The Environmental Audit Committee’s report into Flood Resilience in England paints a stark picture of an overly complex, weak and fragmented approach to flood risk management, which is clearly out of step with the scale and pace of climate change and the increasing flood risk facing communities.
Time for a new approach
The report recognises the need for a fundamental shift towards a strategic and preventative approach based on transparent and clear targets and resilient standards.
The TCPA welcomes this and supports many of the detailed recommendations made by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) – particularly the need to give greater weight to flood risk in national planning policy and embed a more strategic understanding of flood resilience into spatial planning and development decisions.
Planning policy is moving in the wrong direction
However, since taking evidence for this inquiry, government have moved in the wrong direction, by weakening planning guidance on surface water flood risk, and backtracking on its commitment to implement legislation to mandate SuDS for all new development. This recent blog goes into more detail about the TCPA’s concerns about the weakening of flood risk policy.
A review of the NPPF and PPG to ensure it is fully aligned with the UK’s climate mitigation and adaptation commitments is long overdue, and must be informed by the findings of this report.
Do proposals go far enough?
The Committee’s recommendations would undoubtedly improve and enhance the current system, and must be implemented urgently. However, taken as a whole, it is not clear that they would amount to the systemic regulatory change that may be required to move towards the Dutch-style, standards based approach to flood resilience.
A fundamental review of responsibilities and institutional arrangements must be undertaken alongside a move to a target-based approach to resilience, in order to secure an accountable, transparent, strategic and coordinated approach to flood resilience in England.
