Minutes:
(1) Mr Paul Cobbing from the National Flood Forum (NFF) began his presentation by saying that his background was in Environmental Management and that he had also worked for the Government Office for the West Midlands and DEFRA. He had been working on behalf of the NFF for the last four years.
(2) Mr Cobbing said that the greatest impact that flooding had on individual people was the distress that it caused rather than the actual physical loss (the effect of which could be mitigated to some extent by Insurers).
(3) Mr Cobbing then said that the NFF was a national charity with 13 employees. More than 200 community groups were affiliated to this organisation which ran many dozens of projects throughout the UK.
(4) The NFF had been formed in 2002 in response to the major flooding events of 1998 and 2000. It had gone through a series of different stages. Initially, it had mainly involved various community groups to talk to one another. It had then become a campaigning organisation which made representations to Government, insurance companies and others. This role had been supplemented by aim of enabling communities to work together to achieve practical goals.
(5) Mr Cobbing then set out the three functions of the NFF. These were: helping people to prepare for flooding; helping people to recover their lives after flooding; and campaigning and working to put flood risk communities at the centre of policy making and operational delivery. This built upon strong relationships built up with DEFRA, the Environment Agency, insurers and others.
(7) Mr Cobbing said that NFF had a special role to play because people accepted that they were independent. This meant that they could engage with people who were angry and upset in a way which more traditional agencies were unable to do. He gave as an example, a community in Staffordshire which had been at odds with the Government and other agencies for 15 years. There were some 15 developers and the NFF had successfully been able to encourage the community to engage with both them and government departments in a practical and positive way.
(8) Mr Cobbing moved on to describe the “Ladder of Engagement” (set out in one of the presentation slides) for working with communities. The highest priority within this model was “Citizen Control.” The NFF aimed to achieve this on every occasion. Every community that was affected by or at risk of flooding needed to become empowered to take the lead. It was the NFF’s aim to ensure that this was the case and to provide support.
(9) The NFF had a major role to play after flood events. They had undertaken this role in West Sussex, Hull, Cumbria, Sheffield, Surrey and in many other places. The NFF had learned many lessons as a result of these experiences. An example of this was that communities’ needs were very different a week after a flooding event than during the first three or four days. Insurance was often the most significant priority a week or two after the event. The NFF was able to use the strong links it had established with the insurance industry to help overcome difficulties people experienced. The same results could be achieved in accommodation terms because of the NFF’s links with the providers.
(10) Mr Cobbing said that the NFF would usually spend some 18 months working with a flood – affected community, supporting it by utilising the links it had built up with all the relevant agencies to facilitate recovery.
(11) The NFF also worked with the Gold and Silver Commands, advising them on how to work with particular communities. This would include work on reviews in the aftermath of a flooding event.
(12) The Chairman noted that the slide of the Campaign Trailer contained an Environment Agency logo. He asked whether this led the community to conclude that the NFF was actually a part of that agency. Mr Cobbing replied that this particular logo had been the subject of serious discussion and negotiation. The Environment Agency had funded the mobile office, so the question had been how to include its logo on the trailer without leading the community (which considered that the EA was not being particularly helpful) to believe that the NFF was not independent. He agreed that this was a very serious point.
(13) Mr Cobbing continued by saying that the NFF never walked away from an issue once it had been raised. It always saw it through to its conclusion. This led to other issues being raised with them which the other agencies were unaware of. Examples of this had occurred in Surrey where the NFF had been able to pick up health issues as well as identify the problem that a number of people had been unable to insure their properties, despite being initially unwilling to say that this was the case.
(14) Mr Cobbing turned to the question of preparation for flooding, which was another aspect of the NFF’s work. Very often, there was no local flood group. The NFF would help set one up and also advise on the best way to organise and deal with the issues. This could include facilitating discussions within a community about areas of disagreement over what the actual flooding issues were. It was also crucial to ensure that even the least articulate and most vulnerable had a voice which was heard.
(15) NFF’s role as a facilitator of discussions between Flood Action Groups on the one hand and agencies/authorities on the other was undertaken with the overall goal in mind of reducing flood risk. To this end, it would produce an action plan which would lead to meetings identifying the various tasks which needed to be undertaken and the timeframe for them.
(16) Mr Cobbing said that the NFF had been trialling various types of Plans. These included Resilience Plans, Incident Plans and Recovery Plans. A community-led approach was also vital for household and business property level protection schemes. Any such scheme that was not community-led ran the risk of either being impractical to implement or of not meeting the community’s needs.
(17) It was also important to identify and all the important intervention mechanisms and to utilise as many of them as possible in order to manage the risk in the most effective way. A lot of work was undertaken with various agencies such as Age Concern and the Rowntree Foundation to identify those areas most vulnerable to a flooding event. This did not necessarily have to be those areas which were more likely to flood; rather it was those communities at risk which would suffer the most in the event of a flooding event.
(18) Mr Cobbing said that the NFF had been involved with the Defra Flooding Resilience Community Pathfinder which had just finished. The NFF had been involved in 8 of the 13 projects. This had been a great opportunity to test new ideas in a variety of local communities, some of which had been flooded and others which had not.
(19) Mr Cobbing then said that he had personally been involved over the past four years in actively working on flood risk insurance for households, negotiating with the Government and the insurance industry to try to solve the problem that ½ m households had difficulties getting flooding insurance. This could be because they were deemed to be too high risk, because the premiums were too high or because they were worthless when an event actually occurred.
(20) Mr Cobbing also stated that a major problem with the government’s current strategy for flood risk management was that there were still 200,000 homes at risk of significant flooding even after 50 years of investment in flood defences. The NFF had a role to play in facilitating discussion on how to deal with the problem that there currently were so many places which would never have the right flood protection measures installed because they were too small to be a priority or because the scheme itself would be too expensive in comparison to the number of people and properties it was designed to protect.
(21) Mr Cobbing said that there were many initiatives which could be taken by various government departments which could help alleviate the risks of flooding. For example, a number of counties did not ascribe a significant role to the Fire and Rescue Service. Kent, on the other hand, had done so very successfully. The government strongly advocated shared best practice, which, if implemented, would enable these counties to follow Kent’s lead. Another example was that care homes and small businesses had to have a fire certificate but did not need to have any plans or practice to deal with a flooding event, even though flooding was statistically far more likely to occur than a fire.
(22) Mr Cobbing concluded his presentation by saying that you could not build flood defences everywhere, but you could work with every community to increase its flood resilience.
(23) Mr Harwood responded to a question from the Chairman by saying that the Kent Resilience Forum was in discussions with the NFF over joint working. He was particularly interested in the NFF’s Flood risk and incident management matrix which identified the symbiosis between different interventions. It would be very wrong to think in silos instead of working across agencies and disciplines. Work was also being undertaken with the Local Government Information Unit to look at resilient communities in their wider sense so that all decision-making within the County Council could be consistently informed.
(24) Ms Stewart asked which level of Local Government usually initiated work with the NFF. Mr Cobbing replied that working with communities was often initiated on a sub-parish level. Once this had happened, the NFF would work at all levels. An example of this was that, having identified the most vulnerable communities in the county, the NFF was now discussing with Surrey CC how best to translate Recovery into Resilience. In West Sussex, meanwhile, recovery from the 2012 floods had led to the establishment of a network of groups which were helping and learning from one another by sharing good practice. Two representatives of that network were now sitting on the County’s Strategic Flood Risk Management Boards.
(25) Mr Vye said that he had attended a meeting of his local Flood Management Group where a lot of concern had been expressed that EA maps were not always accurate in terms of the mitigation of flood risk. Both the Co-op and NFU had been praised for their insurance approach unlike other insurers. He asked whether the NFF could act as an adviser in this respect.
(26) Mr Cobbing replied that the NFF did have interesting discussions with the EA about its flood maps and was involved in joint working to improve the position. Some of the larger insurance companies had far more sophisticated modelling systems than the EA based on a combination of model data and their own claims data. Other companies either used the EA maps or simply based their decisions on post codes.
(27) Mr Cobbing continued that the NFF ran an advice line which covered a range of flooding issues, including advice on which insurance company was likely to provide the best policy at any given point.
(28) Ms Cribbon said that a major concern was the number of homes which were purchased without the buyer being informed that it was in a flood risk area. Mr Cobbing replied that the current guidance from the Council of Mortgage Lenders to solicitors was that they should research on flooding. This advice might, however, change. The NFF had made its views well known on this subject and would continue to lobby hard against any change.
(29) Mr Dobson said that planning authorities needed to ensure that they took flooding risk into account when deciding whether to permit developments. He gave as an example a housing estate which had been built in Hildenborough on a flood plain which flooded every time the river broke its banks.
(30) Mrs Brown said that her parish was affiliated to the NFF which had undertaken a work on their behalf. She confirmed that the NFF was and was also seen to be fully independent. They provided very helpful advice and support which was very gratefully appreciated.
(31) RESOLVED that Mr Cobbing be thanked for his presentation and that the crucial role of the NFF in working with flood-affected communities be noted.