#Action4Floods: National Flood Forum Conference – York March 2020

The National Flood Forum conference was definitely timely following, what we now know to be, the wettest February on record. The Northwest of the country received 362% of the long term average rainfall (Environment Agency - National Water Resources Hydrology Team), that’s a lot of rain. That’s a lot of people in their homes watching the water rise..... inside.

At the conference we heard about people who haven’t just flooded once this winter, with all the devastation that that brings, but multiple times. For many of you reading this, the impact of having your belongings lost to dark smelly flood work is (hopefully) unimaginable and unexperienced, but try to imagine the nightmare of starting to recover only to flood again and on some occasions then flooding a third time. How on earth do you maintain the energy to keep going? 

Because of the extensive nature of the flooding we are hearing (as often sadly happens) of there simply not being enough resources available to support people to recover; the lack of de-humidifiers because of the high demand, the long delays in getting insurance to pay up, because of the high demand on loss adjusters and insurance staff, the inability to contract a builder to restore your home, because they are booked up for months restoring other people’s homes. All this adds to the stress of flooding. And, of course, asks the question why these sort of simple resource questions aren't addressed up front? 

All this becomes flooding, for those who flood. Flooding is not just water in your lounge, flooding floods all aspects of life. And once again we heard stories of holidays flooded by flooding; daily lives flooded by flooding both by the need to constantly check rainfall apps and river levels and to personally, or get friends, to check becks and streams after rain. Very emotional and emotive stuff.

The objective of the conference was to develop #Action4Floods which Paul Cobbing, Chief Executive and Daniel Johns, Chair of the National Flood Forum could take to the minister the following week. Now, frankly, we could have sent them with a ‘War and Peace’ sized book of #Action4Floods recommendations, so we limited ourselves to three key actions from the 6 important flood risk management workshops. How did we get to those #Actions4Floods? Make yourself comfortable and I will begin……….. (it’s a bit of a long read, sorry!).

For the NFF team, the day kicked off at 7.30am. I fully accept that the late arrival of Trustee Bob Haddon and myself (8am) was because of our slightly (well slightly-ish) longer than planned walk to the venue. In my defence, Google maps seemed to be a little confused about exactly where we were going…… (please note, Google maps was confused, not me).

The National Flood Form (NFF) team have been amazing over the last few months. They have been working flat out to support the communities which have flooded in recent months and then on top of that they set the conference up (no mean feat!). Trustees have helped wherever possible, but I have to profusely thank the NFF team for all their exceedingly hard work. And off course, the work helping communities recover has, in reality, only just started. The team are now working closely with many of those who have flooded to listen, advise and support them through what are going to be challenging times. Once the blue flashing lights have left the scene of the flood, the National Flood Forum steps in to offer flooded communities the help they need to recover from and, exceedingly importantly, to learn to live at risk of flooding.

Back at the conference…… for attendees, the day kicked off with Daniel opening up the conference by thanking the sponsors, challenging us all in terms of raising our (that is the countries) ambitions in managing flooding and setting the scene for #Action4Floods.

Next up was Rebecca Pow MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Defra, who could not attend in person, so sent us a video. She talked about the important role of the National Flood Forum and the need to be better prepared for flooding so that is doesn’t dominate people’s lives. This includes thinking beyond flood walls whilst also appreciating that not all homes can be protected.

Paul then introduced the National Flood Forum charter to the conference and presented the key points:

·       Raising our national ambition: We need better, clever, more integrated ways of managing flooding in the face of climate change.

·       The need to act NOW.

·       The importance of involving flood communities in flood risk management (at the earliest point in the process!!), facilitating them to take more control of their flood lives.

Paul highlighted the problems of people suffering repeated flooding, the concerns about what is often a hidden risk – surface water flooding. He also spoke about the mental health impacts of living at risk of flooding. According to Public Health England research 36% of people who flood suffer from PTSD. That is a lot of people who need our help and support. 36%! Blimey. If that hasn’t prompted you to consider how you can help, on a personal not professional basis, communities local to you that have flooded, then please consider it a request.

Paul ended up with what is a plea. The use of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measure is increasing. At face value this sounds fab but dig a little deeper and there are a number of serious problems, starting with the quality of equipment in some cases, through to whether the right equipment has been installed and the exceedingly thorny issue of maintenance of PFR equipment and I’ve not even touched on the psychological elements of PFR. Paul was adamant here; we can’t rely on PFR as our main line of flood defence. It MUST only be a fall back.

In the first workshop that I chaired, we had the truly brilliant Michael Green, Director, Hydrogreen Consulting Ltd talking about surface water flooding and he echoed Pauls PFR comments, adding that the funding crisis that Lead Local Authorities are facing often means that PFR ends up as the only financially viable option. From my PhD research I know that funding, or rather the lack of it, is a huge problem to the flood authorities. I have been told over and over again, that the lack of funding means that the flood authorities can’t help flooded communities. Over and above the massive impact this has on flood communities, this also has an impact on the flood authority individuals themselves. Just think how hard it must be to tell a community, who you have developed a good relationship with, that the ‘computer says no’. They know exactly what impact this news will have on that community.

Michael's fabulous presentation prompted an utterly brilliant discussion in the workshop. We ended up with some many ideas, concerns, thoughts and questions for the minister. Our instructions were to select only 3, where in fact we could have sent 300! Now that was a little more challenging…… but we ended up going for:

·       Planning – have surface water flooding holding the same weight as development in flood zone 3, re-instating schedule 3 of the floods act and promoting the retrofitting ‘slow the flow’ features of existing properties. The latter is part of planning as our thoughts where that things like water butts or rain garden could be made a requirement for any extensions to pre-existing homes.

·       Removing the right to connect to sewers. This includes highways!

·       Communities are equal partners in surface water risk management (now, where have I heard that before….). This is so important on so many levels, but I’ll pick just one. Communities are often the only people who have been in the area for years and years. Politicians come and go according to the political cycle and there is a high turnover rate in the flood authorities. The only consistency is the locals and all the flood knowledge they hold.

The next workshop I chaired* was kicked off by Bob Haddon, Shinfal Flood Partnership. Bob talked about catchment management. He set the scene by contrasting what a natural catchment does compared to one that has gone through a number of man-made interventions. He then gave us a long list of the man-made interventions that impact how a catchment works, for example, change of land use, urbanisation, framing practices, modifying water course, etc.

Again, the measure of a good presentation is the discussion it initiates, and the discussion threw up a series of challenges. It was felt that there is a need for better and more integrated catchment management but with equal measure, there are so many flood risk management authorities that there was no desire to create another one! We talked about CaBA groups and how they are hindered by a lack of funding. We queried whether Regional Flood and Coast Committees could and should be involved (should from where I am sitting) and whether that involvement included any element of management. We talked through Natural Flood Management and the importance of quantifying benefits through which funding could then be attached. Angie Elwin, Reading University, talked about the LANDWISE project which is currently aiming to do exactly that. And finally, guess what, we landed back at funding or rather the lack of it!

*The National Flood Forum conference presented many of us with that age-old problem of a really interesting conference, the desire to attend a number of simultaneous workshops. Since I, obviously missed the other 4 going on at the same time as the ones I chaired, we’ll have to wait for the outputs from the conference to know what the other workshops submitted to the minister (which mercifully means this blog isn’t even longer!).

After lunch, Paul summed up some of the outputs and discussion from the workshop. For me (and I would say this wouldn’t I), his line that flooding is ‘about people not stuff’ will stick with me long after the trip to the gorgeous city of York is a distance memory. In fact, a discussion with Michael Green at the end of the conference underscored this, if not enlarged upon it. He pointed out that the ‘people’ in Paul's sentence must include flood risk management authority staff. And that funding played a role here (again funding really was a big theme of the conference). For flood risk management to be effective, it needs to have well trained, empathetic and well-resourced staff. In the current financial world of cutbacks, the flood authority people element of flood risk management is being severally challenged, to put it mildly. Hey, a lot of what you learn at conferences actually comes from the networking!

Julie Foley, Director of Flood Risk Strategy, Environment Agency, then took the stage. Julie started by summarising the impact of the recent flooding and re-iterated Pauls point about PTSD. She then took us through the outputs from the strategy review and summarised what has been a COLLSSAL amount of work talking through the three key elements of the strategy:

·       Climate resilient places.

·       Today’s growth and infrastructure in tomorrow climate.

·       A nation of climate change champions.

Julie then, very bravely, presented a summary of the Environment Agency’s construction of resilience:

This was all underscored by her observation that for every person who is flooded, 16 others are impacted through flooded infrastructure, roads, power, schools, etc. A new fact for me was that 2/3’s of the countries homes are served by infrastructure which is at risk of flooding. You can see me using that again can’t you!

Finally, Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central started her talk by stating that that unless we have a more strategic approach to flood risk management, we are going to see a lot more scenes like the ones that we have witnessed over the last few months. She picked up on many of the discussions in the workshops; planning and how we are, in essence, #PlanningtoFlood, catchment approaches to slowing the flow, insurance and FloodRe, the problems associated with small business flooding (and how it can kill the business) and finally re-iterating that we can’t keep having the same conversations about flooding over and over again. We are faced with a climate emergency and need to act not continuously debate things!           

So, for me, what where the top three things to come out of the conference? Easy:

·       There needs for an urgent review of planning policy as currently we are, frankly, #PlanningtoFlood.

·       Funding – this MUST be increased (and not tied or limited to specific use) if we are to protect the increasing number of communities that live at risk of flooding. Currently a lack of funding is inhibiting flood risk management whichever way you look at it.

·       The need to act now. We’ve spent years talking about climate change and how this will result in more flooding. Now is the time to act (well last decade, if not before really).

Those would be my key #Action4Floods. What are yours? Please let us know.