|
|
|
Is the Flood and Water Management Bill full of holes? Even as the Flood and Water Management Bill is published, the government says it will have to be amended to incorporate the Cave and Walker Reviews, which have yet to report. Annabel Andrews examines what is likely to change. The long-awaited draft Flood and Water Management Bill was published on the eve of the Budget, and was lost in the hubbub surrounding the next day's announcements. The draft Bill has several large holes in it. The final version is expected to be a vehicle for the legislative change needed to implement the recommendations of the Cave Review of competition and innovation in the water industry and the Walker Review of charging and tariffs, but as yet these are not included. The current Bill documentation states that this is because the reviews have yet to publish final reports and "subject to consultation could form part of any Bill introduced into Parliament to become law". This was disingenuous with regard to the Cave Review, as it was common knowledge that the final recommendations were to be published the following day. Nick Ellins, head of policy and strategy at the Consumer Council for Water (CCWater), said: "We obviously fully understand why the Walker and Cave Reviews are not included, but we can't fully judge the impact or effectiveness of the Bill until they are." He said that the consumer watchdog was preparing its submissions, and would be seeking reassurance that any measures from the two reviews eventually incorporated into the Bill would undergo a similar level of scrutiny as the rest of the draft Bill. "We're also looking for government to demonstrate how the consultation process is going to take account of any later inclusions and decisions, because it obviously could change the perspective that people have on the Bill looking at it today," he said. Dawn Waterman, public affairs adviser for industry body Water UK, said the organisation was "disappointed not to see measures to combat the growing problem of consumer debt". She said the industry had requested changes to liability for water charges, but remained optimistic that this could change once the Walker Review reported its final recommendations. "We hope that these will be favourable and feed into the Bill at a later date," she said. Ellins said that while the water sector and industry observers were hotly anticipating measures in the final Bill in response to the Cave and Walker Reviews, the Bill's main focus was on flooding. "What we're ultimately looking at is a flood management bill, so it's trying to do what they promised they'd do, which is get through the key conclusions of Pitt," he said. For the general public, it is the implementation of the flooding measures that are the most important part of the Bill. Key among them is the division of responsibility for combating flooding. At last week's Ciwem annual conference, Lord Chris Smith, chairman of the Environment Agency, spelt out the problems with the current system that the 2007 floods had underlined. He said: "We saw first-hand the effects not just of river flooding, but of surface water flooding and flooding from drains and sewerage systems. There was a tendency for the public authorities responsible for these different kinds of flooding to be acting separately rather than together. The poor people that are being flooded, what they want is for whoever is responsible to be working together and coping with the problems." For this reason, he welcomed the proposal in the draft Bill to give the Environment Agency a national overview responsibility for surface water flooding, with local authorities retaining responsibility for local implementation. He said: "Making sure that we have the relevant powers and duties, both us in the Environment Agency and within local authorities to make this work is, to my view, the most important thing in the Bill." Within this framework, the Bill states that flood risk management plans must be co-ordinated "in partnership" with water companies and other bodies. Ellins said that the CCWater policy team was currently teasing out the detail from the draft Bill's regulatory impact assessment to ensure that water customers do not end up paying more than their fair share of flooding costs. "It's an interesting one because some of the descriptions say it will come from water companies, but of course no funding comes from water companies, it comes from customers. In a separate line it says it comes from customers. Well, that's two for customers then," he said. It is important that the right balance is found, said Ellins. "Flooding is a public issue, it's not a water customer issue. There are elements of flooding that water customers will need to be involved in and possibly pay for, but actually flooding on a wider scale is about society." If the final Bill resembles the draft Bill on surface water drainage, then the water industry will get several measures it has been pressing for. The draft Bill proposes to end the problematic automatic right to connect surface water drains and sewers to the public sewer system, which has been cited as a limiting factor on the development of sustainable drainage systems (Suds). Instead, the Bill will grant the right to connect only to new developments where agreed drainage standards have been met. Where there is space on large greenfield sites, Suds should be in place and surface water should "rarely" drain to the sewerage system. On more constrained sites, the Bill states that the National Standards will include requirements for reducing peak run-off of surface water. "These will require the developer to incorporate Suds techniques within the drainage design before approval can be given. Only then will any connection be permitted for residual surface water flows," the draft Bill's consultation paper said. Crucially for water companies, the draft Bill gives ownership, and therefore responsibility, of completed Suds to local authorities. For the first ten years, it is expected that money saved when private sewers transfer to water company ownership will cover the costs of Suds upkeep. See our website: http://protectingcriticalinfrastructure.com/ Source: Utility Week © Faversham House Group Ltd 2009. News articles may be copied or forwarded
for individual use only. No other reproduction or distribution is permitted without prior written consent.
|
Highlighted Jobs |
|
|