Official Report 558KB pdf
The next item of business is to take evidence on the Reservoirs (Scotland) Bill. We welcome the panel from which we will hear today. It consists of Roseanna Cunningham, the Minister for Environment and Climate Change; Judith Tracey, head of flooding and reservoir safety policy; Fiona Quinn, reservoir policy manager; Joyce Carr, head of water environment policy; and Stephen Rees, solicitor in the food and environment division. All of the witnesses are from the Scottish Government. The minister has indicated that she wishes to make a short opening statement.
Good morning. The Government included in the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 a key requirement to reduce the risk of flooding from all sources in Scotland. Today I have the opportunity to talk about the progress that we are making in an area that does not get much day-to-day attention—reservoir safety.
You mentioned that the level at which regulation will kick in under the bill is 10,000m3—four Olympic-sized swimming pools. Why is it four, not three or five? What is the logic of that? Is it simply a matter of judgment or is there a technical reason for it?
That was the professional advice that we took on the size of reservoir that, if it was breached, could create the kinds of problems with which we are concerned. The Institution of Civil Engineers said that a smaller reservoir would not be likely to cause those problems and that 10,000m3 was the point at which it felt that some risk assessment was necessary.
We have picked up from evidence in the past couple of weeks—perhaps it was only last week—that one interpretation of a bit of the bill is that the regulation would cover inlets, pipes and so on into a reservoir. Scottish and Southern Energy, which manages many reservoirs, was concerned about that. There was a plea for that to be dealt with or clarified in guidance. Is it your intention to issue guidance to clarify those matters?
We intend to lodge a number of stage 2 amendments—not a great number, as you might imagine, but some—and that is one of the matters that we will consider for stage 2. Do you want me to go into that any further?
No, that is fine. It seemed a legitimate concern that could be dealt with quite quickly.
We are talking about risk base, so the lower the risk, the lower the likely regulation. The bill allows for a power of exclusion if it is considered that the risk is so small as to be negligible.
So the implication of the low-risk regime would be that, so light would be the regulatory touch on reservoirs at the scale that I mentioned, there would be no practical effect?
We are trying to move to a risk-based approach. An enormous variety of risk assessments will be involved and some reservoirs may be assessed as being so low risk that they do not require much regulation, despite their size.
Perhaps you can come back on that.
It is section 2(3)(b). We have the capacity to assess the risk as being so minimal that we would, in effect, remove a reservoir from regulation, but we have to find the reservoirs to which we need to extend the risk assessment because, currently, reservoirs are all being assessed on their size, not their safety.
Before Peter Peacock asks more questions, I will bring in Bill Wilson.
If somebody put up a new development downstream of a reservoir that you had declared minimal risk and more or less excluded from the requirements, would that bring the reservoir back into the requirements? Would it modify the risk in consequent assessments?
Yes. On any sensible view that would have to be the case, although you would also want the planning authorities to look at the matter. If a reservoir is very low risk or no risk and there is a significant infrastructure or housing development in the area that would be caught by a breach, it would be reassessed.
I am interested in the power of exclusion and how we get to the point at which reservoirs are identified for exclusion. Will the reservoirs be identified for exclusion before they have entered into new licensing arrangements? If reservoir managers, whether it be Scottish Water or individual reservoir managers, pay for a licence under the Reservoirs (Scotland) Bill, will the reservoirs be looked at and the power of exclusion perhaps exercised before any money is parted with?
There is no licence. There is a register but there is not a licence.
Yes, but people are having to pay money to put forward information—
Registration is free for the first six months.
Yes, but will it be done within the first six months? I am talking about costs to people. We are talking about licensing all reservoirs over a certain size, but we are now being told that there is a power of exclusion if they are low risk.
Can we not use “licensing”? I am sorry, but that is not what is happening.
But we were told by—
The correct word is “registering”.
Sorry—registering.
It is not quite the same as licensing.
Okay. Perhaps I have taken up the information that I was given about licensing, or registering, wrongly. The point I am trying to get to is this: given that you now have the power of exclusion under section 2, will that power be exercised before reservoirs are registered? Will the reservoir managers concerned be refunded retrospectively if money is paid?
If the power of exclusion comes into play—let us not become too obsessed with the power of exclusion, because I do not know how many reservoirs would be excluded in these circumstances; it might be only a tiny handful—reservoir managers will be advised that reservoirs have been formally excluded and that, therefore, they are not required to register. The situation you describe would not come into it, because they would not have to register—because the reservoir would be excluded. They would not be on the register. A risk assessment has to be carried out, though, because, obviously, you cannot make an exclusion without first assessing the risk. Whatever the risk assessment involves, different reservoir managers will have to comply with whatever is then required. If there is no risk, there is no need to comply and there will be no registration if the reservoir is excluded.
I understand.
I also ought to say that, even if something is not excluded, if it is low risk little in the way of management is required. The regime is extremely light. The point of what we are doing is not to apply the same regime across the board; it is to apply a proportionate regime, depending on the risk assessment.
You said that a risk assessment might change if there were a downstream development subsequent to the initial risk assessment. If the risk assessment changed from low to medium or high in such a situation, and that became a burden on the dam owners, who would be responsible for the increased costs?
There is a requirement to consult on development plans that involve developments downstream from reservoirs. I think that some authorities are already publishing main issues reports in relation to development plans. At that early stage, authorities are required to ensure that people who might be expected to comment are made aware of the consultation, which means that the reservoir manager ought to be made aware at an extremely early stage in the process and will be able to comment. Further, before anything happens, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency must be consulted.
Perhaps one of the first things you could do in relation to your new climate change responsibilities is set a quota for the number of Post-it notes officials may use in evidence sessions, to help us to meet our recycling targets. Leaving that to one side, I would have thought that to help to meet our climate change targets you will promote small hydro schemes. Is there any conflict between encouraging more small-scale hydro and being caught up in new regulation, potentially, by this regime?
I am sorry, I do not understand why you—
Under climate change legislation, we are encouraging hydro—
Yes. I do not see why there would be a conflict.
Are many of those schemes likely to fall into the new regime of reservoir regulation?
I suppose it depends on how small you think small-scale is. Some of the extremely small hydro schemes that I have seen could not possibly be included under the new regime, but others might be. If they are big enough to come into the scheme, they will do so.
The majority of small-scale hydros would not be looking at reservoirs of this nature, where there are no run-of-river schemes or existing small weirs. They are far below the threshold that we are talking about.
So encouragement of such electricity generation is likely to be done below the threshold; above the threshold there will simply be a risk-based approach?
Yes.
They would simply be in the same position; the process will be risk based. I have not seen many small hydro schemes in locations where this would become a huge issue. If you are thinking of any in particular, you can say so.
I am simply trying to anticipate a policy point. That is fine.
The six months applies to everybody. Obviously, we expect brand-new reservoirs to be built in such a way that they are at low or zero risk. If a reservoir is over a certain size, people will know that it will be assessed for risk. The same six months will apply.
I declare an interest as a past student member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
He is an expert on Mohr’s circles.
I am not an expert.
Our view from the start has been that we do not want to replicate what already exists. That is why we have gone down the road of using the existing panel and not setting up a separate or alternative structure. There are lots of different ways in which to do this, but it seemed to us most sensible for SEPA’s first recourse to be to the existing pool of expertise. I suspect that it would end up employing from that pool if it were to employ its own engineers. I am not sure that SEPA would be in a different position or that it would get advice from any different source by employing engineers; the engineers that it would have to employ would be likely to be on the panel.
You do not see any possibility of conflict of interest? Depending on the same people to fulfil both functions seems an inherent weakness in a regulatory body. Perhaps I am being naive.
When it takes advice, SEPA will go to the experts. It will always be possible, at some point on some issue, for SEPA to red flag a conflict if it feels that that is necessary. At the moment, we do not expect there to be a problem. The regime that is in place is pretty long standing and well tested. There has never been a challenge in 35 years of the current system. Unless you have a concrete situation in mind where you can see clearly that a conflict might extraordinarily arise, after 35 years of no conflict, I have to accept that there will continue not to be that conflict.
We are talking about what-if scenarios. We are proposing regulation where there was none of a similar sort. We are moving the regulatory burden from local authorities to SEPA. In asking SEPA to be the regulatory body, I see an inherent conflict in asking it to take advice wearing two different hats. Perhaps I am being naive.
A local authority is in exactly the same position, and there has been no conflict over the past 35 years. What-if scenarios can be helpful, but they are most helpful when one can suggest a concrete scenario that is likely to occur. I cannot think of such a scenario offhand and nobody has suggested one.
We will come on to that; the disputes are resolved anyway.
Thank you—I will move on. The bill considers environment, cultural heritage and key infrastructure to be as important as human safety. Does the minister intend to offer guidance on a hierarchy of those factors for the purpose of risk designation?
Yes, there will be guidance.
Will there be a hierarchy of risk?
Well, I think that if there was a real risk to life, it would not take a genius to work out what the hierarchy would be.
Thank you for the explanatory—albeit slightly patronising—answer. At present, the bill puts all those factors on an equal footing, but you are telling me that it will not take a genius to establish what the hierarchy is, so they will not necessarily be equal.
I do not want to be patronising, but I am pretty certain that any guidance is unlikely to say that if there is a choice between a ruin and 100 human lives, we will go with the ruin and not the human lives. I would find that extraordinary, and I cannot envisage that the guidance would be drafted along those lines. I may be wrong, but my guess is that I am not.
I think that we have both made our points.
The consequences of failure being the result if a dam is breached?
Yes. The ICE, as I am sure you are well aware from its evidence, has said that that should be the overriding priority in risk assessment, to the exclusion of almost everything else.
We have to start on the basis that the probability of flooding from any reservoir is really low. When we are talking about the risk, we are not working on the basis of imminent or near-imminent breaches at any reservoirs. We have been extraordinarily lucky—although I use the word “lucky” advisedly, as it is testament to the engineers that in Scotland we have not had much in the way of problems.
It is the probability of breach that the ICE has said it finds so difficult to assess, which has led it to the viewpoint that only the consequences of failure should be taken into account. If you agree with that, should SEPA seek to quantify the apparent differences in probability of failure? From the evidence that we have heard, some types of structure are more likely to fail than others—for example, an embankment dam is statistically more likely to fail than a concrete dam. Do you intend to establish a hierarchy for the probability of failure, depending on the type of dam?
We have already discussed the possibility that some categories of dam might be classified as capable of being excluded completely. Therefore, in a sense, some of that is already built into what we are proposing. An assessment will be made and, as was indicated earlier, some categories of dam may well be assessed as being such a non-risk that they can be completely excluded. Therefore, we start on that basis. There is then a risk assessment.
Indeed but, as I understand it, the professional advice from the Institution of Civil Engineers is that only the consequences of failure should be assessed, because it is so difficult to assess the risk that structures will fail.
Probability of failure may be difficult to assess, but that does not mean that we should not consider and assess that probability. Basically, the more information we have, the better we are able to assess the risk. I would be a little worried if professional engineers told me that it was almost impossible to assess in advance whether a reservoir was a high risk. That would be a considerable concern. I would have thought that professional engineers might be able to give a better assessment of that. I do not understand what their work would involve if they did not look at structures and assess them. After all, the reservoirs have to be assessed at some point, and proper management must involve assessing whether they need to be repaired or reinforced. I presume that that is an on-going process, which involves engineers saying, “Yes, there’s a weakness in the structure there now, and it will have to be reinforced.”
I do not wish to labour the point, but reservoirs are inert structures, so assessing the likelihood of their failure is different from assessing the maintenance of an on-going situation. Structural failure concerns us all. It is impossibly difficult to assess embankment dams or dams with a puddled clay core in particular because of their construction. That is the point that the Institution of Civil Engineers has made. I am not trying to catch you out.
I am trying to be diplomatic about professionalism and the capacity of professionals to make considered judgments. I am certain that the institution does not mean to give the impression that professional engineers are not capable of making a considered assessment of the safety or otherwise of reservoirs. I think that people would find it very alarming if they thought that that was what was being said, whether the bill was in place or not. I am sure that the institution does not intend to convey that impression.
Nor do I intend to convey that impression. The issue is merely the difficulty of assessing the risk of failure. I will find the piece in a moment wherein the institution said that it would prefer to assess the risk of the consequence of failure rather than anything else.
Can we come back to that?
We can discuss it later.
We will move on to the establishment of a panel or panels of specialist reservoir engineers, in particular the appointment of construction engineers to operate a system of inspection, reporting and supervision. We have had evidence from the Law Society of Scotland and the ICE expressing concern that the bill appears to prohibit a construction engineer who has previously been involved in work on a structure from being involved in subsequent alterations, such as the enlargement or discontinuance of a dam or similar structure. The point was well made to us that the expertise that they could bring to bear on such assessments is, perhaps rather arbitrarily, being lost. SEPA appears to sympathise with that concern. Have you had a chance to reflect on the issue?
That was unintentional. We accept and understand the concerns that have been raised and we will deal with the issue at stage 2.
Thank you. Another point that was raised was about the demography of engineers. The institution noted that, at present, there are 128 supervising engineers in the UK, of whom 28 are based in Scotland, which is perhaps a higher per capita showing than we might have hoped for. Nevertheless, given the amount of work that the bill is likely to entail, the number of engineers available is not necessarily adequate for the job in hand. What consideration has the Government given to the need to actively encourage more engineers to come through the system to take up the roles that are being created?
Obviously, that is not part of the bill.
But it is a consequence.
I understand that. It is arguably the same kind of discussion that we had about hydrologists for the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Bill. At the moment, we are not convinced that we can say that there are 28 supervising engineers for Scotland and 100 for the rest of the United Kingdom, because the panel sits for the whole UK. The expertise of any of those engineers can be called on.
Absolutely. This is not specifically a problem from a Scottish perspective. As I suggested, the fact that we have 28 supervising engineers appears to put us in a better position than other parts of the UK. Nevertheless, the overall number and the apparent trend suggest that, if there is not a problem just now, there may well be one in the future.
That is part of a bigger issue to do with getting young people to think about engineering as a career. Maybe, given the numbers that you indicate, Scotland has done better in the past in that regard, but the issues are UK-wide. We will talk to the ICE and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the UK situation and whether we can do anything about it. At the moment, we do not have in mind the kind of scheme that we had with the hydrologists, but that is not to say that one might not come to a similar view in the future, depending on the prognosis for numbers coming through.
According to Scottish and Southern Energy and the ICE, chapter 6 will require a single inspecting engineer to be appointed for a reservoir permanently rather than just for the duration of the inspection. Is that interpretation correct?
That is another provision that we propose to amend at stage 2. It is just one of those issues that people overlook in the early stages.
It might be better if you provided those details in writing afterwards.
I was just thinking about the questions that are being asked, some of which relate to—
Yes, but they need to go in the Official Report as well.
Do they? I do not think that every stage 2 amendment has to go in the Official Report—does it? Surely that would preclude us from bringing forward anything we thought about between now and then.
I mean the questions that we are asking to get things in the Official Report.
I will push ahead.
That is another one for stage 2.
I thought that it might be.
Stage 2.
With regard to chapter 7, there was some disagreement about the level of information that should be contained in flood plans and, indeed, whether such plans should be publicly available. What are you thinking of including in future regulation on the preparation of detailed flood plans?
I think that that matter is reserved because of national security issues.
Right.
The difficulty is that there is potentially sensitive information to be considered. We think that the Westminster equivalent of a legislative consent motion will be required for the legislation that we are putting through, and we are discussing the matter. Most of the information in the register will be publicly available, but advice would need to be taken about inundation maps and certain other data, if it was considered to be a matter of national security. It is the same issue for England and Wales—it is all caught up. We have a principled agreement for a section 104 order, as it is known, which is the other side of the LCM coin. That matter has already been considered and dealt with, in a sense. It means, in any case, that not all the information will be publicly available.
Concern was raised that the proposals seemed to imply that the details of the supervising engineer should be in the public domain. Some witnesses suggested that that could—
That is another issue for stage 2.
Chapter 9 deals with new civil enforcement powers for SEPA. In oral evidence, Scottish Water expressed concern that the bill allows SEPA to take enforcement action on every recommendation in an engineer’s report, not just on safety recommendations, as is currently the case under the 1975 act. During our discussions, it was not immediately clear where the line between operational or administrative offences and safety breaches is. The example was given of not cutting the grass, which is to do with inspecting the safety of the dam, and whether that is an operational offence or a safety breach. Is the proposed regulatory toolkit proportionate with the potential offences? In light of the penalties that could be imposed, how can we ensure that a proportionate and even-handed approach is taken to enforcement by SEPA, particularly for operational or administrative offences?
First, we need to set what is proposed against what we currently have. Currently, in the event of non-compliance, local authorities have a choice between sending a stiffly worded letter and going to a criminal prosecution. There is nothing between those two extremes. The bill fills that gap. With the bill, we are going from a situation where people can either do nothing much at all or pursue a criminal prosecution, to having provision for a more proportionate response.
I was not suggesting that it was trivial—grass cutting is important.
Yes.
If disputes arise under the bill, how will they be examined, and who will they be referred to?
SEPA is well placed to do that—it does criminal cases at the moment. We do not think that SEPA cannot do it. The Environment Agency is already able to use civil sanctions. SEPA is best placed to make a judgment call about what is appropriate, and we are not asking it to do anything that its sister agency down south is not already capable of doing. There can be an appeal against decisions, and there will be some clarification of the appeal process at stage 2.
John Scott will ask about funding and costs.
Before I do that, I want briefly to return to chapter 3, on risk, to try to express the concerns more elegantly. In essence, this is a request to you to reconsider the drafting of section 21(3) with regard to the point made by the Institution of Civil Engineers in both its written submission and the oral evidence that was given to the committee by Alex Macdonald. It stated:
We can come back and have a look at that, but I express some concern if the professional advice is that the engineers cannot give any assessment. I see that you are reading that evidence, and it is something that we will want to discuss directly with the institution. People will be surprised at that evidence—frankly, I am.
I was too, I must say.
There needs to be a discussion of what lies behind it.
I move on to the financial aspects and costs of the bill. I will start with Scottish Water’s position and the fact that it is not funded under the current regime to do anything under the bill before 2015. What further consideration will you give to Scottish Water’s funding for redundant reservoirs that are retained specifically for flood management?
As you know, matters of funding for Scottish Water are not in my gift. All budget decisions are taken on the basis of an assessment of the needs and requirements of each department and agency, and that will be no different for Scottish Water. I cannot sit here and say that there will be X amount of funding specifically in relation to the bill; that is not how the funding works.
In evidence to us, Scottish Water has said that it has not been financed for the requirements of the bill in the regulatory period between 2010 and 2014 and that it is currently financed only by customer charges. Again, we can provide the evidence to you, but this is an issue that perhaps needs to be looked at more closely.
We can discuss with Scottish Water what it means by that. It sounds to me as if it is saying, “We are not bothering now and, if we are required to bother by the bill, that will cost us money.” I do not believe that it is not bothering now—that cannot be its starting position. If it is talking about building new reservoirs between now and whenever, the bill allows for those not to be brought into regulation under the bill until 2015. Any new reservoirs that Scottish Water is currently building will not be included until then. However, it must be managing, maintaining and looking after its reservoirs right now. It is not clear to me what it believes the huge difference will be in relation to well-managed reservoirs.
Your financial memorandum predicts:
As you perfectly well know, I cannot sit here and promise funding to Scottish Water, because funding is considered through the budget process. Scottish Water is not funded through my department. We will go away and have a discussion with Scottish Water about what lies behind the issue, but the requirements for more money are many and various and we have to take a view on whether we consider providing more money to be the appropriate thing to do. Our view is that Scottish Water can manage this.
All I am saying is that, to put the matter at its simplest, your financial memorandum predicts that the total implementation costs until 2016 will be £1.4 million—
Yes, but that is over six years.
So it is not a problem, then.
I am not saying that it is not a problem, but we are talking about a cost over six years. The cheque will not be written tomorrow. The cost can be managed into budgets over that period of time.
Okay. Would you like to give us more information on the charging regime under the bill, including registration costs, annual subsistence charges, flood plan preparation costs, and annual engineer inspection and supervision costs? When will those apply, and do you believe that private businesses should incur multiple costs for wider public benefit?
You will need to outline each of those again. However, I do not think that we have information on the specific charges.
When will they apply? What will they be? Is it reasonable that private businesses should incur multiple costs for public benefit?
I remind you that the outcome of the bill will be that many private businesses will have reduced costs, because many reservoirs that are currently risk assessed will be taken out of the system—the ones that represent reduced risks. We are not talking simply about adding costs. We are talking about many reservoir owners and managers finding that their management regime can be reduced, so a lot of their costs will reduce.
Of course, it would be churlish of me not to welcome that predicted improvement in the financial burden of maintaining medium and low-risk reservoirs. Nonetheless, by my reckoning, that leaves 475 reservoirs that are likely to face a significantly greater cost burden as a result of the bill. There will therefore be winners and losers.
Yes, there might well be winners and losers, but we have to look at the overall situation.
I am trying to establish the additional costs that the losers are likely to have to bear.
The cost regime will be developed, and SEPA will consult on it. It is not reasonable to expect us to be able to give you precise costs. We think that the cost might be somewhere between £100 and £300, but SEPA will consult on developing that cost regime.
A particular issue that has been raised with us is the likelihood of reservoirs being decommissioned as a result of the increased burden of costs. One figure that was given to us was £300,000 for the decommissioning and drawing down of a reservoir. Self-evidently, individual owners of private reservoirs might not have £300,000 for that, so they could become insolvent as a result of not being able to meet the requirements that the bill will impose on them and trying to decommission. Have you any pointers on that conundrum? You previously asked for examples of problems. How should that be dealt with?
Decommissioning is not a quick fix, and it would be a huge mistake to see it as such. Apart from anything else, the owner would need a licence to carry out that work. They cannot just pull a plug out and let it go. The work that would be required to decommission a reservoir would require a controlled activities regulations licence; I suspect many members are already familiar with those from different areas. That requirement would involve looking at a variety of issues, including other concerns about decommissioning, such as the environmental impact.
Perhaps I was not clear about what I meant. In a worst-case scenario, if an owner could not afford to maintain a reservoir, because of the cost of the new legislative burden—we established that there will be 475 losers as a result of the bill—or to draw down the reservoir, the only option would be for him to become bankrupt. There would be a problem. Who would pick up the tab? How would the issue be dealt with?
Home owners are in that position all the time—
Home owners?
Home owners. Any owner of property has to make decisions when things change. People are often faced with things that they cannot afford.
I would have thought that you would already have considered the implications of such a scenario for a private owner, but I am grateful to you for putting forward the view that emergency help might be provided.
However, if people own reservoirs that they cannot afford to maintain, there is a conundrum, which is not just about the possibility of their wanting to decommission and facing bankruptcy. There is a problem to do with the maintenance of reservoirs.
The proposed approach in the bill would put people into insolvency. That is the conundrum.
By way of an example of what Mr Scott is talking about, at last week’s meeting the committee heard from a gentleman who came into the ownership of reservoirs almost against his wishes. I think that a threat to his fishing rights resulted in his having to purchase the reservoirs.
Perhaps a discussion can be had on whether reservoirs ideally should be placed in private hands any more.
To be fair to the gentleman we heard from last week, he was seized of the importance of public safety and all the rest of it. However, he tried to illustrate that he had been an almost reluctant purchaser and now, as a result of legislation, he will be in an even more distressed position. I do not think that it is possible for us to say whether he is illustrative of a wider problem.
I assume that his reservoir is big enough to fall within the scope of the bill. It might be assessed as being of such a low risk that it is not an issue anyway. It might be given a risk assessment that does not create huge problems for him. I do not know how big his reservoir is. My official advises me that it is already more than 25,000m3 and is therefore already regulated. If his reservoir is assessed as being low risk, he might end up better off under the bill. We do not know that because we have not done a pre-emptive risk assessment, but let us not forget that it is just as likely that some private owners will find their burdens reduced. Since that gentleman’s reservoir is big enough to be under regulation already, I assume that he is already bearing a cost burden.
What you say might be a welcome Christmas present for him, and I am sure that he is watching today’s proceedings with interest. His evidence threw up a potential issue that the committee found intriguing, but I am not sure that we necessarily have a way through the problem.
I understand that. We can look at whether there would be a way to deal with extreme cases if the bill would cause enormous problems. However, because the reservoir in your example is already regulated, which I therefore presume already costs the owner, there is at least a possibility—although I cannot say for sure without knowing the reservoir—that the bill will introduce a system that improves his situation, rather than making it worse.
We need to deal with that matter in our stage 1 report. Sandra, do you have something to add?
It is similar to the points that Liam McArthur and John Scott raised, so I will leave it at that, but I am pleased that the minister is looking at costs.
I have a final question on the cost to SEPA. As you are aware, the draft budget suggests a reduction of £4.9 million in SEPA’s budget this year. The bill’s implementation will cost SEPA a further £4.12 million. Given those figures, are you confident that SEPA will be adequately resourced to carry out its functions under the bill?
Yes. I am in constant discussion with SEPA about what it is doing and how it is managing the current situation. We have every confidence that SEPA can do it.
And SEPA is confident too.
Assuming that engineers can identify risk as against consequence, is the designation of a reservoir as high risk liable to affect nearby planning developments?
I anticipate that the designation of a reservoir as high risk will give planners pause for thought. It would be extraordinary if planners did not take cognisance of that when making their decisions. We are talking to planning officials about the consequences of the register for their work, but I anticipate that planning authorities will need to take the issue into consideration. SEPA is a statutory consultee, so its views will input into the process.
What timescale do you propose for bringing forward further consultation and subordinate legislation? If the bill is passed, which regulations will be consulted on?
There is not yet a programme timetable, as stage 3 is scheduled for the day on which Parliament rises.
I see. Are you afraid that the royal wedding will influence the outcome of the bill?
No, we are just not yet at the point of having a timetable for issuing guidance and subordinate legislation. Most of what we are talking about is directed towards 2015, so it is quite long term. We have quite a period of time in which to do anything that comes in. We are not expecting implementation to require to be rushed. As soon as we have a rough sense of the timescale, we will let the committee know
We will be the first to know.
Given where we are in the four-year cycle, advising the membership of this committee would probably not be of enormous interest, as there may be new committee personnel after the election.
As you would expect, we want to leave things shipshape and tidy for the next committee by providing legacy reports and so on, so that it knows what to expect.
It can expect statutory instruments and draft guidance.
Is there likely to be single or multiple guidance?
I cannot say at this stage what the extent of the guidance will be.
You will have to excuse me, as I am losing my voice slightly. We will co-ordinate the introduction of the statutory instruments and guidance under the bill with that of the statutory instruments and guidance under the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009, to ensure that whatever we do under the bill does not cause difficulties with the 2009 act. SEPA is doing a lot of work on both pieces of legislation, so we will co-ordinate that work closely. We will look at the implementation timetable for the 2009 act and schedule implementation of the bill accordingly. There will be more than one statutory instrument, but we will do our best to provide a comprehensive guidance document, rather than lots of bits of guidance.
Part 2 allows ministers to make regulations in connection with the creation of offences under the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003. Those provisions were consulted on as part of the WEWS bill in 2001 but were omitted from the 2003 act. Minister, you were not in government at the time. Will there be further consultation on the proposed regulations? What is the timescale for bringing them forward?
Next autumn.
Okay. Thank you.
I think that we have exhausted our questions, so I thank the witnesses for their attendance and ask them to forward any information that they agreed to provide to the clerks as soon as they can.