Agenda item

To receive a report of the Cabinet Member for Community Services providing a review of the Christmas / New Year 2013-14 storms & flooding (and previous severe weather events) and making recommendations for how the County Council, in collaboration with its partners, can be better prepared to manage such future events and flood risk.

(Report of Cabinet Member for Communities, Mr Mike Hill and Interim Corporate Director of Growth, Environment and Transport, Mike Austerberry)

Cabinet received a report providing a full review of lessons learned from the Christmas / New Year 2013-14 storms & flooding (and previous severe weather events) and making recommendations as to how the County Council, in collaboration with its partners, could be better prepared to manage such future events and flood risk.

Cabinet Member for Communities, Mr Mike Hill introduced the report.  He reminded members of the extreme conditions experienced over the Christmas and New Year of 2013 – 14 and the resulting flooding and loss of power for over 28,000 homes.  He explained that the report was made up of two parts, each of which would be accompanied by a presentation.  The first part of the report would focus on the emergency response by KCC and partner agencies and encapsulated feedback from many parties involved in that response and those affected.  Mr Hill was, overall, proud of the response, which had seen staff working long hours in difficult circumstances and cancelling Christmas leave to return to work.  However, lessons could be learned and to that end the report contained twelve recommendations for improvement.  The second part of the report considered long term flood risk management solutions and also put forward recommendations to improve protection from flooding in the future.

Paul Crick, Director of Environment and Planning spoke to the item.  He made a presentation to Cabinet regarding the emergency response review and subsequent recommendations [attached as appendix 1].  In particular the presentation referred to the following:

         i.        The statistics related to the flooding, namely that:

·         50,000 sandbags had been provided to try to protect affected properties

·         32,000 calls had been received by KCC

·         6km of public rights of way had been left in need of repair, as had many kilometres public highway

·         A total of 929 properties had been flooded in Kent.

       ii.        Identified successes of the emergency response:

·         Staff systems had withstood the pressure of exceptional circumstances

·         No lives had been lost and property had been saved in many instances

·         Staff commitment and resourcefulness

      iii.        Identified areas for improvement:

·         Visibility, of all partners, in affected communities

·         Warning and informing

·         Multi agency co-ordination

·         Internal KCC resilience – not relying on a small number of people to work many hours

·         Provision of sandbags & other practical support

·         Individual and community resilience

·         Role and involvement of central government

      iv.        The report contained 17 recommendations which related to:

·         Review and enhance KCC resilience

·         Multi agency on scene liaison arrangement – ‘Bronze’ on site liaison must occur more quickly.

·         Review and enhance flood warning arrangements

·         Strengthen multi-agency protocols

·         Creation and implementation of a Countywide, partner-wide emergency response policy.

·         Explore opportunities for contributions from KCC and partners toward future flood resilience programmes.

Andrew Pearce, representing the Environment Agency made a further presentation to Cabinet [attached as appendix 2].  In particular he referred to:

·         The fact that 60,000 properties in Kent were considered to be at risk of flooding in Kent and less than 1000 had flooded during this unprecedented weather.  He regarded this as a good return on the financial investment and hard work carried out on flood defences in the County to date.

·         The take up rate for the flood warning service, which had increased since 1999 to between 75% and 90% of all targeted residents.  The warning system had three stages which each reflected the risk to life and property.

·         The timeliness of the final stage (2 hour) alerts had proven to be approximately 90% accurate but not all residents were aware of what action they should take in response to different alerts and to different types of flooding.

·         Work had been, and would continue to be, undertaken to clarify further geographical areas at risk of flooding in order that alerts would be even more relevant and enabled residents to take action when necessary.

·         Work had begun to repair assets damaged in the floods and were scheduled for completion by November 2014 in order that they could afford protection once again to vulnerable areas during winter.  This programme of repair was estimated to cost £7million.

·         Flood risk management provided good returns on investment, saving millions of pounds when it successfully defended properties, business and infrastructure as it had on this occasion, albeit not completely.

·         The Environment Agency had identified a six year capital programme, consisting of 68 schemes with an approximate cost of £115million.  If completed the schemes would offer protection to a further 22,000 properties in Kent.  In order to complete the programme, financial contributions were sought and some priority schemes, both coastal and fluvial would not be undertaken unless those contributions were secured.

·         The annualised cost of delivering all schemes would be approximately £3million and would attract investment of much higher value whilst also protecting existing homes and businesses.

The Leader requested confirmation from Mr Pearce that should the £40million of contributions required to undertake every scheme identified be put forward by partners, that this would be a comprehensive solution to the potential for future flooding in Kent.  Mr Pearce confirmed that if that were the case Kent would be able to make a very strong bid to the national prioritisation scheme for the remainder of the funding.

The Leader continued, seeking to ascertain whether contributions would also be sought from precepting Parish and Borough Councils.  Mr Pearce reported that the Environment Agency worked with all relevant parties on a scheme by scheme basis with the ultimate aim of securing contributions for the entire six year programme and therefore creating a position of certainty that would ensure strong representation in national priority scheme, security of investment in specific schemes and enhanced bargaining power with contractors.

The Leader thanked Mr Pearce for his presentation and answers and assured him that the Council would consider the issue of contributions as art of its medium Term Capital programme.  However he regarded the challenge presented by the request from national government to contribute to these schemes as a difficult one owing to recent reductions in both capital and revenue settlements from Whitehall.  He considered that statements by Ministers following the flooding had indicated that this kind of commitment would not be necessary and considered it extremely challenging for local government that this was now the case.

Stuart Beaumont, Head of Emergency Planning for Kent County Council, spoke to the item.  He spoke of the two areas within which work would be undertaken should the recommendations in the report be approved.  These were internal measures and work with partners, in particular:

      i.        Internal (KCC) action:

·         Increase capacity and resilience within KCC by ensuring that the recommendations within the report are enacted.  To this end a cross-directorate task and finish group would be established and regular update reports would be brought before Cabinet to measure the successful implementation of recommendations.

    ii.        External (with partners and communities) action:

·         By utilising the Kent Resilience Forum and the newly established Kent Resilience Team many agencies with different responsibilities in emergencies would be brought together to encourage greater co-operation and this work had already begun.  In addition a seminar would be held in September for partners in order to build on the issues and recommendations contained within the report and to formulate a ‘Plan for Winter’ which would be adopted in October 2014.  The second strand of external action would involve the engagement of communities and residents in order to enhance community resilience.  Work was already underway with the Kent Association of Local Council, Environment Agency, the Fire Authority and others to establish and introduce new ways of working with communities to ensure they are strengthened in the event of future flooding.

Stuart Beaumont confirmed at the request of the Leader that an update report detailing work undertaken toward implementation of recommendations discussed would be presented to Cabinet at its October meeting.

Max Tant, KCC Flood Risk Manager, spoke briefly to report that he continued to work with the Environment Agency regarding the priority schemes detailed in Andrew Pearce’s presentation and the specific funding requirements for each and would also report to Cabinet the detailed outcomes of these discussions in October.

The Leader reminded the Environment Agency that in order for the Council to have meaningful discussions regarding contributions to flood defences as part of the Medium Term Capital Programme assurances must be forthcoming that sufficient investment would be made in the maintenance of rivers, in line with recommendation 13, so that any flood defence investment was protected and effective and the Environment Agency and others were open and transparent and responded to concerns.

Andrew Pearce confirmed that the Environment had been responding to such queries from members of the public, currently approximately 400 per month, and offered to return to a future meeting to give account of such operations.  He acknowledged, following further questioning from the Leader, that it was recognised nationally that as revenue budgets had been reduced and funding had become more scarce, the maintenance of river channels had been negatively affected.  However he assured members that assets, such as critical locks, were maintained to the highest operational standards and to support this, this year an additional £1mmillion of funding for additional revenue and maintenance activities had been secured and enhanced programmes would be in place before the winter.

The Cabinet Member for Corporate and Democratic Services, Mr Gary Cooke, spoke to the item.  He referred to comments made by Mr Beaumont about his desire to establish a network of volunteers to help with emergency response efforts.  He advised that selection of volunteers within relevant geographical areas would be crucial to the success of such a programme, owing to the difficulties of access that such emergencies inevitably caused.  In addition he urged that, where volunteers were also employees of KCC, they were duly rewarded after having been called upon with time of in lieu from their employed posts.  Mr Beaumont agreed with the points made.

It was RESOLVED that: