New report on the flooding this summer

A new report has come out today on the flooding situation this summer. According to the report, the floods in June and July led to the biggest loss of critical infrastructure since World War II.

Amongst its findings:

build more flood-resilient buildings
greater leadership from local authorities
a national flood emergency plan
clear responsibility for dealing with urban flooding
systematic stockpiling of emergency equipment, such as boats.
drainage systems were overloaded, and there needs

Of these we are very lucky that in the Liatris planning application (which has presumably been withdrawn now that Tesco has bought the site) one of them was dealt with – their engineers said in the planning application that, at times of extreme weather, the plateau would be surrounded by at least a metre of water and would be cut off. They therefore recommended that there should be first aid facilities in two locations (they suggested the visitor centre and the supermarket) and that these buildings should also store either two shallow draft boats or two sea tractors to aid in evacuation of the site. Although some of us are still wresting with the problem that they also say that the surrounding area will not suffer any greater risk of flooding that before!

When it came to local responsibility, Sir Michael Pitt, the author of the report, said local authorities should take a stronger leadership role, including mapping the drainage systems and working with the Environment Agency, local drainage boards, and water companies to get a better understanding of how drainage works.
Although he personally wanted as little building as possibly on flood plains, Sir Michael acknowledged that with 3 million new houses planned between now and 2020 there was bound to be some construction there. "Where that takes place why can't we build proper resilient properties so that if they do flood they can recover very quickly," he said.

He went on to say that there should be an urgent review of underwater rescue attempts as there was "ambiguity" surrounding procedures.
We are very luck that we now have a new owner for the site (Tesco) which can use this report to inform its own planning application and that, being committed to environmental inmprovements, Tesco will hopefully be much more creative about how the flood plain is used.