experience in Herefordshire, I know exactly the situation. There is a real issue with meeting the threshold of a certain number of households being affected before support mechanisms from central Government can kick in to support local government to support affected households. It is both local government and national Government that need to take action, is it not? Where do you see the real needs?

First, every place that floods should have a flood risk manager in place in the local council. In Shropshire council we have one person who is doing his best, but if a flood happens three times a year, one person just does not have the capacity to manage it all without receiving any funding to do so. That is an issue in itself, hence why people like me have to almost prop them up and support them by doing all the groundwork. I am not paid by the council for presenting the information of who flooded. There are clearly issues there. You might have somebody who moves over from the traffic department but does not have a clue about PFR, and who checks an email once every fortnight. The way the whole system is managed needs an overhaul. Yet again, it is all about Government pushing it down to the individual. The flood victim has to do it—we have to do more. Not only have we just been flooded, but we also have to do other people’s jobs for them. That is where I feel the onus is, and that needs to change.

As you know, we only had one flood risk manager. When people on TV say, “The council should do this,” I often point out that it is one man and his dog running the flood risk management department. We now have three. What joy is that? I take part in one of the FCRIP-funded schemes. I work on the RAIN project in Northamptonshire. One thing we are doing is giving communities at risk of flooding a flood box, to enable them to manage a flood until somebody can get there to help them. In Northamptonshire, there are over 240 parishes, most of which can flood. We are enabling and helping the community with head torches, hi-vis jackets, drain pods, flood sacks and all sorts of things that can help them to help each other. I also encourage something called flood buddies, so that people who are not at flood risk and who live in a local community can have a named person they can go and help to fit the property flood resilience measures and move their furniture. Local authorities can play their bit by doing that, training flood wardens and giving communities things that enable them to manage the flood.

I will move on to a set of questions around flood warnings. We have been talking about resilience measures. Siobhan, how effective is communication around flooding and early warning systems in your area in Shrewsbury?

From talking to people in gathering evidence for this, there is definitely room for improvement. It does not help when the EA is on strike. The algorithm of the map is up and down, which really does not help us. We find that they are quite inaccurate. It is about your knowledge of having flooded before, writing down, “This water comes into me at 4.20,” and making sure that you have a record of it. You really have to go off your own instincts for flooding as well. In the past, people have said that warnings can trigger someone to have to stop all their plans and basically do everything in 24 hours. In order to prepare for a flood, you are on a ticking time bomb, really. You need a good two or three days if you have to move everything upstairs and move cars and everything. The community speak to each other and to their groups, and they say that, of late, the warnings are always inaccurate.

Mary, would you agree with that?

I agree. I do not like automated flood warnings. People who have to move their furniture on a regular basis need to know what level the flood is going to get to, so they can get their furniture upstairs or not. Some people flood so frequently that they know exactly when to move their furniture. When you are 70 and trying to move furniture upstairs, you need accuracy. You need that local man with the local knowledge in the Environment Agency office, not an approximate flood warning. That is something that we need to revisit. I really am a huge fan of Environment Agency flood warnings—they are vital to enable people to enact their own flood plans or their to-do list—but some of them in Leicestershire came too late. As I have been traveling around the country, people have already been knee-deep in water before the flood warning arrived. That happens quite regularly, which is a shame, because they are essential for people to move all their belongings.

Why are flood warnings sometimes too late? What is causing that?

It is the automation, really. I am not an expert on how flood warnings are triggered. Perhaps that would be a question for Julie Foley later, because she has a thorough knowledge of flood warnings. Something that I have been told quite regularly around the country is that people’s flood warnings have come after the flood has arrived. Because our weather is changing, we have had so much wetness that the ground is like a sponge and cannot soak up any more. The tributaries and streams are rising very rapidly and going into the River Severn, for example, which was normally a slow riser. Now, because of the wet weather and the wet ground, and the tributaries going into them, they are rising far more quickly. Perhaps the Environment Agency flood warning has not caught up with the fact that things are happening so quickly now because of extreme weather conditions.

Patterns of flooding are changing, and we need to update our systems too.

Yes, absolutely.

Graham, have there been times when it was not clear which agency was responsible for dealing with flooding or issuing warnings or whatever, or when you received conflicting advice from different organisations? How navigable, basically, is the ecosystem of organisations in this?

In our little village, most people know and trust our local flood wardens, who are their first port of call, honestly. Our evacuation point is the local pub, unfortunately. Last time we were flooded, gold command based themselves in the local pub. We were all aware that they had information that for various reasons they did not want to share with the general public, which was a little frustrating at times. On the coast, if the wind changes just a few degrees, it can affect how serious the flooding is going to be. If it is off the land, it is not a problem; if it is coming on to the land, it is. Sometimes it goes along the coast, which is okay unless it swings round, and then the waves are crashing over the defences again. For most of the populace, the local flood wardens are their first port of call. I am not sure that they get too involved with the rest of the agencies at that stage.

If you are renting a property, it is down to the landlord to put resilience measures in place. There is now a minimum energy performance requirement of EPC C to be able to rent out your property. Would it be a good recommendation to say that there needs to be a minimum FPC in order to do the same? Secondly, when people are selling properties, should there be some requirement to get them up to a specified FPC level once we get these FPCs in place, before they are able to sell it on?

That is an excellent idea, and one that I was going to say myself.

It is much more important that you say it.

You are right across it. If you are renting a property that is at flood risk, the very least that you should do is supply the property with a flood door and self-closing air bricks to give people a fighting chance of keeping the floodwater out. I often hear that people are still living in wet rented properties because the landlord is not remotely interested, so that is an excellent idea. Also, people at flood risk will find themselves unable to sell. A local estate agent in Worcester rang me and said that they could not sell the property because of the flood risk. The property owner was thinking about putting in property flood resilience measures to enable them to sell it. That absolutely has to be the way forward. You cannot sell houses to flood. If your house is at flood risk, you really have to improve its resilience to enable yourself to sell it.

My apologies: I have to leave at this point, but I really was very impressed with the quality of all your answers to us. It has been really helpful—thank you.

I recently met a group of farmers and landowners in my constituency: the Bremhill Vales Farmers Group, who work with another group called BremZero. What is really interesting is that they are working with the Environment Agency on a project called Wiltshire Rural Run-off, where, as landowners, they are looking at mitigations to slow down the flooding and contain it in their own land. All of this is helping quite considerably to mitigate the flooding in the small urban areas around them. They are acting as attenuation, in many ways, but they are doing this off their own back as part of the community and as part of their own activities as local farmers and landowners. Is that something that you had heard of? Is that kind of working with the Environment Agency widespread, or am I involved in a one-off project?

The SVWMS project is about catching the water in the catchment area of the River Severn. The farmer Ed Tate spoke at my public meeting last year; Julia has met him, and I think she has been on his land. He was talking about flooding the land, and the initiative. He is constantly telling the authorities, “This is what we need to do. This is my land. I am here.” We have the National Trust’s Attingham Park, where, when the SVWMS project comes off, that is what will happen. This project has been talked about for seven years, and there is funding in the pipeline for demonstrator projects. I am asking them to get moving, because what happens in the meantime for us? We are still flooding two or three times each year. Quite frankly, I and the people of Shrewsbury and Shropshire are getting a bit fed up and frustrated and saying, “I will be dead before it happens.” Seven years for demonstrator projects is not good enough.

I can see that. Out of curiosity, though, if the project were to go ahead, would there be community buy-in? Does it feel as if it would be a step forward in mitigating at source?

This is our only hope at the moment. It needs to go ahead, and it needs to go ahead before I am dead.

Mary, do you know of similar projects?

I mentioned the RAIN project to you. It is a unique project that marries up natural flood management—working with farmers to slow the flow and hold the water on the land—and property flood resilience. It is very dear to my heart, and it is happening. There are many others that are happening, so yours is not unique. Farmers ought to have some financial recompense for doing that, because they are giving up their land for the betterment of the community.

Graham, I do not know whether there is anything in your coastal areas that is similar.

No. In our community, there are many properties that are quite close to the beach front, so I do not think that that would be viable in that case.

I would like to talk about the important role of community organisations. Mr French, what has helped your community to come together to prepare for flooding? What kinds of support or partnerships have made the biggest difference?

Well, getting flooded helped! We have a community resilience organiser.

Are they from the council? Where are they based? Are they a volunteer?

No. She is a councillor but operates independently from the council. Funding is raised locally for that. I know that the parish council have paid for two-way radios, jackets and that sort of thing. I am not aware of any funding coming from local government or central Government. It would be nice if they were supported. In addition to that, we have the flood wardens. I think they are supported by the local authority. As a community, in general, we like to try to support the people who have been flooded in various ways. Our café was opened fairly quickly and we were able to provide food for those who did not have kitchens and things. We did have donations come in from various sources, and food parcels that were delivered to people. They were gratefully received, but a lot of our guys did not have kitchens or power any more. They had a box of veg that they could sit and look at, but there was not much they could do with it. Help and assistance needs to be appropriate and thought through.

Could I ask the same question of you, Ms Connor? What has helped your community to come together to prepare for flooding? What kinds of support or partnerships have made the biggest difference?

When you are flooded, you do not get any support from any of the agencies, so you are turning to each other and you are coming together as groups. That is the only way. That is why I am here today, speaking on behalf of the people of Shrewsbury. You can have a bit of power and advocacy in doing this and supporting each other. I should not have to be going off to B&Q the night before a flood, buying sandbags not for me, but for other residents who were unable to get there. They should be available from the local authority. It is about having a voice and people power. You are doing other people’s jobs for them. The multi‑agency meetings that we have are a good way of raising the issues in the community. I leave no stone unturned in making sure that I get results for people, because I do not feel like anyone else is doing it.

Ms Long-Dhonau, what challenges are there in trying to organise or sustain a local flood group? What would make it easier for communities to take action?

I was very much involved in the early days of the National Flood Forum. I was its first chief executive. I also first set up Worcester Action Against Flooding. It is quite difficult to sustain. I am always looking for people to help me in what I do. I often find, as perhaps Tracey from the National Flood Forum will be able to tell you later, that there is an initial interest. If there is repeat flooding, like in Shrewsbury or in Worcester, the interest is always there, because the thought of flooding is not very far from people’s brain. But if you have not flooded for a few years, the interest does wane. That is where the National Flood Forum comes into its own, because it has conferences and it can get newsletters out to people. During covid, for instance, it had regular Teams meetings. You have to keep people very interested in flooding and keep it on the agenda. I find that the media come when there is a flood, but trying to get a bit of news into the media on a sunny day like today is incredibly difficult. But I went somewhere on Friday, which was a blazing hot day, and everybody still turned out. They had flooded in January, and I was inundated with people. People were still very engaged, probably because most of them will not be back in their homes until Christmas.

It is really interesting. That has come up a few times now: the inconsistency in how things operate, because we are relying on volunteers? You have inconsistency of geography, and then you have that inconsistency, where people are getting on with their lives. It waxes and wanes around the regularity of the flooding. I noticed that in your written submission you made some recommendations about having more paid staff to take more of a lead. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Yes. It would be great if, instead of having a person here who is trying to hold down a full-time job and keep the flood group together, people were rewarded for doing a job that perhaps the local authority does not have the time to do. I have found that many communities do have the skills. I am always flabbergasted, when I go into communities, by their extensive knowledge. I remember going to a village in Leicestershire where everybody was totally across how the flood happened, how to stop it and how to do things. To keep that vibrancy alive, having somebody within the community, with some financial remuneration to enable them to do that, would be absolutely wonderful.

It is about remuneration. You also talked in your evidence about training. I noticed also that one of the other flood action groups, at Watton and Saham, talked about a national handbook for each community, so, again, you have that consistency. What were your views on that?

You do not get given a handbook when you flood. It would be nice to have a handbook. There are lots of handbooks when you have a baby—you can go to the library. I have tried to do that on my website: I have put so much information on there that people are finding really useful, but I am a one-woman army and I am not very far up Google. There is lots of information on there, and I gladly share it with people. There is even information on how to recover in those first few bleak days after you have flooded and what to do. That handbook is on my website as well; it is not just from my experience, but from talking to so many others.

That is really helpful. My final question is to Ms Connor: to what extent do you feel that your group’s knowledge and experience has been listened to or used by local authorities, agencies or national bodies, and what could help to improve that relationship?

The answer is simply “Very little”. When you flood, what is the first thing in the EA guidance? Move your car in the morning. That is in the adverts, so we have to move our cars. In Shrewsbury, we are in the town centre. The river runs around the town in a loop, so we move our cars and put a note on. Then guess what? You get a parking ticket. You can write to try to appeal it, get it put on the agenda in a flood action group meeting or speak to the head of highways traffic management, but they are not interested.

Just to be clear, the same council that told you to move your car is giving you a parking fine.

Yes, Shropshire council. This is not isolated; it has happened a few times over the years with floods. I am still pushing to get a 24-hour flood pass in your car, like a disabled badge pass. John Bellis at our council is fantastic. We have one person who does his best to get everything moving. It took a year for all the debris and all the flood stuff at the quarry, down where I live, to get moved, but it was only when he was going by on a bicycle that he saw that you literally could not see the ground, because all the stuff was still there and built up. Nothing used to work. Nothing works at all now, in terms of the clear-up after a flood. I do not want to be putting gloves on and going to pick up E. coli and all sorts that a flood washes up. It was clear after Storm Henk that we do not have a flood map of Shrewsbury for people. Considering that we are one of the most flooded places in the country, why can we not identify a map of places that have repeatedly flooded? There should be letters going out—“Did you flood?”—so people know what to do. The flood risk action plan needs updating. It was last done in 2015. It needs to be done in most places. Councils need to have an action plan. I find that the Environment Agency wriggles out of anything. We do not feel that we are that well listened to or have got through.

How would you like that to change? If you were in charge, how would you organise this?

Instead of having 10 different people looking after this area and that area, and using contractors, the agencies really need to come together. Somebody needs to grasp the nettle of flooding, know what needs to be done and communicate, because it is clear that we are all in isolation and not working together. All this impacts on people like me, in the community, and everyone else. It is putting all the onus on us, for us to do it, and that is not good enough.

May I thank all three of you for the evidence that you have provided today? We hear your despair, but also your practical suggestions for going forward. That has been incredibly helpful. Ms Connor, although it may feel like no one is listening, your local Member of Parliament certainly is. It is partly because of your work that Julia, Cameron Thomas and other Members of Parliament who have been flooded have brought this review to the Committee as one of the first things we are looking at. I appreciate that a sympathetic ear is not as good as the action that you want to see, but the message is getting across, certainly to this Committee. I hope that in the final report and recommendations that we produce, you will see your evidence and long experience reflected. Thank you all for coming in. Witnesses: Tracey Garrett, Ian Moodie and Julie Foley.

We now come to the second panel of today’s meeting. Having heard from people who have been affected by floods, and from the organisations representing them, we now turn to those with responsibility for protecting those groups. May I welcome you all and thank you for attending? I invite you to introduce yourselves, your organisations and your areas of responsibility in regard to flooding.

My name is Tracey Garrett. I am chief executive at the National Flood Forum, which was set up over 20 years ago to support, help and represent flooded people. We do that in a number of ways. We have a helpline that takes over 1,000 calls a year. We offer recovery for people who have been flooded, once the emergency services have gone; we also do longer-term work in flood action groups, which is in specific flooded communities.

Hello, I am Julie Foley. I am one of the directors at the Environment Agency, which is the lead national body for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England. We have a strategic overview for all sources of flooding—that is flooding from rivers, the sea and surface water—as well as day-to-day operational responsibilities for managing flooding from rivers and the sea specifically. We have a number of roles and duties, but one of our key roles is to help deliver and manage the Government’s flood and coastal investment programme, to provide grants and deliver projects hand in hand with our local teams, as well as internal drainage boards, local authorities and other key partners. We also work in partnership locally and are a statutory planning advisor when it comes to flood risk and planning. Finally, we are a category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act, which means that we are involved in flood response. Our key responsibilities there are in relation to flood warnings.

My name is Ian Moodie. I am technical manager for ADA, the Association of Drainage Authorities. We are a membership body for the different risk management authorities across England and in other parts of the United Kingdom that manage flood risk, watercourses and water levels. The Environment Agency is a member of the association, as are internal drainage boards, local authorities—particularly lead local flood authorities, given their role in flood risk management—a number of suppliers to that sector and the regional flood and coastal committees that sit within the Environment Agency, which co-ordinate that at a regional level.

Ms Garrett, to what extent is the current division of responsibilities between national agencies, local authorities and bodies like drainage boards clear and well understood, both by the organisations themselves and by the public in flood-hit communities?

When it comes to flooding, water does not make any distinction between different responsibilities and different organisations. People do not make that distinction either. We hear on our helpline and in our communities over and over again, “They did not come to help me,” but our communities do not necessarily know who “they” are. They just know that somebody did not come. If you do not have insurance, nobody is coming. It is not terribly clear to communities, if they have flooded for the first time. What we see in flood action groups is that it becomes much more understood who has responsibility but, as Siobhan said earlier, we find that we have different organisations responsible for different bits. The picture is very complicated. It makes it very difficult for people to get any traction. They are passed from pillar to post, and they can fall through the cracks very easily.

That is certainly something that I and, I am sure, my colleagues who represent flood-hit communities would repeat. We heard it from the previous panel, too. Often it is the local authority that people expect to keep them safe. People blame the council for not doing so. Ms Foley, do you think that there is a communication issue for your organisation? As you say, you are the lead authority when it comes to protecting people, yet many flood-hit communities, even those who are intimately involved, do not really seem to know who is responsible for what, when actually primary responsibility lies with yourselves.

There are a complex range of responsibilities. If I can just explain it a little more, the Environment Agency has a strategic overview. That is something we take very seriously in our leadership role, including on areas that are not our prime delivery responsibility. When it comes to flood response, the lead authority is the local authority. That is where we would work very closely, particularly with local resilience forums in an area, to enable that response. I would go a bit further, though. I listened to the other panel and to Tracey’s points. We fully recognise that this is an area in which, particularly for local authority colleagues, resources will be really strained. We do a public attitudes flood survey every year, and we have over 2 million people now signed up to receive our flood warnings. It is very positive that they are receiving our flood warnings and understanding when they need to act, but that information is also telling us that only 49% of people who receive a flood warning actually know what to do when they receive it. They are receiving the warning from us, and we are doing the job we should be doing, but they do not know how to take action. That is one of the reasons why the Environment Agency has been collaborating with a range of third sector bodies. The National Flood Forum is one; we have also been working with a group called Communities Prepared, as well as the Red Cross and Aviva. We are looking at how we can support volunteers in communities, like those we have just been hearing from, but also flood wardens, who are trusted brokers who can work with members of the community to provide them with advice and information about what to do, as well as understanding vulnerable members of the community. That is work that we are very much supporting, but it is not a primary responsibility that the Environment Agency has.

To return to my question, do you think that the communications from your organisation could improve, so that people have greater clarity on what your responsibilities are?

There is a role for all organisations here, but particularly local resilience forums. When we have a major flood event, the main forum for planning flood response is what is called a local resilience forum. Those are often chaired by the police, alongside other emergency providers. That includes the Environment Agency, but also lead local flood authorities and others. Each of those local resilience forums operates quite differently. Many of them are absolutely brilliant and do a great job as professionals, but there is a lot of variability in the resourcing, experience and capabilities of those local resilience forums around the country. That is something we would welcome continuing to support.

Mr Moodie, do local authorities, including lead local flood authorities, have the powers, the resources and the technical capacity that they need to fulfil their flood risk management responsibilities?

For lead local flood authorities, it is challenging, as Julie was saying. Having the requisite resources to have a flood risk officer in place and be across the various responsibilities is a challenge. A big gap in the sector is making sure that there are people coming into the sector with the requisite set of skills to be able to perform their functions. They have a good set of powers—we understand it within the industry quite well—but it is about how they can utilise them and how we can make sure there is the right co-ordination. Sometimes that can break down between different authorities.

Local authorities have many responsibilities, from potholes in the roads, which are going to be noticed by people every single day, to care services and schools, which have to run every day. Then they have flooding, which may or may not happen every other year. In Chesterfield, we had bad floods in 2007 and then none for 16 years. Do you think that the unpredictability and rarity of flooding means that they are not as well equipped once disaster strikes? We often then hear local authorities saying, “Lessons will be learned,” but it may be 10 or 15 years until those lessons are put into action. Is that something that you recognise?

I recognise that. Within a lead local flood authority team, they will have a small core team of one, two or three people. They are often very capable and diligent people, but then you get an event, and—as the community group individuals we had beforehand said—there will be a lot of incidents that they will be dealing with all at once. They will then need to investigate them, if appropriate. It is at that point that it becomes a challenge. It is fits and starts, and it is exactly that set of pressures.

I do not know if you were listening, but in the previous panel the residents told us that agencies do not take responsibility. They push it on to all the other agencies. So far, each of you has talked about other agencies that are responsible. Are the residents right?

From a community perspective, they are right, yes. We take loads of calls from people who are being pushed around from pillar to post. They cannot find the right responsible person. There might be a multitude of reasons why that is the case, but that is the experience from the community perspective.

What do you think, Ms Foley?

We need to be thinking about our community engagement. I do understand that perspective, but we need to be thinking about community engagement immediately after a flood, but also in an ongoing way. I know from my own experience of working operationally on flooding matters and an awful lot of projects that—particularly in some areas, with the changing climate and greater flood risk challenges—we need to work with communities in a much more long-term way and listen to their voices. We have local flood groups and other groups, which are very powerful, and they are important. Often, they are made up of people who shout the loudest or have the most availability to make their points. That is not always the most representative of a particular community, just to be fair. We need to take an inclusive approach. To think about this much more proactively, rather than just thinking about these issues after it floods, we have to think about what we do to engage communities before floods. We are going to flood more frequently; that is inevitable. We have been trialling citizen panels through one of the innovation programmes. It is actually the programme that Mary Long‑Dhonau has just mentioned, which is through our flood and coastal resilience innovation programme. In a number of strategic locations, including the Thames, the River Severn and the Humber estuary—places where there are very complex flood and coastal risk management challenges—we have been looking to listen to those views and to provide the evidence and information, so that people can be informed of what their flood risk is. We provide them with the options to deal with those flood issues. They might be very difficult. They might be immediate; they might be in the longer term, over the coming decades. We are seeking to engage them and involve them meaningfully in policy options. If we shift our engagement communities to be much more proactive, rather than only talking about it after a flood event, that would be a much more meaningful way to involve community groups and other stakeholders in what some of the solutions might be in the medium term. Those might be nature-based solutions, for example, as the previous group mentioned.

That would certainly be very welcome. It certainly speaks to what the residents were telling us: that they are ready for that engagement, but they feel that no one is listening. What they really want to know, Ms Foley, is how well you, as agencies and authorities, collaborate with each other in practice to deliver flood resilience. Can you talk to us about that?

There are a lot of different strategic partnerships that already exist around the country. Perhaps I can give you a few site-based examples, as well as some national examples. The Northumbria drainage partnership involves 13 of the lead local flood authorities in the north-east. It involves the Environment Agency, but it also involves the water company, quite fundamentally, in thinking about sustainable drainage, planning for measures and the future funding of projects that we can take forward collaboratively. That is just one example. There are many partnerships like that around the country. Indeed, many of them are facilitated and supported by the regional flood and coastal committees, which are locally based, are made up of local partners and local elected members, and provide a really powerful, devolved, regional forum for some of those conversations. Alongside that, the Environment Agency collaborates nationally with organisations. Again, to give you a few examples, one of our responsibilities is to lead and develop the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy for the nation. It was laid in Parliament in 2020. We produced a road map to help deliver that strategy. Many partners and national bodies are on that, including ADA, the National Flood Forum, the NFU, Flood Re, National Highways and local government bodies. We have agreed collaborative actions to take forward based on that national strategy, which has been in place for the last five to six years. Many of those actions get tracked by other bodies, such as the NAO, the Climate Change Committee and others. We are very open about our tracking and delivery on that, so it is fully transparent. To give you another example, we recently created the rural flood resilience partnership, recognising that a number of our rural communities, particularly in recent years, have been very much on the frontline of flood impacts. We are working with farming businesses and landowners to develop ways in which they can be much more resilient on their particular farms and in their wider communities. We are thinking about what support and products we could develop for them. That is something that we have taken forward with a number of partners, including the NFU, ADA and the CLA. I could go on, but I will not. Those are just some of the many examples of the strategic partnerships we have.

They are very helpful. I hope that they are not a lucky few examples or the exception that proves the rule. We received a lot of written evidence for this inquiry that repeated the first half of your message. There are strategic requirements and duties on different agencies and bodies to collaborate and work together, but the practical reality on the ground is that that is not how communities feel their delivery is happening. They say that they see some systematic barriers to that joined-up working. In fact, they say that you work in silos. We have strategic versus delivery; we have river water versus groundwater flooding; we have capital versus revenue. There is a series of systematic failings, where these agencies are working in silos. Despite the duty to co-operate, that is not felt on the ground. Mr Moodie, do you think that there are any barriers to that collaboration, in terms of delivery? What could help to overcome some of those barriers?

I will talk about the positives, first of all. Working with the Environment Agency and local authorities, we have had something called public sector co-operation agreements. They have been around since the mid-2010s—2013, 2014, something like that—and they exist where one risk management authority has certain duties and functions that it needs to undertake, but another authority is better placed to act. At a simple level, that might happen where a stretch of main river embankment needs to be maintained, and the drainage board is in that area anyway, maintaining its existing channels in the locality, so it can step in and act. That works really well, where it is empowered and enabled. You talked about revenue and capital investment as one of the arbitrary barriers. That is one that we definitely recognise. We have a good, strong track record of capital investment in this country over the last couple of decades. I would completely second Mary’s comments about needing to keep up that investment and enhance it, but it is really on the revenue side of things, around the maintenance of our assets and systems, that we have a growing pressure. Flood events are increasing in frequency, extent and duration. We are now seeing assets that have been damaged during a flood event not being recovered, because we do not have the money. That then puts pressure on the maintenance of the other assets in the system. We are in a bit of a vicious cycle, which we need to get out of.

Do you recognise the relationship there? Well-maintained assets could be a really cheap preventative piece, instead of allowing things to fail.

Yes, absolutely. It allows you to then manage those systems in a controlled way. It can engender partnership as well. We have had a number of flood events affecting the fens, which is an area I am more familiar with because of the number of drainage boards. The winter before last, we had 12 embankments of main rivers that were breached. They failed, effectively. That can erode trust to an extent, not between authorities but between the communities in those areas, and that can affect their willingness to play their role. Resilience is the main part of the Committee’s interest here. It is not just about flood prevention. If those things can overtop in a controlled way, you can start to look at what we can do within the rural area, the farmland. How can it absorb some of that water? If it fails, that is a complete breakdown. The relationship becomes a bit “them and us”. That is something that we would like to get ahead of. If there is that maintenance, then there is an honest dialogue about the sharing of that responsibility or those powers. That can really work.

May I add to that? We would very much welcome greater flexibility in the provision of funding. There has been a big onus in recent years on investing in new flood defences. I am not saying that that is not important, but have seen time and again that our defences are working very hard over winter periods. They need to have investment in refurbishment and replacement as well. We would welcome greater flexibility to be able to make the right technical choices about when to invest in a new defence, as well as to invest in what is an increasingly ageing asset base. That is a point that Ian has made, but it is a point that the Environment Agency would underline as well.

That is a very helpful recommendation.

You mentioned communities getting frustrated. I recognise that, because there is so much endeavour in local partnerships and strategic partnerships, but sometimes the points that community representatives raise are strategic policy points. If we unlocked some of those points, it would really help us with some of the solutions, through the partnerships that we are endeavouring to take forward.

That is really helpful. Water knows no boundaries, but apparently if it is groundwater it is somebody’s problem, and if it is river water it is somebody else’s. Do you recognise that having different agencies responsible for different types of water is incredibly frustrating for residents?

I totally recognise it. Most flooding events come from multiple sources. The flooding that we had over the new year in Manchester was coming from rivers, but it was also flooding from open surface water, which was basically where drainage systems were being overwhelmed. You were getting flooding from multiple sources. Of course, as a citizen, you absolutely do not care where the water is coming from: it makes absolutely no difference. It comes back to the need to have a body that takes a holistic approach and is able to identify the best solutions. This is very much what the Environment Agency does, I should add.

Do you feel that the Environment Agency takes responsibility in those scenarios?

Our job is to help understand the risk holistically and what some of the solutions—

Who do you think is responsible in that scenario? You are an expert in this room. If that were to happen again today, to me, who would you advise me to contact? Who is responsible in that scenario?

Let me start first. Understanding flood risk from different sources is the Environment Agency’s responsibility. Very recently, we published our national assessment of flood risk, a tool called NaFRA. That is our key evidence base for understanding flood risk from rivers, the sea and surface water. Groundwater is also an area that we are developing. We identified that there are now 6.3 million properties in areas of flood risk from one of those sources of flooding. Nearly two thirds of those people are at risk of surface water flooding in particular. We do understand where the risks are.

My question is who is responsible.

There are different bodies that are responsible—

I know. I am asking you, as the expert, whether I should call the Environment Agency the next time that happens. Who should I contact?

For flooding from rivers and the sea—

There is water in my home. There is some coming from a drain and there is some coming from the river next to my home. Who do I call first?

When it comes to flood recovery, the prime body that is responsible for that is the local authority.

It has taken you a long time to answer that question. You can understand people’s frustration. Even you took a long time to get to the bottom of who is responsible, who we should contact and who does what, because it is incredibly complicated. That is what residents are telling us every day. We need to tidy that up. My final questions are to Tracey Garrett. What changes to the flood defence funding formula would improve fairness and effectiveness in delivering flood defences?

We all know that the FDGiA funding discriminates against some of the smaller communities, which cannot meet the cost-benefit criteria. We welcome the fact that DEFRA is reviewing the funding and the funding criteria, but we need to take into account smaller numbers of properties and impact on mental health. 43% of people suffer from PTSD after flooding. We need to take into account several different elements that are currently not factored in. The fact is that somebody can flood for 20 years, over and over again. Perhaps some of those criteria need to have a stronger weighting now, not necessarily just number of properties protected.

We heard in a previous panel, on another day, about other types of impact, such as social impacts. You might have a village with one shop or one school, and that whole village then becomes isolated through lack of access to public transport. Do you think that that is another criterion?

Yes, absolutely. We are running a project in Shrewsbury at the moment that is looking at the true economic and financial cost of flooding on businesses. People from Tenbury Wells have been talking in the media about perhaps abandoning the town. It can seriously have an impact on schools, colleges, shops, businesses, homes and lives.

Thank you. That is really helpful.

Finally, if I can just follow up slightly on that point, you were good enough to be here for the first panel. You heard one panellist, who had been flooded 20 times, say that no one is listening. Meanwhile, you and your colleagues are there saying, “We have all these partnership meetings. We are bringing these people in,” and so on. There just seems to be a disconnect between how you represent how busy your organisation is in trying to resolve this, and the experience of people who feel that no one is listening and that no one cares about their community. To return to what I was saying, do you not think that your organisation seems a fairly faceless Government body? Meanwhile, those people who are desperate feel that they are not being listened to. Is there not a disconnect there, in terms of that communication and the public-facing nature of your body?

I absolutely understand the concerns that people have. A lot of my colleagues in the Environment Agency would feel a lot of distress on hearing that. The Environment Agency has local teams that are based in places. We have local area directors and local staff who live in those communities. They very much care for those communities. When you talk about partnerships, these are not folk just having pointless meetings. They are genuinely wanting to engage with community members to understand their views. That is very much the ethos of the Environment Agency.

Why is the community feeling like no one is listening? We are not talking about someone on the Clapham omnibus; we are talking about someone whose life is dedicated to trying to improve the flooding situation in their community. They are feeling unheard.

I am just trying to present a broader picture. The Environment Agency serves communities right around the country. Can I also point out that the number of communities at risk of flooding is increasing all the time? We are working with communities inland, on the coast and in rural areas. In terms of the resources that the Environment Agency has in our local areas, we are absolutely doing our best. Mary Long-Dhonau referred to this. We have brilliant staff who are involved and incredibly expert at their jobs in terms of flood warnings, for example. We have flood warning duty officers who work around the clock when we have flooding events. We also have staff who are working on developing projects in the longer term, in many cases working for years with communities to develop a range of different flood projects. I am just providing a perspective. If you went into one of our local area offices, they would feel very differently about these points and would be deeply passionate about listening to the views of communities. They work very hard at doing that.

The way I would say it is that I might, as a Member of Parliament, have all these meetings. I might say to my constituents, “If you followed me around, you would see how busy I was,” but I need to actually communicate that by having a Twitter or Facebook account, showing people what I am doing. They should not have to follow your people around in order to know how busy they are. That is the point on communication that I am trying to make. I will leave it there.

To follow up on the Chair’s point about community engagement in flood risk management, I represent Chippenham, which is a constituency that floods regularly. I live in Bradford-on-Avon, which is an area at low level. In the most recent floods, it was the community emergency volunteers who made all the difference. They were the ones who were out quickly, alongside some support from local parish wardens and the police. It was hours before anybody else from any of these flood forums turned up. We have communities who are really keen to be involved. I mentioned earlier, in the previous panel, that I have a very active group of local farmers who are engaged with the Environment Agency on the Wiltshire run-off project. I was extremely depressed to hear that a similar scheme has been going for seven years and is still a talking shop. My real question is about the ways in which communities are currently involved in the flood planning and the decision making. What could be done to strengthen their role? If they become talking shops, you are not going to have their enthusiasm for long.

Just as a starting point, which I am sure you will have sympathy for, because it will be a very key point that other local authorities would make as well, the Environment Agency has limited resources as a public body. We are, in many cases, spread very thinly. We would love to work with every community and every group, and I know that many of my colleagues would be deeply passionate about doing that, but they do not have the resources to do it. We have been working through other organisations. That would include the National Flood Forum, but I have also mentioned working with Communities Prepared on providing support and information to volunteers who want to get involved in emergency response. We do a lot of work locally to train flood wardens. There were a number of mentions of the importance of flood wardens; that is something we recognise. Many of the flood wardens who are operational in local communities have been trained by the Environment Agency. I myself was involved in some training around flood wardens when I was an operational manager. That is the support that we would provide. We provide support, training, information and signposting about where to go, because we will not be able to work with every single community that is affected.

I am aware that our flood warden was trained by the Environment Agency, and I am absolutely not criticising the local Environment Agency officers and wardens in my area, in any way. They work tirelessly and are incredibly accessible. It is just about this disconnect that people feel in the case of emergency, and this keenness to be involved that does not seem to be happening. I just wonder, Mr Moodie, whether enough is being done to build trust between the communities and the flood risk authorities, particularly in those areas that flood frequently but are unlikely to benefit from the major flood defence schemes.

It is hard. I will credit the agency: it has some very diligent local staff and, when they are empowered to make local choices, they do a fantastic job. It is about being able to devolve, as much as possible, that decision making. It has to be within a framework but, if it can devolve that decision making to a local level, the local staff can achieve some fantastic things. On your question about community engagement, they only cover a tenth of England but, where we do have internal drainage boards, they are very much embedded in their communities. The representatives on a drainage board are the farmers in that area and the council representatives as well. They have that directness of having a workforce achieving the management and maintenance of those systems in these lowland areas, alongside the community engagement side of things. They are very embedded and they have a directness, which helps. Going back to the question of barriers, the regulatory side of things can often be another element. It can take a long time to get things done and that can clog the process, which can frustrate people at a community level. It can be a point of contention and frustration between authorities as well. We touched on local decision making, but we have not talked a lot about it. Regional flood and coastal committees potentially have a core role here. They allow that interface between the agency, as a large, national organisation, and that regional decision making, sharing decisions and local pressures. If more could be passed through that decision-making prism, it would help those in the regional area to make fundamentally better decisions about what is important to them from a flood and water management perspective. You have to integrate things. Mary touched on this: we can often deal with these things in silos. Different forms of flood risk are part of that, but in a lowland landscape it is also about water resource management and water quality. It is all integrated together. We are not looking after that infrastructure for one singular thing; it has to serve that multitude and we have to value that multitude.

Would it be sensible if the other 90% of the country—or at least those of us who flood but do not have drainage associations—had an overarching body that would address some of the concerns of local Environment Agency officers? Is that what you are suggesting? Those concerns could then be taken through to a slightly more strategic level, rather than working individually at a very micro level as they do now. There could then be a more strategic, collegiate and multi-agency approach.

In terms of a collegiate, multi-agency approach, you are not going to see internal drainage boards in every part of the country. They are locally focused in the lowlands that they serve, but that is really where lead local flood authorities, if they were adequately resourced within this area, could play a pivotal, co-ordinating role.

We have not quite decided which is the lead authority yet, have we?

The lead local flood authority is the local council, so the unitary authority or the county council.

Thank you. I see what you mean. It is about trying to get them to form a very specific and visible group, to give more trust and more transparency. Can I ask Tracey what value that local knowledge can bring to the flood risk planning and response? How can volunteer networks and flood groups be better supported to contribute effectively into these more multi-agency groups?

We see that our flood action groups can be really impactful. People bring, as Mary said, tons of skills and tons of expertise. They all have a life outside flooding, where they have careers, expertise and understanding. They bring all of that to bear. They understand their local area better than authorities, because authorities cannot necessarily be everywhere. They do bring a huge amount of understanding and expertise. As we saw with Siobhan, they can contribute huge amounts. However, they have jobs; they have families; they have illness. It is not something that can just be expected for free. It needs to be supported. People need to be supported in order to contribute. If we move towards a model where we are supporting communities to contribute more, perhaps we will be able to harness that knowledge better. We see fantastic things happening in communities all the time, but if they are supported and perhaps funded and resourced, we will get much more benefit from that, because we will be harnessing that expertise.

We can also secure continuity, which of course is always one of the problems with voluntary groups, is it not?

Yes, it is.

Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

In Bognor Regis, we have the fantastic flood avoidance community taskforce. My question, coming from a business background, is about the metrics and measures that each of your agencies is required to adhere to in how you engage with these fantastic groups. It is sounding very generic at the moment. I would love to hear something more specific about how you can take that fantastic good will and turn it into an outcome.

I will just say that we are a charity, not a statutory body. That is the first thing. However, in terms of bringing the community together, the metrics are about how many more people feel better for getting involved in their community. How many flood action plans do we create with various agencies? How much on that action plan is actually delivered? We bring our communities together. Everybody engages. We have fantastic staff from the local authorities and the Environment Agency. We bring everyone together. They put together a plan. The local community expertise is put in, and then nothing can happen, because there is no funding. We can do all these measures, but a lot depends on what can happen after that to really make a difference to the community.

Julie or Ian, have you anything to add on how you engage with the local flood action groups?

Yes. Where there is a local flood action group—and there will not always be one in a particular locality—we would always engage with that group. A metric we would use as a measure of success is encouraging the take-up of flood warnings, for example. We often find that that can be quite variable around the country. Particularly in areas that are more disadvantaged, there may be what we would call a low flood literacy rate: a low understanding of flood risk. That might mean that people do not see that there is a need to sign up for flood alerts and flood warnings, be aware of them and know how to take action. Flood awareness is something that we work very hard on. Every year, we run a flood action campaign that is all about that, encouraging people to be more flood-aware. That is a key area. When we take forward a flood project in an area—that might be a flood barrier, a maintenance project or a natural flood management project—we clearly need community buy-in. We are not going to take it forward without community buy-in, so we would have a lot of community engagement workshops to ensure that there is agreement to the flood project going ahead in that area, and to explain what the reasons are for that project. It is integral to many aspects of our work.

Are you taking those projects from the recommendations of the community taskforces?

For local groups, yes, we would listen to their views. To give you a bit of an example, we would run a local flood group or go to a local flood group, if we are not running it, to show them historical flood levels. A particular community may not have flooded for quite a long time. There might actually be quite low awareness that it is an area of flood risk. We would give them examples of record flood levels. We would show them how floods could change with future climate change and we would talk through some of the things that we can work with them on, which in many cases will be in partnership with others, including the local authority. We talk to them about what those projects could involve. As Tracey was just saying, our ability to take forward those projects and those community ideas will always depend on funding.

From an internal drainage board perspective, a lot of what they are doing will be articulating how they are managing and maintaining their systems, the maintenance work that they are achieving, the state of the assets and how they are working. That can sound quite detailed, but at a local community level, very often the communities who live in those areas and are reliant on, say, pumping stations in the case of the fens, know where they are. They will be interested in that functioning and that detail. Being able to take the community on that journey, in terms of how that is being managed, is really important, as well as looking at the condition of assets across the piece. That includes the most critical ones, but at all levels it is a really useful metric in understanding how we are performing and keeping up with that side of the equation.

Thank you. I will follow up to get some constituency details.

Ms Garrett, we have probably established some of the things that are not working so well, which are along the lines of communication and a lack of transparency. What else is not working so well, and what is working well in the current approach to promoting and supporting property flood resilience?

With property flood resilience, we heard from Siobhan—and we hear it quite a lot—that people have done all they can to protect themselves. Sometimes they have spent tens of thousands of pounds. It may, more often, protect you, but sometimes you will still end up inundated with dirty, foul water. That brings with it a lot of trauma and cleaning up. It can take months or years to get back into homes. With property flood resilience, there are three kinds of people who ring the helpline. We have people who know and understand that they are at flood risk and want to do as much as they can to protect themselves and who have the resources to do that, even though it is tens of thousands of pounds. They go on to do as much as they can, although these days they cannot get a surveyor for a single property. We have people who are lucky enough to fall under the £5,000 scheme, even though that is not a huge amount. They have to put up that money up front. Certainly, they have to pay £500-plus for the survey. We then have those people who have no access to any additional resources. That is a huge problem. If they do not fall under a scheme, they have no capacity to protect themselves or their properties in any way. It can be a massive challenge for people.

Ms Foley, you might have been ready to speak there anyway, but what can your organisation do to square that circle?

We are very positive about wanting to mainstream property flood resilience. Just to be really clear, when it comes to flood risk management, yes, there are flood walls and flood barriers, but we also need other things, particularly given the reality of climate change. We need more nature-based solutions. We absolutely need to help individuals with property flood resilience. It is a really small market at the moment. One of the challenges is how to mainstream it. There are a few things we could do. Just to give you a sense of the Environment Agency’s role, nine out of 10 property flood resilience measures that are installed on properties in England have been funded by our flood and coastal investment programme. Nearly all the investments have come from the Environment Agency’s investment programme to date. If we mean to expand that market, there are a number of things that we need to do. Over the years, there have been some instances in which householders—they have certainly come to us and reported this—have lost confidence in property flood resilience measures, because they have been installed by people who have not known what they are doing, who have not been trained, who are not certified and who are not familiar with how to install a flood gate, a flood barrier or whatever it might be. We need to make sure that that market is properly trained and accredited because most people will not be going to a specialist; they will be going to the average local builder or tradesperson. We need to be able to expand that much more generally. We also have a real bottleneck at the moment with the availability of property flood resilience products. There is really limited availability. That is partly because there is only one major testing centre for property flood resilience, which is at HR Wallingford. We have worked with Hull University to extend another independent testing facility. Needless to say, it is really important that we test these products before we put public money into them. Again, that is a really key confidence point. If we are going to build public confidence in property flood resilience, we need a sector that is better trained and better certified and where we have those proper qualifications. We insist on BSI kitemarking, for example. That is very good, but the process can be quite slow. Certainly, a number of SMEs in this sector have reported to us that the process is too slow. Today, a number of us have been at a major workshop. We have commissioned an independent review by Professor Peter Bonfield, the vice-chancellor of the University of Westminster. You might have heard of him in the context of property flood resilience, because he did a review for the then Government in 2016, quite some time ago. We have invited him back, with the support of Minister Emma Hardy, to look at what progress has been made and to take the journey further and say, “Now that people understand what property flood resilience is and we have an ambition to mainstream it, what do we now need to do to make these products much more available and to increase public understanding of why property flood resilience is so important?” We get feedback from members of the community, and it often surprises us. When a person is flooded and we talk to them about property flood resilience and whether they would consider that for their home, they do not automatically express an interest. Sometimes they need to be flooded up to three times before they will consider installing property resilience. A home that has property flood resilience has 70% less damage and repair cost than a home that does not. That really is fundamental.

We are back to the communication piece again, by the sound of it. What actions is the Environment Agency taking to get that working?

About a year ago, we worked with Flood Re, which has a number of mechanisms around flood insurance, including its own Build Back Better mechanism for supporting property flood resilience for homes that have flooded, to do a social media campaign to raise awareness. That campaign went beyond the conventional routes that public bodies would use, such as gov.uk, which most people do not use. It looked at Twitter sites and other forums. We worked with DIY influencers and others who have traction with people. Through Peter Bonfield’s review, on which we are supporting him, we are trying to work with a number of different sectors. These are not the usual suspects when it comes to flood risk management, particularly across the building and development sector, to get them more involved in raising awareness. When somebody is thinking about work in their home, they generally go to a trusted builder, a trusted tradesperson, somebody who has been recommended by a friend, a neighbour or a member of the family. You need those individuals to know what property flood resilience is, to be qualified and to have gone through the training. We need to get to some of the sectoral groups so that they can communicate those messages much more directly to householders. That is probably one of the most pivotal things that we could do. It is a focus area and a target of the Bonfield review.

You mentioned earlier that flooding is becoming more consistent, but your resources are increasingly stretched. How can the funding for property flood resilience be structured better to support resistance and recovery measures?

When this Government came into power, one thing they did early doors, which we very much welcomed, was announce a review of the existing partnership funding flood formula. The Secretary of State for EFRA made a very open comment that the current funding formula is far too complex. That is something that we would agree with. Sometimes there can be a lot of hurdles to get access to funding and take projects forward, particularly for projects that are quite small-scale in value but are terribly important to a household or a community. That applies to property flood resilience, but it also applies to sustainable drainage. It applies to lots of natural flood management measures. Small-scale community-based measures can often find it difficult to access funding. Over the years, that has really frustrated us and many of our local officers. We really welcome the review that the Government are doing to help streamline some of the processes so that projects such as property flood resilience can get into delivery faster. That is something that we definitely want to see.

This is ticking the flexibility box that was mentioned earlier. There was an inflexibility that made things more difficult.

There are many inflexibilities. One of those relates to the balance between investing in new projects and new defences and maintaining existing defences. We also want to mainstream wider and smaller resilience measures. Natural flood management and property flood resilience are two of the key ones.

I wanted to come back in on the mainstreaming of PFR. It is something that communities are quite worried about. What we hear from the flood action groups and particularly on the helpline is that the mainstreaming of PFR might bias towards cheaper schemes. PFR might be more affordable or be a cheaper option than a community scheme or a capital scheme. One of the challenges with PFR—this did come up in the last session—is that communities and flooded people can do all they can to protect themselves, but they do not have any control over some of the major things that are impacting flooding, such as climate change, antiquated sewer systems and development, particularly now that we are moving into an ambitious building and development phase. We need to have the right solution for the right type of flooding in the right type of place. That might be a multi-pronged approach. It might not be that you just focus on one element; you focus on a number of them to get the right result.

I have a really important point to add to that. We are not going to recommend a solution just because it happens to be the cheapest one. The Environment Agency would always look at the best solutions for tackling risk in a place. In many cases, it is a combination. An engineered flood defence will often work really well in combination with a nature-based solution or property flood resilience. It is very rarely either/or; it is often in combination.

I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Moodie. What are the potential benefits and challenges of implementing schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act? How might it improve the delivery and long-term maintenance of SuDS?

It would be beneficial. Schedule 3 is the element of the Flood and Water Management Act that was referred to in the earlier session in regard to having a SuDS approval body, which would ensure that developers above a certain threshold put forward a SuDS solution, that it is approved by the local flood authority and that there is an authority in place to manage and maintain that asset through its useful life. At the moment, SuDS are put in at a range of different standards. Unless they have a process for maintenance, we will not be able to rely on them to serve their purpose. SuDS in isolation are not a solution; they work in combination with all the other defences that you have within a catchment. It could be really critical. It is part of the system, but it is a resourcing issue at the same time. We cannot just enact schedule 3 on its own without having the requisite officers, the support and the time and keying that in to the planning system. It is not a silver bullet on its own, but it would take us a lot further forward than where we are now.

It is effective if it is done in a hybrid manner.

On the flood insurance aspect, that is not something that the Environment Agency provides. It is provided through Flood Re. You need to refer those points particularly to DEFRA. When it comes to planning, I am very happy to respond. One of the key roles of the Environment Agency is as a statutory planning adviser. Our statistics show us that in the majority of planning applications, local planning authorities take notice of our advice. In 96% of cases, planning applications accord with the advice of the Environment Agency. Planning policy is set by the Government, just to be clear; our job is to enact it. Planning policy is based on avoidance. It requires development to avoid areas of high flood risk, and only in exceptional cases should development go ahead for other overriding sustainable development reasons. If that were to happen, we would provide advice on how to ensure that the development is safe over its lifetime and avoids making flood risk worse elsewhere. For example, we might suggest raising the floor level of a particular development in order to mitigate the impact of flooding. There is something that I would flag, though, as a challenge for our local authority partners. When we provide advice, particularly through planning applications, we suggest a number of conditions, particularly if development goes ahead in a higher flood risk area. There has been a lot of research in which local authorities have been asked whether they enforce those conditions. Largely due to a shortage of resources, they are very rarely enforcing those conditions. That is something that we need to be concerned about, in terms of local authority resourcing. The Environment Agency will be putting forward some very important conditions as to why development may go ahead in an area of flood risk. Our first port of call will be to ask for it not to go ahead in an area of flood risk, but where there is a reason for that, we will have set these conditions. It is very important that they are carried through, particularly because we are seeing flood risk increasing across the country.

I want to go back to my colleague’s line of questioning about who has responsibility in certain situations. EA has responsibility for river flooding, and the local lead flood authority has the responsibility for surface water flooding—is that right? For the benefit of the public: if you have a flood with both sets of flooding, who is responsible?

The response is co-ordinated by the local resilience forum and it is led by the local authority.

I have some questions on monitoring. First, Ms Foley, to what extent are the current monitoring and warning systems meeting the needs of communities, particularly in relation to surface water flooding, for which you do not have responsibility, and rapidly developing flood events?

In terms of flood forecasting and warning, we have some very long-established relationships. The Environment Agency has a longstanding collaboration with the Met Office through the Flood Forecasting Centre. That is world-leading. There is no other existing collaboration like that, to our knowledge, across the whole of Europe or even internationally. It is often the envy of other countries. That enables us to bring together the meteorological expertise of the Met Office with the hydrological expertise, the water expertise, of the Environment Agency. We can do five-day forecasts for emergency responders. That enables them to plan, particularly when there is flooding from rivers and the sea, and it enables us to target our flood warnings as appropriately as we can in particular locations. We are acutely aware that flooding from surface water is an area that needs to improve, because our mainstream flood warnings do not cover it. That is because surface water flooding is really difficult to predict. I will just take a moment to explain this, because it is very important. In flooding from rivers and the sea, water coming down a catchment may take several days before it reaches a community. With coastal flooding, we are able to look at issues many days out; that gives us a chance to issue flood forecasts and give notice to emergency responders about how to prepare. Surface water flooding is incredibly hyper-localised. It could be due to a thunderstorm that lasts a matter of minutes. The effects can be very quick. You can have flooding in a very localised part of the town, not even across the whole of the town. Predicting surface water is very difficult. Forecasting surface water flood risk is very difficult. We have been working with the Met Office—the Met Office is very much leading this, of course, as the forecasting experts—on something called nowcasting to improve the understanding of rapid rainfall events, so that we can address that. Last summer, we piloted what is called a rapid flood guidance service for emergency responders, which is our first attempt at piloting the provision of flood warning information to emergency responders so that we can give people as much time to prepare and do the work necessary to respond to surface water flood events. We will be using the same service again this summer. It is often in summer periods that you see those really rapid heavy thunderstorm events. We have had a few of them in the last few weeks, as you might have noticed. That is something of a focus area for us, and it is something that we are improving through our work with the Flood Forecasting Centre.

How can we increase the uptake of flood alerts? How can we get more people to sign up for the warnings?

Currently, 2.2 million people are signed up. I am sure you know this anyway, but we triage flood alerts and flood warnings. Sometimes that needs some explanation. That is often part of our communications. When people receive a flood alert, we are telling them that flooding is possible. When they receive a flood warning, it means that they should expect flooding. When there is a severe flood warning, it means that there is danger to life and we may need, in the worst case, to work with local authorities and other emergency responders to evacuate communities. We spend a lot of time trying to explain to communities that there are different types of alerts and warnings and what to do when they receive them.

They have to sign up to them, do they not?

Many people can automatically sign up to it, but, yes, they do need to sign up to it. It is a completely free service. When you go to check for flooding, the flood warning service is on gov.uk. If you have a look at a local river in your particular area or an area that you are interested in, you can see the river gauge monitoring information. You can see when it last flooded. You can see when the gauge has recorded historical levels. The amount of information you can get from that is now really significant. We have also recently updated the service that allows people to check their long-term flood risk with our latest flood risk maps. That is not for emergencies or for immediate responses, but so that people can just be flood-aware more generally. If you type in your postcode—absolutely anybody can do this; it is a completely freely available service—you can find out about the risk of flooding in your area from any source. It also shows you flood depths and the potential impact of climate change, which is an area that we also need to communicate a lot better. A number of you have asked about communication. That is an example of services that are freely available, which the Environment Agency provides as digital services, to help people understand their risk a lot better.

Mr Moodie, how effectively is flood risk data shared and communicated between agencies and with the public? What could improve transparency and co-ordination?

We have reasonably good data sharing between the different risk management authorities. It has been a point of strain in the past between water companies and the wider sector in terms of sharing data and information. Julie talked about flood guidance statements; they are incredibly useful documents that are shared between authorities. They work quite effectively. It is the sharing of data and knowledge around the schemes and the maintenance and management of systems that I would really highlight. There is an opportunity to do a little bit more to show when things are being managed and maintained and how they are being maintained, and to make that publicly available. We could certainly go a bit further there: that would give a lot more confidence in some areas.

Ms Garrett, what improvements are needed to ensure that flood alerts are timely, accurate and actionable?

As far as flood alerts and flood warnings go, it can be a really mixed bag. Some people find that it works quite well for them. It probably depends on the kind of catchment you are in and on the kind of flooding you are experiencing. For people who are about to flood, the more accurate and timelier the warning, the more they can do to protect their home, their property and ultimately their lives. We advocate for as much as we can in terms of accuracy. We could even harness community representation to improve the warnings.

I have a small follow-up on your remarks about the resilience measures and the fact that you are feeding into the review at the moment. We have some examples in Shrewsbury, where residents applied for a grant and got planning permission for flood doors, but they have to go through the framework of contractors, so they can only use a very specific contractor. You talked about the accreditation and the kitemarks. One of the manufacturer units failed. Those products are not available, and they have been waiting for two years. These residents have now lived through two flood seasons, despite having had the funding and the planning consent and a contract in place. They are really worried that either the company will go under or they will be subjected to a third flood season without these flood doors. You have talked about mainstreaming these measures. Can it be part of that movement that you also have a much wider range of contractors and products? We need to make sure that people are not trapped when something has gone wrong and that they have the flexibility to recontract quickly and get things moving.

Yes, I recognise what you are saying. This is partly the reason why we have asked Peter Bonfield to do a review of this area. There are a couple of things to say. Most PFR suppliers are SMEs. They are brilliant companies doing great work, but they are very small. Trying to get a wider pool of suppliers to meet demand can be a big challenge. I mentioned that a real bottleneck at the moment—this is something that we are quite frustrated about—is the very limited testing facilities. We only have HR Wallingford, which is renowned for its work. We have recently supported Hull University to be able to extend its testing facilities. As you would expect me to say, we do not want to spend public money and support projects and installations without ensuring that those products have been tested and will actually work in people’s homes. It is fundamental for us to make sure the products are tested and kitemarked. There are so many bottlenecks in the market at the moment. There are bottlenecks in terms of the availability of these certified products, the actual PFR suppliers themselves and the surveyors who have been trained. At times, it can be very difficult to take that forward and mainstream it. That was the point that I was making: if we want to mainstream this market and take it forward in a much wider way, we need to have a much bigger market of products and suppliers in order to give people the confidence that property flood resilience is a really serious option for communities.

When will the review conclude?

The review is under way at the moment. We are looking to publish it in the autumn.

Ms Garrett, Ms Foley and Mr Moodie, let me take the opportunity on behalf of the Committee to thank you for your evidence.