Presentation on 'The Policy Overview – what is the Government’s ask from the local levelin preventing, preparing for, responding to and recovery from floods'. Presented by David Lees of Defra at the Flood Resilience Discovery Day in Bristol on 27 February 2015.

1. The Policy Overview – what is the
Government’s ask from the local level
in preventing, preparing for,
responding to and recovery from
floods
David Lees, Defra – but speaking on behalf of DCLG and
others

2. Prevention
• Acting as planning authorities and using flood risk data to ensure flood
resilient development (Planning Legislation)
• Acting as Lead Local Flood and other flood management authorities to
produce strategies and plans to prevent flooding (Flood and Water
Management Act) – local authority lead on ordinary water courses, coastal
defences, surface water and ground water
• Acting as Highways Authorities – maintaining drains(Transport Legislation)

3. Response
• Planning for flood emergencies relevant to your (local resilience forum) area
(Civil Contingencies Act)
• Responding to flood emergencies working with multi-agency partners
• Rapidly providing the best information possible on what’s happening to
Defra – your own local strategic leaders will also need this

4. Recovery
• Helping your communities – people and businesses to get life back to
normal
• Let DCLG know how this is going and how any funding provided is being
utilised
• This is a long haul and can be long term impacts on people and businesses
• Investigating how things went – to refine plans and prevention work

5. What could good look like – and
how can we best harness
technology?
Tim Godson, DCLG – but speaking on behalf of Defra and
others

6. Local working - you
know what works on
your patch
• but how can we all work together, floods don’t respect
boundaries
• Why invent a system when your neighbours got a good
one you can borrow?
• Can your system speak to national ones?
• Common platforms rolling out – how can we all make
use of them?

7. PREVENTION

8. Prevention
• EA and others making more data and more up to date data on flood
risk available
• Across all types of risk
• How can this be best used in long term and medium terms when
looking to prevent floods – can it be fed in digitally?
• Is information being shared digitally on planning decisions and
planning conditions between local planning authorities and the
relevant flood risk management authorities?
• Can it help best target investment in defences – be used to draw in
further investment?
• Can a digital register be kept on flood risk assets for FWMA and
systems for ensuring road drain maintenance

9. PREPARATION

10. Preparation
• Hotspots, weak points, vulnerable people and
critical infrastructure identified and mapped(may
be have to be held securely)
• Weather data show short and medium risk – fed
in automatically into alerts and warnings
• Specific local data automatically produced
triggers prevention and response activity to save
property and lives

11. RESPONSE

12. Response
• Automatic and simple systems record where impacts
have taken place - what are current water levels –
allows tactical decision making
• Impacts data linked back to risk data for strategic
decision making – where is the water going next?
• Automatically producing reports for wider/national
awareness
• Common picture on Resilience Direct?
• EA/DCLG/Defra working on solutions – you may have
them already?

13. RECOVERY

14. Recovery
• Know better where the impacts were so can
target support and track progress
• Use similar systems as response– feeding in
data nationally automatically
• Allows targeting of resources

15. FEED BACK SYSTEMS?

16. After the Event - Feed back
loop
• Know accurately where flooded to determine surface
water and groundwater risk
• Can refine projections for river and coastal floods
• Does it need further investigation (FWMA)
• Common problem needs addressing by permanent or
temporary defences?
• Change triggers for response?
• Can better understand risk for planning/management
strategies

17. • TIM GODSON
• Flood Policy Lead – Resilience and Emergencies Dvision
tim.godson@communities.gsi.gov.uk
• Or speak to your local RED Resilience Adviser