The Committee to receive a presentation and to review the Flood Risk Management for West Northants Council.
6:45pm to 7:10pm
Minutes:
The Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport, Highways and Waste introduced Councillor Chauhan as Assistant Cabinet Member and commended her work with the team on Flood Risk Management. The Chair then invited the Assistant Director Assets and Environment Senior Flood and Water Officer to deliver their presentation on Flood Risk Management.
The Assistant Director Assets and Environment delivered the presentation on Flood Risk Management and highlighted the salient points:
· There was a series of ongoing future projects and capital works to improve flood resilience in West Northamptonshire communities.
· The current service delivery model relied on outsourcing to external providers and the Council would be bringing the resource in-house so to enable all contracted work to be delivered. This would increase efficiency by having a specialist team to understand West Northamptonshire specific flood issues.
· Climate change was causing more pluvial flooding and the flood resilience project would look at prevention methods to reduce risk
· The Council were looking to collaborate with the University of Northampton to work with students to complete work experience and gain knowledge in the area during a sandwich year in their degree
Members were pleased to hear that flood risk management was being improved and asked if more site visits could take place as there were often issues reported to members that were difficult to explain over the phone without someone coming to review the incident. Members also asked for better accessibility on the Council’s website reporting flooding issues and asked for details of a designated contact. The Assistant Cabinet Member responded that there had been a changeover of staff in the department at Ruth Burnham was the person to contact as the Senior Flood and Water Officer.
Members questioned if flood prevention was in relation to flooding by natural causes. The Assistant Director Assets and Flooding confirmed that the Council were concerned with preparing for natural floods and explained that flood plains were a natural part of how rivers behave, and part of the wider problems is that many houses have been built on a flood plain. The Assistant Cabinet Member for HR shared that there were Regional Planning Committee Flood Boards which had a primary function to look at locations that required additional funding and requested that any examples could be brought to the board to be considered for funding.
Members discussed problematic areas in West Northamptonshire for flooding and mentioned Brackley, St James, Silverstone, Tiffield and Towcester as key flood areas that would need investigating and prevention resources. The Senior Flood and Water Officer shared that the Innovative Flood Resilience Project was tasked with flood matters and improving community resilience considering that climate change meant that more places would be at risk of flooding in the future, and the Council needed to be prepared and have prevention measures in place. She explained that the board had been working with DEFRA and had acquired £6m in funding over the last year to ensure flood resilience for properties built on flood plains.
The Chair thanked officers for their presentation on Flood Risk Management and for answering questions of the committee. The Chair requested that a progress update report be brought to the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee in 12 months’ time on Flood Risk Management.
RESOLVED:
1) That the Committee heard the Assistant Director Assets and Environment deliver a presentation on Flood Risk Management
2) That the Committee requested a progress update report be brought to the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee in January 2023.