Councillor Adam Zerny, on behalf of all the various organisations involved in flood prevention, will stress the need for funding criteria to be reviewed to improve eligibility for less densely populated areas that face repeated flooding. Changes to government recovery grant thresholds will enable the investment needed for some of the measures identified at the second flood summit called by the council this year, held on Thursday 28 November.
Since the first flood summit held this summer, September saw the most significant and prolonged flooding in living memory for Central Bedfordshire. Drainage systems and watercourses struggled to cope with overwhelming amounts of rain, with Flitwick receiving 2.5 times the average monthly rainfall in just one day.
The latest flood summit drew on the experiences and learning from the latest floods to look at a number of actions, now either already underway or agreed, including:
- strengthening the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) network, with support to complete flood action plans and access flood toolkits to help with local flood defence
- the Environment Agency (EA) will be holding events in early 2025 to engage with affected residents across Central Bedfordshire, to gather more impact data from the floods. The EA is validating and implementing improvements to triggers for Flood Alerts and Flood Warnings, and considering improvements to river monitoring. Schemes piloting similar work are already underway, in partnership with the council, as part of the ResilienTogether project at Pix Brook
- work carried out by National Highways to remove the flood water and proposals for improvements to the pumping station next to the A421, which suffered from unprecedented flooding leading to its closure
- a full report by the council, under Section 19 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, for the flooding occurring as a result of Storm Henk in January 2021 and the more recent floods. The report will look at what happened, what actions were taken, and possible future recommendations. The EA is undertaking an initial overview and understanding of the economic viability of progressing a scheme in Leighton Buzzard
- ongoing investigations by the council and partners to look at the drainage network and determine additional contributing factors and suitable mitigation measures to action (e.g. at Cranfield and Flitwick)
- a full debrief with Local Resilience Forum partners in the coming weeks, to identify lessons learnt from the latest flooding that will help further enhance the council and its partners’ coordination of activities in an emergency
- a range of actions identified at a local level, reflecting the fact that flooding has a variety of causes depending on the respective drainage systems, sewer networks, pumping systems and other factors, and with various agencies involved
Councillor Adam Zerny, Leader of Central Bedfordshire Council, said:
Having recently seen at first hand the impact flooding has on people’s lives, it’s more important than ever that we explore every option to reduce the risk and impact of flooding.
Homeowners and businesses rightly want to know we are working together with the other organisations involved in flood defence to take every reasonable step to protect property across Central Bedfordshire.
That’s why we have held two flood summits this year. Excellent work is taking place throughout Central Bedfordshire already, and I will continue to push the government for improvements to the way areas get funding for flood mitigation. It is not right to leave affected residents to struggle on their own.
We must recognise flood events like this will likely happen more and more often in future. While residents ultimately bear responsibility for their own properties, the council will continue to play an important role, working with the EA, IDB, water companies, emergency services and other agencies, to ensure everything possible is done to reduce the impact of flooding. The government needs to play its part as well.