Agenda item

To consider and comment on the draft Annual Progress and Implementation Plan.

6.1       James Blockley, Principal Flood Risk Management Officer, introduced the Annual Progress and Implementation Plan which looked back at the previous year and forward to the next year (2019-2021).

6.2       The Committee noted that over the past 13 months, thousands of residents in Gloucestershire had been affected in some way by flooding, including the most recent incident mainly in Tewkesbury and the Forest of Dean. It was also noted that unfortunately, extreme weather events were going to become the norm and flooding would no longer occur in isolated incidents. It was therefore very important that the team continued to build resilience for the county against future events.

6.3       Members heard that the best way to tackle flooding was not just to focus on individual capital development schemes, but to also look at ways of managing the risk be that through natural or more traditional alleviation schemes.

6.4       The team at GCC has had two new members join in the past year and had been focusing good effort on maintaining closer relationships with the wider level of organisations surrounding flood management, for example, the Environment Agency and NFU, as well as, maintaining key roles in the Natural Flood Management Forum and the River Severn Corridor project.

6.5       It was concluded that if the Committee were happy with the report, it would be published and available online after the meeting.

6.6       A member queried how the new tree planting objectives for the county would work alongside the flood risk management objectives, it was highlighted that trees may cause a hindrance to water flow in some areas.

6.7       It was advised that working with natural processes was a part of flood management and sometimes tree planting would stabilise the land, but it was vital that this method was only used in the right place. It was also important to work in partnership and share best practice.

6.8       A member questioned why in table 3.1 some parishes showed an increase in calculated risk but there was no action to address this. It was requested to take discussion about an individual parish offline so more detail could be provided. It was reassured that this list was revisited on a regular basis and measured against a wide range of metrics.

6.9       The report stated that the Council would allocate at least £2.1 million per year for flood prevention; it was questioned how many years previous this had happened. It was advised that this went back to 2008 when the Council exercised a flood levy through council tax.

6.10    A member requested for information to be provided on the financial contributions of the district councils and Environment Agency into the county’s flood alleviation works since 2008. It was also raised that there was a typo on page 5 of the report where planned activities should be for 2020 not 2019.

ACTION:       JAMES BLOCKLEY

6.11    There was a discussion about the prioritisation of alleviation works. Members noted that scheme prioritisation does take into account how many times an area has flooded and if works had already been carried out. It may be that some areas/properties are more likely to continue to flood regardless of schemes put in place. If work had already been carried out, this would reduce the prioritisation of any future schemes. It was stressed however that this did not mean areas were being left behind; the team were working hard to identify new methods to help tackle these more difficult areas.

6.12    A member observed during recent floods that there was an issue regarding members of the public pumping flood waters into the highways drains. When these became full, they were creating their own flooding issues on the roads. It was noted that this had always been a problem, there was a need for better partnership working and communication during flooding incidents.

6.13    The Committee and Cabinet member paid tribute to the hard work of the GCC flood alleviations team since the floods of 2007.