Agenda item

(1)          The presentation slides for this item are contained in the agenda items which can be found in the electronic papers for this meeting on the KCC website.  

(2)          Mr Tony Harwood introduced his presentation on the work of the Emergency Planning and Resilience Service, which formed one of the key components of the Committee’s remit.   He said that the genesis of Flood Risk Management Committees had been the Summer Floods of 2007 which had seen very significant flooding events in the North of England, Gloucestershire.  The result had been very profound impacts on some 55k inundated properties.  There had also been some loss of life.  Following this, the Government had set up a Review led by Sir Mike Pitt, the former Chief Executive of KCC.  This Review had made 99 recommendations, including the need for an overview and scrutiny committee to be established in each upper tier local authority area. 

(3)       Mr Harwood continued by saying that flood risk management committees provided an opportunity to consider concerns of local communities as well as standing reports.  In Kent, there were representatives from many of the District Councils and Parish Councils as well as Kent Fire and Rescue. The local IDBs were also invited.  Although only KCC Members were entitled to vote, the only time that voting had ever occurred was when the Chairman of the Committee was elected. 

(4)       Administrative support to the Committee was provided by Mr Andrew Tait from KCC Democratic Services.  Specialist officer support was provided by Mr Max Tant, KCC Flood Risk Manager and by Mr Hartwood who led the Emergency Planning Team.  His role was to organise the operational response. His duties consisted of responding, planning, training, the development of emergency plans and ensuring that KCC was compliant with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and some 50 other legal requirements.  

(5)       Mr Harwood said that whilst as a “key risk” flooding was a very important aspect of his work, he also carried out his emergency planning role in many other areas such as off-site work on Dungeness B, ‘Top Tier’ Control of Major Accident Hazard) industrial sites, Major Accident Hazard Pipelines and larger reservoirs.  There were 60 large reservoirs in Kent or on its boundaries with other Local Authorities. A reservoir exercise was due to be held in Autumn 2021 to complement that held at Mote Park in Maidstone in 2020. 

(6)       Mr Harwood also had emergency planning operational roles such as responding to Covid-19.  Additional responsibilities were the co-ordination of post-incident site demolition, clearance, waste disposal, decontamination, testing and analysis, ensuring effective animal and plant health emergency planning and response contingencies for Notifiable and other destructive pests and pathogens such as Foot and Mouth Disease, Avian Influenza, Xylella and Ash Dieback.

(7)       The Emergency Planning role also included the production, development, maintenance and testing of Emergency Plans for Major Emergencies, Business Continuity, Recovery, Flood Response and others.  It also ensured that resilience principles were considered within infrastructure planning and delivery, local and other development plans, and some major planning applications.

(8)       Mr Harwood then showed a bar chart indicating the number of alerts received by the 24/7 Duty Emergency Planning Officer in each financial year from 2002/03 onwards.  In 2013/14 the number had dramatically risen from the previous average of about 150 to 645.  This was accounted for by the winter flooding events that year.  A similar peak had occurred in 2019/20 as well as 2020/21 when 689 emergency calls had been received.  These figures aligned with similar figures recorded by Kent Highways.

(9)       Mr Harwood said that the third highest number of emergency calls to the Duty Emergency Planning Officer in 2020/21 had been in respect of high wind impacts. The second highest volume of calls had been flood response.  The winter of 2020/21 had seen a very high number of such calls at the same time as Covid-19 pandemic issues such as border closures were at their height.  Unsurprisingly, the highest total related to human health, where Emergency Planning had written the Gold Command response document and taken responsibility for the delivery of PPE to vulnerable communities. 

(10)     Mr Harwood replied to a question from Mr Lewis by saying that following the 2000 flooding events, strong consideration had been given to a number of issues including how the Environment Agency’s Flood Areas had been drawn up, how and where Flood Alerts had been issued and who they had been issued to. The Pent Stream in Folkestone was now a Flood Alert Area. Public awareness was a critical issue.  Communities that were regularly impacted by flooding events had a high level of awareness, whilst others that were not so regularly affected and were not in Flood Areas did not.  The impact of Climate Change was that the location of flooding events was becoming less predictable.  There had been a significant increase in intense localized summer precipitation events.  A major task was therefore to engender greater awareness in both residents and planning authorities who were facilitating development within the County.  The result of this was that work to ensure that drainage was properly maintained and that the effects of the loss of greenfield land was mitigated had been prioritized and was improving significantly.  A standard planning condition was now being used by Local Authorities in the County which placed additional responsibilities upon developers to ensure that their SUDs systems were effective.

(11)     Mr Lewis said that residents in Thanet were very concerned that, although they could identify where flooding was most likely to occur, no mitigation seemed to be taking place.  Mr Harwood replied that work had been undertaken in Thanet. An example of this was the establishment of rain gardens to provide better drainage in flooding hotspots. This linked in with tree planting initiatives to provide shelter, cover and absorption.  This project was being repeated in other parts of Kent.  He added that it was critical for all flooding events to be reported. This could be done either to the Emergency Planning Team, the District Council or direct to Mr Tant’s Flood Management Team.  One of Mr Harwood’s duties after a flooding event was to itemize those properties where inundation had taken place.  Analysis undertaken by the Flood Management Team could well lead to funding being unlocked. 

(12)     In response to a question from Ms McArthur, Mr Harwood said that the Severe Weather Advisory Board (SWAG) which consisted of all the partner agencies, would meet when the Met Office or EA gave a Warning that a severe weather event was likely to occur.  Its role was to help co-ordinate the response.  Following the event, SWAG would carry out a review in order to learn from the experience.   The Kent Resilience Forum, established under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 also met regularly to plan response co-ordination. This was a partnership of Level 1 and 2 responders (including the emergency services, local authorities, Kent Fire and Rescue, Kent Police, the utilities and the Port Authorities).  The Kent Resilience Team consisted of officers from KCC, Kent Fire and Rescue and Kent Police who worked as a team.   All the agencies recognized that partnership working was essential. 

(13)     The Chairman said that he was one of three KCC representatives who sat on the EA’s Regional Flood and Coastal Committee and the Kent and Essex Inshore Fisheries and Coastal Authority (IFCA).   The joint working undertaken by these Committees enabled all the partner authorities to share information from a different perspective to that of the emergency responders, underlining Mr Harwood’s point about the importance of partnership working.

(14)     Mr Mackonochie said that the role of Flood Wardens contributed vitally to information sharing in that they represented the local starting point for intelligence gathering. 

(15)     Mr Harwood said that the communities most at risk of flooding were very well served by their numerous flood wardens. There was, however, a dearth of wardens in a number of urban areas, particularly where the population was more transitory.  Work was taking place with District Councils and other partners to rectify this situation.

(16)     RESOLVED that Mr Harwood be thanked for his presentation an that its content be noted.