I call the Committee to order for the last time in 2024. It is good to see our three witnesses before us this morning as we look at flooding in Wales in recent times. I want to thank the three gentlemen in front of us for coming to see us in person. That is really helpful. My name is Ruth Jones. I am the Member of Parliament for Newport West and Islwyn. I am also Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee. Thank you for coming in this morning. I am going to ask you to introduce yourselves and state briefly who you are.

Good morning. Bore da. I am Russell Turner. I am head of the joint Met Office and Environment Agency Flood Forecasting Centre based at the Met Office HQ down in Exeter.

Good morning. I am Simon Brown. I am director of services at the Met Office.

Bore da pawb. I am Jeremy Parr. I am head of flood and incident risk management at Natural Resources Wales.

I will begin with the first question. We had Storm Bert and Storm Darragh in very close succession. They appear to have been treated quite differently within Wales. Were the warnings issued for Storm Bert adequate to allow people to protect themselves?

Let me extend my sympathies to those families whose people were killed in Bert and Darragh. Weather is impactful and the Met Office’s job is to help people stay safe—hence why we issue national severe weather warnings. People’s homes have been flooded during both Bert and Darragh. I recognise that it is a really difficult time of the year for people, leading up to Christmas. I want to reflect that on behalf of the Met Office and myself. We issue national severe weather warnings when there is likely to be impactful weather. That is based on a likelihood and impact matrix. We work closely with our partners to assess those impacts. Particularly in the case of rain, that will be the Flood Forecasting Centre and Natural Resources Wales. In other cases, we might work with aviation or transport networks, particularly in the case of winds, snow and other impacts across transport infrastructure. We work with a range of partners trying to assess the impacts. For Storm Bert, we had a two-week period of relatively dry weather, which generally meant that soil conditions had dried out. When we did the impact assessment on Storm Bert, meteorologically there was a lot of rain but the antecedent soil conditions suggested that there was not going to be as much flooding, through our work with FFC—Flood Forecasting Centre—and NRW. Darragh was very different. We clearly had a very wet period leading up to Darragh. It was also a different type of weather system, with predominantly more wind than Bert. All our observation network sites across Wales had more than 50 knots. We had a multi-hazard approach on both Bert and Darragh, but Darragh was very much focused on wind with pockets of rain warning, hence why they were different. What led up to Bert was a much drier period, followed by, between Bert and Darragh, a very wet period.

Mr Parr, I suppose the question is whether the warnings were adequate for Storm Bert. We had a lot of damage and flooding from Bert, and people felt that they were not prepared for that. Do you think that the warnings were adequate?

As you say, there was extensive damage as a result of Storm Bert, with over 700 properties flooded across large parts of south Wales. We work really closely with the Met Office and the Flood Forecasting Centre to look at the possibility and probability of flooding. We work really closely with the Met Office on the rainfall. It is important that we give the signal to partner organisations. We do that through the flood guidance statement. Five days in advance, we saw the signals of these significant events, but with Storm Bert there was quite a bit of uncertainty and low confidence in the forecast. That can happen. It is complicated thing to forecast the weather systems and the weather patterns. None the less, we got the signals out through the flood guidance statement, which goes to partner organisations. We take the data and run that through our models to see what will happen in the different catchments. The day before—on the Saturday of Storm Bert—for example, we issued flood alerts across large parts of Wales, particularly south Wales, to say, “Flooding is possible; people need to be aware and take action”. In Storm Bert, it is true to say that there was a rapid escalation on that Saturday morning, which was because the weather systems hit some of the steep-sided rapid-responding catchments and valleys, such as the Taff catchment. It makes forecasting extremely difficult in those sorts of circumstances. Likewise with Storm Darragh, again there were the predictions five days out that we were looking at a storm event. Again, we got the messages out to partner organisations, to the public and across the media as well.

Mr Turner, what lessons did your organisation learn from the 2020 storms? How did that affect the way you put out warnings for Storm Bert?

There are a couple of key things from the Storm Dennis period, including working together on a common warnings framework, which is under way. That is across all the partners—to look at the range of warnings, from the weather side to what we provide in the Flood Forecasting Centre and the hydrological agencies. That work is ongoing. Behind that, further work was done on improving the flood forecasting capabilities. One area particularly was looking for severe events on a routine basis. We run 24/7. We have shift working and our role is to join up the weather forecasting with the flood modelling and forecasting that goes out to responders. We tested that more thoroughly. One of the learnings from Storm Dennis was looking for those severe events. We run a range of national flood models and they were giving us the good lead time that Jeremy was describing. We had that in place four days in advance. We were also then providing input into Wales and its forecasting centre in Cardiff to run the local models, and testing that with further rainfall. We were taking the rainfall forecast but also stress testing that. That is a key bit of learning from Dennis. We put 20% more rainfall down and still could not see an escalation point in the flood risk matrix, on the likelihood or the impact side, into severe. That is where we could have seen a more severe event, with flood defences overtopping and rapid inundation of urban areas on a much wider scale affecting tens of thousands of properties. For me, that is a key bit of learning that we have looked at. We are looking for severe events. In this case, there was no signal until the observations were coming in on the Sunday morning. We tested that thoroughly from a national and local level with more rainfall, but we were in a position where we were escalating quickly on the Sunday morning.

It would be helpful to understand a bit more about the weather warning levels. Simon, for those who might not be familiar with the different levels of weather warnings, can you set out what a yellow weather warning means and how you came to the decision to issue one for Storm Bert?

Thank you for the question. Back in the 1987 storm, we introduced threshold-based warnings—generally, 80 mm of rain or a wind speed of 60 knots might have equated to a yellow or amber warning. Back in 2011, we took a different approach and moved to an impact base. This is trying to join up the weather with the potential impacts and, as I described in my first answer, then working with partners around the impact on the flooding models, aviation and transport. That is recognised as international best practice and the Met Office is recognised across the international community as adopting a well-regarded best practice around weather warnings. How that matrix works is that we look at likelihood—likelihood is around both our certainty over the weather forecast and what our partners are saying in terms of their certainty—for example, the flood models—and the potential impact. That is typically from an “unlikely” to a “very high” category. If you are a member of the public, you can go and look at that matrix via our app. If you are a member of the responder community, you can see that matrix through our hazard manager system. For a yellow warning, you can have low impacts but highly likely, which would constitute a weather warning. You can also have, for yellow warnings, medium or even high impacts. To bring that alive, thunderstorms are notoriously difficult to forecast. We know that the energy in the atmosphere is going to happen somewhere across the UK and often we have widespread yellow warnings. My best analogy for it is that it is like boiling a pan of water. You do not quite know where the bubbles are going to pop up on thunderstorms. Thunderstorms will likely be quite high impact, in terms of surface water, but in your local area it is going to be low likelihood because a thunderstorm could happen five miles away. For other rainfall events, we might have more certainty, so more of a high likelihood, but low impact because it might be low-level localised flooding. That is how yellow works. Amber warnings are about much more significant risk, disruption to transport and power supplies, and asking the public to take action and consider what they do. We issued a red alert for Darragh, particularly in the case of wind. Red alert is to stay at home, protect your property and protect lives. We have an escalation route. We do not issue weather warnings lightly. We do not issue them for everyday weather. We issue about 400 to 500 a year and typically fewer than 40 of them are ambers. Since 2011, we have issued only 16 red warnings.

In hindsight, given the impact from Storm Bert, do you think that the yellow warning was the appropriate one to give?

In terms of preparedness, our messages, along with those of our partners, were really clear that significant localised flooding was possible. We saw that and it was fairly widespread. I have noted the criticisms we received of that. This is not just about the warning system. This is also about the responder community and what local communities do in terms of taking action. I was in a Welsh Government meeting two weeks ago, and I generally felt that the impacts from that meeting were well understood by the responder community. They were well prepared to respond. The local council for Rhondda Cynon Taf said that it prepared like it was an amber. The impacts were well understood. People understood our narrative. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we will certainly look at whether that weather warning was appropriate. One thing we are looking at is that we always align with our partners. That is really important to do because, if you are inconsistent in the weather warnings and the flood warnings, responders and the public will get confused. They will get warning fatigue. We are going to look at whether there are rare occasions, because of the volume of rainfall, that we step outside our national severe weather warning practice guide. We are going to look at that, but we will not do that lightly and we will do it in conjunction with our partners.

In terms of general landslips, the Met Office does not have a remit around coal tips. We work with our partners, such as the British Geological Survey. If they provide information to us that there is a risk, we will include that within our warning narrative. We briefed the previous First Minister in Wales as part of the coal tip safety report in 2022, including on the impacts of landslips as a consequence of climate change. We work with our partners. One thing we do at the Met Office is disseminate into the responder community a daily hazard assessment, but the information on landslips is provided by the British Geological Survey organisation. The clear difference between Bert and Darragh was that in Darragh red was for winds—high-risk wind and danger to life. As I said earlier, all observation sites in Wales were over 50 knots, particularly on those coastal areas where you get coastal surges and significant impacts along the coast. It was a very different weather situation. Bert was much more rain, whereas Darragh was much more wind.

The simple answer to that is no. We treat every event the same. The difference, as I explained, was that the antecedent soil conditions were much wetter leading up to Darragh. That was the key difference.

We factor in disruption to society, not just to lives but to businesses, homes and the public. The national severe weather warning service is for the public, responders, business and Government. We take that all into account, including when we issue severe weather warnings and transport routes are disrupted etc. We have just recently done a London Economics survey. For every £1 invested in the Met Office, the UK economy gets £19 back in return. The Met Office is very much focused on not just saving lives but the work it does to drive the economics of the UK.

Good morning. Mr Parr, for clarity, what is the purpose of two organisations—yours and the Met Office—both issuing weather warnings during severe weather? In a previous answer, Mr Brown mentioned warning fatigue. It would be good to understand the purpose of all these warnings going out.

We work really closely with the Met Office and the Flood Forecasting Centre. We all do slightly different roles but are part of that chain, from the weather through to flooding. The Met Office’s role is to do the weather forecast—everybody is familiar with that—and understand where the rain is going to fall. The Met Office issues the weather warnings. NRW does not issue weather warnings. We take the information from the Met Office and work with the Flood Forecasting Centre to look at what that would mean on a Wales basis, and on an England and Wales basis, county by county, in terms of the flood risk. NRW itself then looks at the impact on a more local scale, using our network of models, rain gauges and river gauges to take the data and look at what it will mean in terms of flooding and the risk of flooding. We issue flood warnings. The Met Office issues the weather warnings; we issue the flood warnings. During those storms, we issued a large number of flood warnings across large parts of Wales. The messaging around flood warnings and that consistency of messaging is important. A flood alert, which is the lowest level, means that flooding is possible. A lot of the time, people think, “It is possible but it probably won’t happen. It won’t happen to me”. There is something here for us all to continue to work at. We work really hard at the moment to get the message across that it is possible and you need to think about it. It is not a pleasant thing to think about, but a lot of the time people do not think that it will happen to them, or indeed are travelling or on vacation in areas at flood risk and might not realise that those areas are at flood risk. It is important that we get those messages across to people that it is possible. We did that in both Storm Bert and Storm Darragh. The next level is flood warnings, when we are saying that flooding is expected. We all know the unpredictability of the weather and what can happen, so we put a lot of technological input into the accuracy of those warnings. There is also human input in terms of what the catchments are like. We are really conscious of not crying wolf too often and losing the message. It would be really easy to have a lower threshold for issuing warnings, for example, but with a lot less certainty. There is a real danger there that people say, “It didn’t happen, so therefore I do not really trust it for next time around”. We need to work really hard in that space with communities, politicians and community leaders in local authorities to say, “No, you need to think about it. You need to think that it might happen”. We all know that, when it happens, the speed at which it can happen is incredible, especially now with more and more extreme weather events. We encourage people to have that conversation in their house, at home: “What would we do if it were to happen to us? Where would we go? What property would we move? Should we move our car in advance? What about those valuable things?” People need to think about all those things in advance. That is some of the purpose of the alerts, the warnings and then, in extreme circumstances, the severe flood warnings going out. That whole bit about behaviour change and acceptance of the risk—and of the risk increasing in the future—is a really big area for all organisations and local authorities to work on.

On the flood warning side, are we reaching all the people we need to? We all see the weather forecasts on television, on our apps and things like that, so they are quite high profile. How would you evaluate whether the systems from the flood warning side are reaching the people that they need to, linking to what you have just said about awareness?

One in seven properties across Wales is at flood risk but, if you ask people, they might not know that. One thing that we encourage is use of our flood mapping products. There is a simple thing on our website where you can put in your postcode and find out whether you are at risk. That is often the first point. People think, “It has not happened to me before; it is not going to happen to me ever.” But it could—it very much could. Then there is a free flooding warning service, so people can get the free flood warnings to their home by email or text, but the take-up of that is not as high as we want it to be. For example, in certain communities in the Taff, the take-up is 36%, which include people who are at flood risk and people who have flooded before. We have to ask ourselves the question of why it is so low. Why is it not higher? One reason is that people are worried about impact on insurance, possibly. They are worried about false positives and getting alarms in the middle of the night. There is also that element of denial. We also have to accept that that is a traditional way of people getting the messages—through the texts to their home mobile. A lot of people look at our website, for example. We point people to our website. We had 1.6 million hits on our website during the last year where people are checking for flood warnings. We need to be responsive to all these different ways in which people could get flood alerts, including, potentially, working with big tech companies—Google alerts and elements like that. The emergency alert service, which was utilised in Wales for Storm Darragh, is an important part of that messaging in severe circumstances. There is a whole thing there about recognition of the risk and taking a degree of ownership for it. Public organisations are there to serve, but people also need to take some personal ownership. It is not a pleasant or easy thing to say, but it is the reality. I am not saying that they need to sort it out themselves. The point that I am making is that they need to recognise that the risk is there.

On that line, should we explore—through media or something—a higher profile for flood warnings?

We work really hard with the media and did a lot of media interviews on BBC Wales, ITV, Channel 4 and all sorts of media outlets to get the messages out in advance. There is always more to do. It is about working with communities at a grassroots level, getting people to look out for each other and their neighbours, which they do naturally in a lot of these communities, in terms of that flood risk and thinking about who is more vulnerable in the community and how they can help. There is a horrible end to it as well, isn’t there? Unfortunately, when you get that knock on the door and the emergency services are saying “Leave”, you will need to leave quite quickly. It is about getting people to understand that whole thing. It is a bit like checking into a hotel; there probably will not be a fire, but there could be. Would you know how to get out of that hotel? Would you know where the emergency exits are? It is that sort of thinking and mentality that we want to get. I stress that the public organisations will always be there to support.

I will move straight on to my next question.

Can I make a plea for brevity of answers please?

Mr Turner, does Wales experience more severe flooding than the rest of the UK, and if so, why?

The Flood Forecasting Centre covers England and Wales, so I can only comment on that part of it. I have been involved in flood forecasting for 15 years and it is relentless. That is how I would describe it. We have a series of events. Talking about Storm Dennis—we have had five years that have been extremely busy. A lot of parts of the UK probably feel similar, certainly in England and Wales; I think back to recent events across Cumbria and Lancashire, for example. Different parts of the UK are probably quite familiar with flood risk. It is difficult to benchmark exactly, but these are increasingly likely events and familiar for a lot of communities, unfortunately. There are challenges around different parts of Wales in terms of forecasting. There are obviously a lot of upland areas. We see that enhancing the rainfall. There was a large rainfall event in Bert, but it is not an automatic link to issuing flood warnings directly. It is a balance of, as Jeremy is describing, those assessments taking place and looking at what the flood models are saying. We have around 2,000, at least, local flood models across England and Wales. They all need maintaining and updating as catchments continue to change and the climate changes. In keeping up with that change in risk, there is a big asset maintenance activity, if you like, to keep on top of that risk and help communicate. We do not communicate directly with the public, but we do through partner organisations and the parent organisations.

Mr Parr, how do Welsh flood defences compare with rest of the UK?

We have an extensive network of flood defences across the whole of Wales and they do their job in defending a lot of communities. Natural Resources Wales, for example, has 500 km of defence. The systems that are used in Wales and the systems that are used in England are comparable in terms of design of those flood defences. We are answerable to the Welsh Government and the Senedd in terms of their investment priorities and needs. There is generally a good level of protection to the highest-risk communities across Wales, but we are dealing with extremely challenging circumstances in terms of climate change, more extreme weather and rapid response of river networks.

Can I come in on the flood defence, Mr Parr? There are schemes in place where there is matched funding by local government for them to be approved. Are you seeing them becoming more challenging as the budgets in local government are tightening? Also, the criterion for that flood defence funding is the impact on houses, yet I have an example in my constituency where a village could be cut off and has been cut off but, because there is no direct impact on houses, it is never eligible for the funding. Is a re-look at the criteria for the funding of flood defences needed?

If I break down the answer to that, there are different authorities with different responsibilities for flood risk management in Wales, just as there are in the rest of the UK. NRW—Natural Resources Wales—has responsibility when comes to main river, which is generally the larger water courses, and the sea. Local authorities have the responsibilities when it comes to smaller watercourses, local watercourses and drainage. The water companies have responsibilities for drainage as well. They are funded in slightly different ways. Natural Resources Wales, for example, gets all its money from Welsh Government. There is no matched funding as such for NRW because all of our schemes are 100% funded by the Welsh Government. We try to get partnership contributions where we can. The matched funding point, as you say, is a point for local authorities. Traditionally, historically, they have had to put matched funding forward for schemes. Welsh Government keep that under review. Recently, the rules on that might have changed, such that the levels of matched funding are more relaxed. I would have to double check that, but it is something that Welsh Government continually keep under review. Other elements of your question are around the levels of investment and the standards.

I have a village called Llangoed that is cut off when flooding happens. It is the routes that need the flood defence, but because no houses are affected it does not fit the criteria for any funding. Although there are residences, a nursing home and everything in this village, and we could not get the emergency services in, it does not reach the criteria. Do you think that the criteria are accurate to safeguard communities?

We have to follow Treasury Green Book standards in terms of the levels of investment and what we invest in. We also have to follow the Welsh Government’s policy directive and strategic directive, which is about risk to life and flooding around properties. However, it is not just about properties. A point has been made around livelihoods, infrastructure, roads, as you say, and different elements of things that are at risk and can put communities at risk. We will take all those things into account, but it is true to say that the priority goes to homes and properties when everything needs to be looked at on a risk basis across the whole of Wales.

Do you think that the current funding model that NRW has is sufficient to deal with the challenge that NRW faces with flooding?

It is probably true to say that, like all Government‑sponsored organisations, we fully utilise the money that we get and of course we would like more money to do more. The challenge is clearly there in terms of the climate emergency, the nature emergency and the scale of the challenge going forward. For example, earlier this year we published figures and our long-term investment requirements report for flood defences in Wales. That said, over a 100-year period, we need 3.4 times as much money as at present for looking after the flood defences and the maintenance of the flood defences. That report is publicly available on our website, for example. It is important that it is not just capital funding for flood defences. It will always rain. There will always be floods. We cannot stop everything from happening all of the time. All of the sorts of things that we have been talking about today about flood forecasting, flood warning and community engagement are revenue funded. It is really important that our revenue budgets keep pace with the challenge, and the climate change and nature emergency challenges.

There are 2,573 disused coal tips across Wales and 360 of them have been deemed high risk. Jeremy, how will the £25 million allocated in the UK Budget help to deal with the coal tip spills caused by floods, particularly given that the total cost of remediating these tips has been put down as £600 million?

It is an incredible challenge for Wales with that industrial legacy and the number of coal tips across Wales. As you say, there are more than 2,500. The policy and strategy on this is led by Welsh Government. NRW is a partner and has a role within that. We have such coal tips on our estate. We have over 140 on our land across Wales. After the awful Tylorstown incident in 2020, a lot of effort was put into this by Welsh Government, setting up a taskforce and a working group. There has been revision of the legislation and recent publication of the renewed legislation in Wales. It is really important that the inspection regimes are undertaken. There is a whole process of categorising the coal tips, prioritising where the inspections take place, and working with the Mining Remediation Authority and the local authorities on that is hugely important. As we saw again in the recent storms, there was a slip in Cwmtillery as well. Clearly, the risk is there. NRW’s role within that is not the lead organisation. It is as a partner at the table to look at the risks on the legacy coal tips on our estate.

You mentioned prioritisation. How would you prioritise those 360 high-risk tips?

That is prioritised on a national basis and put into different categories, again led by Welsh Government in terms of that risk classification, and I believe previously by the Coal Authority, which is now the Mining Remediation Authority. It was very much led by them in terms of the risks with those sites. NRW uses that risk information to prioritise the work that we do.

These tips are causing continued disruption to communities across Wales. For example, in Godre’r Graig the children are going to school in temporary accommodation because their school had to be closed due to the threat from a nearby coal tip. How long do you think it will take to acquire the necessary people, equipment and skills to adequately deal with the coal tips?

You outlined some figures and that figure of £600 million as the sort of number that might be needed. There is a significant challenge there over a time period, so it is important that the risks are prioritised and dealt with on a prioritised basis. It is not just the landslips. Members may remember the event in Skewen in Swansea; there was that sudden release of water to a community there from an old working mine shaft. Indeed, there are metal mines as well and the impacts from those. There is this whole industrial legacy. The consequences from the industrial legacy are a significant issue for Welsh Government. I know from speaking to Welsh Government colleagues that they are keen that UK Government play their part in recognising and helping address the risks.

Before I go on to my proper question, I want to pick up on something the three of you have mentioned. The five years of weather we have had has resulted in continuous flooding over the winter period, to be honest. One village in my constituency, Pont-ar-gothi, continuously floods. Only six or seven properties are affected, but it is three or four times every winter. I do not understand why we cannot look at the rivers and clean them in order to get the water flowing down. Nobody minds when farmland floods, but when it continually affects five, six or seven properties every winter, surely we need to look at our rivers and get them cleaned and dredged in these hotspots that we all have within our communities. Mr Parr, what are your thoughts on that?

There is a point there around flooding being a natural phenomenon and the need for floods to go into flood plains, as you say. That is naturally what would happen. The idea of being able to contain all water in a river channel and convey it out to sea is not a correct premise. In order to do that, you would need to build higher and higher defences as you go down river systems until you go out to sea. Years ago, that used to be the main mantra about conveying water downstream more quickly. If you are not careful, you are conveying that flood risk to communities downstream by doing so. It is important that all these things are done. We do dredge rivers. We do remove shoal from rivers in locations. It has some impact, but not as big an impact as most people think. When you get such quantities of water, even with a little extra capacity in channels, it will come out of those channels and flood areas. Particularly as we look to the future here, it is really important that we engineer locations that we allow to flood, along the lines of what you are saying, with sacrificial land in certain areas that is allowed to flood, so that communities do not flood downstream, for example. That is not particularly easy, because that land is under ownership by somebody—what is the value of the land? We are dealing with such huge quantities of water. Very briefly, I remember in Storm Dennis it was 800 cubic metres per second coming down the river. That is enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every three seconds, continuously coming. We need to use all the levers at our disposal, working across all organisations to work out how to look after such huge quantities of water in catchments. Things such as the sustainable farming scheme in Wales will have their place in terms of how land is used. We all need to work together.

I will move on. We will have a conversation again, perhaps. How do you utilise the information that you receive from the Met Office and the national Flood Forecasting Centre for your flood warnings? This is specifically about the flood warnings.

I explained this a little bit earlier. I will recap and be a bit brief on it in the interests of time perhaps, but go into more detail. We work closely with the Met Office and the Flood Forecasting Centre. The best way to think about it is that the Met Office looks at what is going to happen in terms of the weather—rainfall in particular. That information is then utilised by the Flood Forecasting Centre and we work closely with the Flood Forecasting Centre to work out what that will mean in terms of flooding on a big scale. The Flood Forecasting Centre operates on an England and Wales basis, really at county level. Then we take that information within NRW—the predictions of where that rainfall is going to hit—to put into models. We do not have models for everywhere and this is one thing we would like to do more of in the future, for example. Where we have models, we put that information into models to predict what is going to happen with rivers, but it is quite a complicated picture. It is about the amount of rain that is falling, how wet the catchment already is and where in the catchment the rain is going to fall. You may have several rivers with different amounts of rainfall hitting them, for example. We take that information to predict where will flood. Where we think flooding will happen, we issue flood warnings. Where we think flooding is possible before that, we will issue flood alerts. Going back to Storms Bert and Darragh, we were issuing flood alerts for many parts of Wales during those days leading up to the events and then flood warnings when we were more certain.

From what you are saying, it does not matter that the agency is in Exeter. Whatever information comes is relevant and you tweak that for Wales with NRW.

That is correct. That has been the working relationship for many years.

Do the Met Office and Flood Forecasting Centre provide you with all the data that you need? You also monitor the flood risk separately from the data that you get from the Met Office.

We have a network of river gauges and rain gauges. Some of those rain gauges feed into the Met Office system and are utilised by the Met Office. In essence, we take that data and put it through our models. The increasing challenge is the rapid, extreme, really intense rainfall events, particularly if we get them in steep-sided rapidly responding catchments. That timeframe from knowing that that is going to happen to issuing the warnings and getting that information out often can be quite compressed, because of the speed at which it can happen. Of the improvements in the future, that is one thing: accuracy of rainfall predictions and where they are going to be. That is something that we work on with colleagues, such as Simon and Russell in the Met Office and the Flood Forecasting Centre.

I have one very brief question about soil. How do you get your soil analysis? Where do you get that? That does not come from your weathervane, so how do you know how wet the land is to absorb any further rainfall?

We have hydrological information. We have the information about the state of the catchments and we know how much rainfall has hit the catchments in the preceding weeks. I do not know whether Russell wants to add to that.

We pull all that information together so we have it across England and Wales. We obviously have a lot of shared catchments as well, so there is really good data exchange. There is a fantastic network of rain gauges and river level stations. We have access to all that across England and Wales. That drives the national models, with the Met Office data, and then we co-ordinate what goes into the local models as well to support decision making. There is the centre in Cardiff for Wales. There are seven local centres in England as well. We co-ordinate the activity across each of those, but that is through the parent organisations.

Thank you, gentlemen, for coming this morning. I would like to turn to how you share information with responders during a storm event. In Storm Darragh we have a very recent example of how the incredibly strong high winds caused significant impact not only to people’s lives and property but also to key infrastructure. One concern that has been raised with me, representing an area in west Wales, is that, when the mobile network is knocked out, because of a lack of power or damage to the actual sites themselves, there is this question of how we maintain communication between emergency services and communicate alerts or updated advice to people. Mr Parr, was that a concern or an issue that you have encountered during Storm Darragh—communicating to residents and civilians but also emergency services? I have a second question. You mentioned the river gauges and rain gauges that you have. As a keen observer myself during these events, I know that the website is very good at giving you a level of information about the river. Does the reporting or sharing of that data depend on mobile networks, or is there some other network that is used to collect that data?

Your first question is around organisations working together, and making sure messages go out and go to the public in such circumstances. The starting point for that is that there is a network of emergency responders and people who respond during floods. It is through the Civil Contingencies Act responsibilities primarily. It is through things called local resilience forums. They are organised around the police authorities. They have the police, emergency services, local authorities, NRW and health boards, for example. Water companies and the Met Office are also part of that structure. It is really important to reflect on those for a moment because they work, if you like, in peacetime to make sure that the guidance, procedures, plans and contacts are there, because some of the time this is helped by knowing people and personal contacts as well. They make sure that all those things are in place and exercised, such that, when it is needed, we are confident that it is going to work. That kicked in during these events. We were sharing information, for example, through that network to say, “This is what we are looking at. This is what we are expecting to happen”. That information is going to what we tend to call those partner organisations to say, “Heads up, something may happen here” and the level of confidence associated with it. For example, during Storm Darragh, largely on the back of the red weather warning, that whole system kicked in. There were strategic commands and tactical command groups set up. That is some of the terminology associated with it. That means those organisations coming together through telecoms, and with the ability to meet in person if needed—if comms went down, for example—to do the thinking and preparation, get those messages out and get the preparations running. That happened all the way through Storm Darragh. In terms of loss of power, it is business continuity planning in a way and thinking, “What if? What if you were to lose power?” I live in Wales, work in Wales and was well aware that there were large parts of Wales that had power cuts during that time, particularly the more western areas, although not exclusively so. Indeed, some of our staff were out of contact for those reasons. It is important that we have contingencies and back-ups in place and people we can turn to. Quite a lot of our message to the public depends on the website, mobile coverage and those sorts of things. Ultimately, it is important that people have, for example, radios with batteries in them to get the latest information and news. That is something I was referring to before—thinking through that “What if?” It is about thinking, “If it were to happen, where would I get the information from? What may I need?” There is a real job of work to do, working with communities to say, “We have to face these possibilities and prepare ourselves as best we can for them”.

In terms of some of the river gauges, the stations themselves and getting the real-time data from those sites, does it depend on the mobile network?

It does depend on the mobile network. There are degrees of contingency and back-up with that, in terms of back-up power and back-up generation, but most depend on mobile network to get the message back through the telemetry system from the field to the base.

Of course, it also depends on the end user, as it were, receiving the information. In this case, we will also need the network. It is interesting because Storm Darragh perhaps highlighted the value of looking again at some of the mast sites in more rural or exposed areas to see whether we have ways of getting them back online more quickly.

As you say, the river levels information on our website is usually useful information for people. I am pleased to say that that stood up, largely, through these events. There was good real-time information on those river levels.

Mr Turner, as an agency that is funded by both the UK and Welsh Governments, how do you co-operate with Natural Resources Wales and local authorities in Wales?

We have a really close working relationship. We produce, if we go through a cycle, a lot of seasonal briefings specific to Wales and specific support for NRW to deliver. There were Welsh Government visits and NRW visits last year down to the centre. It is a good day‑to‑day working relationship. We provide, as I say, coverage for England and Wales. While there are technical differences about how the services are provided, because England and Wales have two different flood forecasting systems, we are able to work through that and make sure that the assessment is done on a robust and similar basis. That is supported through common working with local resilience forums, training material and exercise material for coastal events and river inland events. There is a whole range of support available and specific to Wales, I would add. We work very closely on a range of levels.

Is the relationship with local authorities good across the board, or is it variable across Wales?

We would mostly work through the Environment Agency teams or Natural Resources Wales teams. We would attend and support meetings where we needed to there. We are a small team. We cannot go to all of the local authority meetings, but we would work through NRW. A particular strong point is on training and exercising in advance of events and having bespoke products that are produced that responders can train with and practise. Those are available. There is a good join-up with particularly our flood guidance statement, which goes across England and Wales, because that supports cross-border working and, more widely, joint working.

It was mentioned earlier but, as a general principle, who is responsible for rivers? Is it Natural Resources Wales or local authorities?

Generally, NRW is responsible for rivers, but there is a distinction. It is main rivers that we are responsible for and that is an historic term. It generally means the bigger rivers and it generally means that the smaller watercourses are the responsibility of the local authorities. You cannot say that it is all big rivers, but generally that is the case. It is NRW for the larger rivers and coastal flooding, and local authorities for smaller watercourses and drainage.

Continuing on the theme of information sharing, Simon, I wonder whether you could let us know, during a flooding event, besides the colour of the weather warning, whether the Met Office passes on any other information to the devolved Welsh agencies. What is the process for any real-time updates that might be coming through as data is evolving?

To take Bert as an example, we issued weather warnings on Wednesday 20 November. We are a cat 2 responder in the Civil Contingencies Act and, as part of that, we discharge that duty through 22 civil contingencies advisers who are spread across the UK. The civil contingencies adviser in Wales started a series of calls into NRW and the head of Cardiff emergency planning. That is one example of a type of call. On Friday, we were talking to Welsh Government and sending a briefing out to the Deputy First Minister. Throughout, from Wednesday right through to Sunday, there were regular emails with the local resilience forums to say, “This is the situation with the weather; this is the rainfall we are expecting”, tying in the messages around significant flooding and low-likelihood localised flooding. That was the consistent message for that event. There was also a pre-event telephone call set up by north Wales, which all local resilience forums attended on the Friday. We will tie into any tactical or strategic co-ordination group and pre-event calls, which are all set up by the local resilience forum. That is generally how we work during an event, so it is a constant feed of information. From a weather warning perspective, that is constantly updating. If times or impacts change, our teams go through a regular assessment. My teams are 24/7, so it does not matter whether it is day or night. Naturally, we tend to issue more warnings in the day because that is when the public are going to have their phones on. That is the best time to get the message out in terms of media partners etc. We communicate weather warnings from a public perspective through our web and app. That is pretty much updating in real time once my team has pushed the button, if there is a change. We also have a public weather media service, where ITV, Channel 5 and Sky take data and advice from us, and we also provide our national severe weather warning service to the likes of BBC and S4C.

It sounds like there are quite a lot of different ways of communicating. It sounds like the Met Office is trying to feed in regularly with these various devolved agencies. Do you have any thoughts on whether that process could or should be streamlined or improved in any way?

If you go back to Storm Bert, having met with the resilience community and with the Welsh Government a couple of weeks ago, I feel that they were well prepared. They understood the narrative. Even as you add more and more steps in the way—from weather warnings to flood warnings, then to resilience response and community response—there will always be areas you could improve within that process. Particularly with climate change, it is really important that that process is as streamlined and efficient as it can be. You could always make improvements; that is my response. On any particular learning from Bert, the weather warning has been challenged and we will certainly reflect on that. We have a well-oiled local resilience forum machine. I have talked about this regular exercising. We have a stakeholder user group where partners meet. There is a UK flooding leadership group. That community joins together really well. The bit I would point to is that the national resilience strategy talks about how to improve the resilience of the UK overall. It is those recommendations we should take forward as the UK.

I can kick us off in terms of an NRW perspective. It is apparent and we have talked today about the rising challenge from both the climate emergency and the nature emergency, and the need for a response on both fronts. It is not as easy as saying there is one answer to this or one thing that we need to do. It is a range of things that that we need to do to manage those risks. It is about managing the risks. We cannot stop all rainfall and we cannot, unfortunately, stop all flooding, so it is about investing in flood defences. They are going to continue to be a really important part of the response and the management response, but it is all the other things as well. It is thinking about planning decisions and where we put people in the first place, and making sure we do not put more people at flood risk through planning decisions. It is about sharing that information about flood risk and working with communities to understand what that risk means and how to respond to it. The warnings are very much part of that picture, but a warning is only as good as what happens on receipt of that warning. What is it that we are expecting people to do? What is it that we are expecting partner organisations to do? As we have also talked about today, we are going to have to look at how we manage whole catchments and all organisations working together. We talked briefly there about NRW main rivers and local authority non-main rivers, ordinary watercourses and smaller, but of course they flow into each other. We need to work together on this issue, and the water companies as well, and look at catchments as a whole. The future is about building in resilience—including bouncebackability in terms of properties. It is about adaptation and recognising that there are risks and that we need to do something about them. Increasingly, it is going to be thinking about how we manage these huge quantities of water. It has to go somewhere and it is better that it goes to locations where it will have less of an impact.

We know a lot of the solutions for the challenges on flood forecasting technically. The challenge is keeping pace with them and being able to deploy them. As an example, if there is good practice in Scotland, can Wales take advantage of that? Can we share that good practice round? That is actually quite challenging, as organisations work separately, and procure and put in systems, contracts and licences separately. All those business things are quite a challenge in terms of good join-up and working. We see quite a lot of that as a joint partnership ourselves. I would emphasise that, although keeping pace with the technical development is part of the challenge, organisations can also look at how we get it out across the UK, if that is what we want to do, in order to improve, streamline and continue to keep pace. We want to make sure that responders and LRFs have the best information available. The barrier might not be technical; it might be how organisations operate, communicate and share that.

I would follow up on Russell’s point. Met Office provides a UK-wide remit and flooding is devolved. We need more consistency and standardisation. Hydrometeorology is becoming a sacred resource, so there is work to do across the UK around bringing that skillset through academia and then into organisations such as ours. We are focusing within the Met Office much more on social science. This is not just about meteorology, but about how we communicate our messaging and meteorologists in particular being almost social scientists and understanding human behaviour. We have a whole different skillset that we are trying to develop within the organisation. I wanted to follow up on something Jeremy said. In terms of getting flood warnings out, next year we are looking to bring flood warnings into our public weather media service. That will allow broadcasters not just to communicate weather warnings but also to include flood warnings. That is going to be tricky, because broadcasters typically have 15 seconds to about a minute to describe the weather. Through our public weather service, we will work with broadcasters to help communicate weather warnings and support our partners in terms of flood warnings. You have picked up the point about climate change. We did a recent survey on the 2023-24 storm season and that showed 20% more rainfall than is typically associated with those storms. We are seeing more days over 50 mm. Like Jeremy said earlier, climate change is absolutely happening and we are not going to be able to protect everyone. There is a significant amount of investment and there are some choices to be made.

In conclusion, the knowledge you have expressed to us this morning is great. You have expert accountability. How do we get your knowledge to the public? You are talking about climate change very matter-of-factly. A lot of people in the general public are still coming to terms with the effects of climate change. I am wondering, in a sentence, how you make sure the public become better informed on climate change and the dangers of flooding across Wales.

I think that people already understand the risk. It is about recognising that they need to be involved in the process, as we are, to be able to deal with this on a changing basis. It is about getting involved in the whole area.

I have two very quick points. One is around tackling climate misinformation. We have been working with Welsh Government through Climate Action Week and targeting young people, because it is young people who will be talking to their parents about climate misinformation. The other point I would make is risk perception. Risk perception of the public is not just about weather or flooding, but about other risks we carry in society. That is absolutely reflected in the national resilience strategy. A public understanding of risk perception is going to be key.

I could add a couple of quick things. One is education and making sure that, from a young age, it is part of the curriculum. We work with the curriculum in Wales to that extent. It is like recycling in a way. You can change people’s perceptions. The other thing I would reflect on is what we have talked about today—about working with communities on the risk now and the risk in the future, and on what we collectively—communities and organisations—can do about it. There are certain things we could do and there are certain things we will not be able to do. Having the honesty of those discussions is hugely important.

I thank all panel members—Russell Turner, Simon Brown and Jeremy Parr—for coming before us this morning to discuss flooding in Wales.