Agenda item

A briefing by the Head of Contracts: Leisure, Waste and Environment to provide information on the roles of different agencies for flooding incidents and prevention, (to include the role of the Borough Council).

In accordance with the scrutiny scope document, considered and discussed the roles of different agencies via a presentation by the Head of Contracts, Leisure Waste and Environment.

Key points of discussion:

·       determining ownership of water courses was challenging.  On purchase of any new property, conveyancing would identify any responsibility for water courses on the land.  Noted that some brooks located in the Borough changed ownership and responsibility along their course.

·       if a section of a water course was blocked, it was the responsibility of the riparian owner to remove the blockage.  Depending on the definition of the water course, this would identify who was responsible for enforcement.  If it was defined as a main river, it would be the Environment Agency’s (EA) responsibility.  If it was ordinary water course, it would be the responsibility of the County Council.  Consent to inspect water courses was not a legal requirement but it was likely to be sought.

·       the geographical area of water courses to be inspected was significant, the number of enforcement notices given by the County Council or whether there was an inspection programme was unknown.

·       parish and town councils did not have any flood responsibility other than as a riparian owner.

·       as part of the planning process for building of new housing developments, the green field run off rate (water discharge from fields into water courses) would be calculated to ensure that balancing ponds or Sustainable Urban Drainage (SUDs) schemes implemented as part of the development would reduce the flood rate to slower than agricultural fields.  It was uncertain whether the calculation accounted for climate change over a 20-30 year period or when the process had been introduced as part of the planning process. 

·       it was the landowner’s responsibility to maintain the pond or scheme, however, identifying the owner could be complex.  Often there was a mix of owners for green spaces in a housing development.  The Borough Council or Parish/Town Council could adopt the SUDs scheme or a management trust could be established, requiring fees to be paid by home owners.  If the Borough Council took ownership an advance maintenance sum would be requested, management trusts tended to be the preferred option, and this would be highlighted during any conveyancing when purchasing a property.  Planning conditions could be in place to ensure the schemes were maintained.

·       it was important to consider if new foul sewers were built or that existing sewers could cope with additional housing.  Some older sewers were combined rain and foul sewers.  This could be discussed with Severn Trent.

·       Loughborough was considered to have a high flood risk, the Borough Council had established a Flood Board and liaised with other agencies to provide a response to an incident.  Flood Wardens and volunteers were not contacted directly; their role was to respond to the Flood Alert and proactively made residents aware of the risk. 

·       new ‘aqua sack’ sandbags were distributed to high risk parishes. They were easy to store flat, had a longer shelf life than sand and expanded when wet.  Concerns raised that there was no information on the bags to alert users to the need to wet them before use (which seemed counter-intuitive).

·       the number of properties flooded during the recent incident in January 2024 was continuing to grow as people came forward to register for the national Grant Scheme.  There were still some families accommodated in hotels and B&Bs at a cost to the Council.  90 tons of waste had been collected in 1 week.  As a token of good will the Council had cleansed some unadopted roads but generally the focus was on the roads the Council was responsible for.  The majority of unadopted roads were waiting to be adopted which could take some years to process as the roads had to be up to a good standard and were initially maintained by developers.  The number of private roads in the Borough was not considered to significantly impact flooding of adopted roads and properties.

·       the EA and County Council could bid for government funding to implement flood alleviation schemes which was based on the number of properties protected.  Higher value properties would receive more funding and the area covered was geographically large.  The EA’s flood alleviation scheme for the Wood Brook and Nanpantan Reservoir had been ongoing since 2016 but obtaining funding had been challenging and the costs were increasing. 

·       natural flood management schemes were possible but required support from landowners.

AGREED that the information provided be noted.