9:22am Monday 3rd August 2009
GOVERNMENT moves to give Selby Council and other local authorities more powers when flooding occurs have been criticised.
In its Draft Floods and Water Management Bill, ministers proposed to avoid confusion over which body is responsible when flooding occurs.
But, rather than giving more powers to councils, the chairman of the National Flood Forum, Saxton resident Laurence Waterhouse, said a separate, independent body should be set up which only has flooding as its responsibility, because too many organisations were currently involved.
Mr Waterhouse, whose own home has been flooded several times, said people immediately thought of calling the Environment Agency when flooding occured.
He said: “But the first thing the Environment Agency asks when you call is where you live and if you’re not in the catchment area of the river, they don’t want to know, and you have to ring your local authority. But with the best will in the world, the man who looks after wheelie bins and dead rats can’t also properly look after flooding.
“In Saxton, we have 300 metres of dyke running through the village. “To get anybody to accept even some responsibility for it you have to get ten different organisations – all the utility services, parish, district and county councils.
“The Highways Agency, for example, owns half of the width of the stream, some farmers own bits. It’s a nightmare and that’s consistent all across the country.”
He said the National Flood Forum was calling for one organisation to be set up to take responsibility for flooding.
“In Selby, as with other councils, we feel we would probably not get the best response by passing powers to them.”
Selby MP John Grogan, who is also secretary of the All-Party Flood Prevention Group, will pass on the comments to Defra. He said the views of the forum would be taken into account.
He pointed out there were various villages in parts of Selby itself which suffered from flooding, and agreed it was difficult at the moment to ascertain which organisation was responsible.
The proposal was for the Environment Agency to have overall responsibility and for councils to act as their agents, but that it would only succeed if there was enough funding.
But Mr Grogan agreed there was a good case for creating a single body responsible for all flooding in the country.
