Agenda item

C Blackburn introduced a report to provide the Board with an update on South Yorkshire’s flood risk priorities and consideration of the scope of a South Yorkshire Wide Catchment Plan.

The Board noted that, following the November 2019 floods, the Mayor and South Yorkshire Local Authorities Leaders jointly submitted a Business and Infrastructure Resilience Flood Priority Programme for South Yorkshire with an investment ask of £271m to protect over 2,800 businesses and 10,300 homes.  The Programme was shaped by lessons learned from the flooding in November 2019 and was designed to invest in new infrastructure and natural flood management measures to mitigate this type of flood event from happening again.

Since then discussions had taken place between the Mayor/Leaders and the Government which culminated in a South Yorkshire Flooding Roundtable hosted by the Secretary of State on the 8th October 2020.

Following the Flooding Roundtable in October with the Secretary of State, the Mayor and Leaders submitted a package of ‘shovel ready’ schemes (could start on site within two years) to the Secretary of State for funding support, which it was proposed would be supplemented by £5.5m of MCA investment.  A response on this proposal from the Secretary of State was awaited.

The Board suggested that a reminder letter be sent by the MCA to Secretary of State to ascertain if funding support would be available.  ACTION: C Blackburn. 

The Board was informed that the Environment Agency (EA) programme incorporated 26 of the 27 South Yorkshire Priority Programme schemes including work to address severely flood affected areas like Bentley and Fishlake, as well as a £40million Nature Based Solutions programme covering the whole Don catchment.

The Government had announced a doubling of investment for flood defence schemes, known as Grant in Aid (GiA), in its March 2020 budget.  Nationally, this will see £5.2 billion of investment over the next 6 year programme between April 2021 and to March 2027.  In light of this, the Environment Agency (EA) had been working with local authorities to refresh its spending programme for South Yorkshire. 

More details will be available in early 2021 on the revised  funding programme and the sequencing of the investment over the six year programme period. The programme would be refreshed each year to take account of changes to projects, manage emerging risks and capitalise on any new opportunities.

Annex 2 to the report set out an early draft Scope for preparing a new Catchment Wide Flood Plan for South Yorkshire led by the Environment Agency, in conjunction with the MCA Executive, local authorities and other key stakeholders.

The aim in the first instance would be to develop a draft Plan by early Summer, with key milestones being reported to future meetings of this Board for input and comment.

It was proposed that the Housing and Infrastructure Board and the South Yorkshire Flood Risk Partnership Board would be the key partnership Board’s which would provide input as the Catchment Wide Flood Plan is developed. 

The Board welcomed the collaborative approach being taken to develop the Catchment Wide Flood Plan.  The Board noted that there was a funding gap and queried if the prioritisation of the 27 schemes would be based on those which could be delivered the fastest.  Furthermore, the Board queried if there were schemes within the programme which were not currently ‘shovel-ready’ and considered to be a critical scheme. 

In response, C Blackburn said that there were nine of the twenty-seven priority schemes within the programme which could be delivered within the next 2 years, subject to funding, but other schemes would take longer. There was therefore a mixture of large scale schemes and quick-win schemes within the programme. 

Work was currently being undertaken to progress the business cases for all the priority schemes. 

The Board stated that efforts should be a focused on natural flood defences wherever possible. 

RESOLVED – That the Housing and Infrastructure Board:

1.      Noted the progress on South Yorkshire’s flood priority programme and the next steps in this work.

Commented on the scope for preparing a South Yorkshire wide catchment based flood plan.