The Financial Blog

Sir Michael Pitt has called for changes in the way the UK adapts to the increasing risk of flooding and has put forward a range of policy reviews for the Government to consider, urging the government to publicy set out how it will help.

Sir Michael said; “During the year I have received more than one thousand written submissions from the public, consulted widely and visited communities to see for myself the extraordinary hardship so many families across the country are facing. It is unacceptable that one year on, thousands of people remain in temporary accommodation.”

“Research published as part of my report today shows that the risk of flooding continues to escalate; making the events that shattered so many communities last year an ever increasing threat. I urge the Government to show leadership and urgently set out the process and timescale for improving resilience in the UK. The recommendations in my report are realistic and affordable and should be made a priority. Waiting for another serious event is a dangerous ‘strategy of luck’; we need to act now to protect our future.”

The Government should:

• Establish a Cabinet Committee dedicated to tackling the risk of flooding, bringing flooding in line with other major risks such as pandemic flu and terrorism
• Publish monthly summaries of progress during the recovery phase of major flooding events, including number of households still displaced
• Ensure proper resourcing of flood resilience measures, with above inflation increases every spending review
• Establish a National Resilience Forum to facilitate national level planning for flooding and other emergencies
• Have pre planned, rather than ad hoc, financial arrangements in place for responding to the financial burden of exceptional emergencies
• Publish an action plan to implement the recommendations in this review, with regular progress updates.

More key requirements;

• The Environment Agency and Met Office should work together, through a joint centre, to improve their technical capability to forecast, model and warn
• The Government should put in place a fully funded national capability for flood rescue, with Fire and Rescue
• Authorities playing a lead role, underpinned by a statutory duty, if necessary
• The Ministry of Defence should identify a small number of trained Armed Forces personnel who can be deployed to advise Gold Commands on logistics during wide-area civil emergencies and, working with Cabinet Office, identify and suitable mechanism for deployment
• The rail industry, working through Local Resilience Forums, should develop plans to provide emergency welfare support to passengers stranded on the rail network
• The EFRA Select Committee should review the country’s readiness for dealing with flooding emergencies and produce an assessment of progress in implementation of the Review’s recommendations after 12 months

Morefrom Sir Michael, to finish;

“I welcome the positive approach and administrative structures that the Government has so far pledged to put in place to improve the UK’s flood resilience. I have worked closely with Government and our key stakeholders throughout the process and am pleased that so many of my recommendations are already being taken forward. Momentum on these issues must continue and I know we will all be watching with interest as my full list of recommendations are implemented.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.