Flooding and Flood Management Inquiry
The purpose of item 3 is to enable members who attended the two visits on flooding last Tuesday to report back to the committee. Members have received written reports. I hope that you noticed that the one from Perth was much livelier than the reports that you normally receive. Those of you who have not read it yet will not know why I said that, but if you flick through the report, you will immediately spot why it is more interesting.
I will make a brief statement on our visit to Perth and the River Devon, on which John Scott and Peter Peacock can add their comments. I will then ask Des McNulty to give a brief overview of the Glasgow and East Kilbride visit, on which Jamie Hepburn and Mike Rumbles can add their comments. Obviously, we do not want this to become a huge session as we already have the written reports.
In Perth, we spent the morning at the offices of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, where we were able to see a lot of SEPA's work, including the flood warning centre. Basically, the office in Perth seems to have a national as well as a more local role. We had a lot of discussions with SEPA officials about their activities and how they saw things working. They agreed that some issues need to be addressed. It was clear from the tenor of our discussions in the morning that, when a flooding incident occurs, a great deal of uncertainty remains about who exactly is responsible for what. From the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the flooding incident, that is a big issue that desperately needs to be resolved. That came out quite clearly.
Various issues were raised with us about the indicative river and coastal flood maps for Scotland. It would be useful for all members to have a look at those because they give interesting information that enables people to spot where the problems are in their local area. The indicative flood maps flagged up questions about why some planning permissions had been granted given the indicative flood risk. From our flooding inquiry perspective, we can perhaps explore how those issues might be resolved.
We also visited Perth's hard flooding defences. The defences, which are relatively new and were quite expensive, were put in place in the wake of the 1993 floods. They are very hard defences indeed, as those who saw them can testify. We saw how they worked and we were told about when they were brought into play, how often they have been used in that time and how effective they might be in future. The defences were designed to cope with a one-in-200-year flood, which was understood to be appropriate when they were planned in the 1990s. Since then, the defences proved to be adequate against the one-in-25-year flood that would otherwise have flooded the centre of Perth in 2006. However, a big question mark remains over what could happen in future.
In the afternoon, we visited the River Devon demonstration site, which is a demonstration of soft flood management methods. Such methods do not offer very much to look at. An amusing conclusion that I drew from the visit was that our medieval forebears seemed to handle such issues rather better than we do. Whereas the line of the medieval roadway rose up to skirt round what was understood to be a flood plain, in modern times a road had been driven right through the flood plain. As a result of that work, we have exacerbated a situation that was recognised as an issue even in medieval times.
Do John Scott and Peter Peacock have anything to add?
Convener, I have little to add as, not for the first time, you have said it all.
I thank SEPA, Perth and Kinross Council and WWF Scotland for taking the time to show us round those sites. From an engineering perspective, I was particularly interested to see both the hard engineering and the soft engineering solutions. They certainly gave me food for thought. Obviously, hard engineering solutions come at an enormous price, so any other solutions that can be found in mitigation should be pursued.
The visits that were organised by WWF Scotland to the River Devon and Yetts o' Muckhart were hugely beneficial because they showed us that, in some instances, there may be potential for taking the tops off floods by using the methods that are demonstrated there. The trouble is that much of it is a subjective analysis. Notwithstanding the interesting stuff that we were told by the hydrologist—to whom we are very grateful—the engineering that is required to take the tops off floods through sustainable management, and to quantify it in order to make predictions, will not be easy. That does not mean that we should not show willingness to address it. I was very taken with all our visits.
I have nothing to add—the convener and John Scott have covered it all.
I ask Des McNulty to give a brief overview of the visit that he, Jamie Hepburn and Mike Rumbles undertook.
We went to East Kilbride and Glasgow. In East Kilbride, we met the people who are responsible for flood monitoring and flood warning, including hydrologists from SEPA and representatives of Scottish Water. We were all impressed with the complexity and sophistication of the computerised programmes; the measurement and monitoring that are available to identify where flood risks are most acute; the extent to which significantly earlier warning is available because of the detail of the information and the quality of the computer modelling; and the predictability that ensues from that.
None of us had appreciated just how much information about rainfall and flood levels is collected from all round Scotland. There is a sophisticated system for the Clyde, which is important given the scale of the population around the Clyde. Work is being done in other parts of Scotland to improve the quality of information, which depends on being able to identify down to smaller and smaller parcels of land. The more monitoring that can be done in local circumstances, the more the flooding risk can be anticipated. That is linked into meteorology—the meteorological models and the monitoring go together to give us the necessary flood warnings.
In the afternoon, in Glasgow, we spoke to the strategic drainage partnership and had a site visit. What came across from that was the firm idea that flooding is not purely a rural matter; to a significant extent, flooding affects urban areas and high concentrations of people. In Glasgow, many of the watercourses have been covered over as a result of previous development, leaving thousands of houses vulnerable to flooding from watercourses that normally do not have much water in them. Particular patterns of rainfall can lead to a significant number of houses being affected. We were taken to parts of Glasgow where the topography is such that flooding can happen quickly. There is run-off from higher areas to areas in the dip, which creates problems in those localities.
Something needs to be done to deal with those problems because the incidence of flooding is increasing. Although we were pointed to areas where such flooding had happened in the relatively recent past, the officials made it clear that in many areas of Glasgow, given the right rainfall, a variety of incidents could affect large numbers of properties and families. Obviously, that needs to be addressed, through flood protection measures and by re-examining the drainage systems. The culverts and the sewers are interrelated. One big issue that was pointed out to us was the need to find ways of separating surface water from sewage. Currently, surface water simply goes into the sewers, which can create huge problems at the treatment plants and in the sewage pipes. There needs to be considerable focus on the management and segregation of surface water as a means of improving flood management.
I do not have a tremendous amount to add. The visit was very useful, and offered a lot of insight. It was good to visit SEPA and see how it operates. Des McNulty is right: we were all very impressed by the computers that SEPA has. I was glad that there are boffins there to operate them; I could not quite understand the detail of what was going on but, obviously, they can. Part of our visit involved learning about soft flood management—that appears to be similar to what you learned on your visit, convener.
The main thing that I took from the visit was the collective approach to flooding and drainage management issues. In greater Glasgow, a collective approach is taken by the city council and the surrounding local authorities, in conjunction with SEPA and Scottish Water. That metropolitan approach is interesting, from my perspective. An unofficial entity has been established there—the name of it escapes me, but perhaps Des McNulty or Mike Rumbles could remind me.
It is the metropolitan Glasgow strategic drainage partnership.
There we go.
How could you forget that?
It is an unofficial body, but it is working and I think that it is making a difference. I hope that when—perhaps we are getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves—
Yes.
When it comes to evidence, we can perhaps involve the partnership.
That whole issue will be key in the flooding inquiry.
Representing a very rural constituency, I took the opportunity to visit a very urban environment. I greatly appreciated the briefings that we got from the metropolitan Glasgow strategic drainage partnership. I saw parts of Glasgow that I have never seen before.
The most important point that came out of our visit is the need for the legislation to be updated. That is what everyone was saying to us. Organisations are working together, but they are using old, outdated legislation, which needs to be updated. There are issues about funding and about asset ownership.
The sooner that gets done, the better. Until it gets done, we are still doing everything on the old basis. I thank members for their feedback.