Rural Affairs and Environment Committee

Speech by Peter Peacock on Flooding Risk Management

19^th. September 2007

Peter Peacock: Following on from what you said about the timing, I point out that our inquiry will take place in public, whereas the Government's process for determining recommendations for legislation will take place largely among professionals and in private.

Our inquiry will, therefore, be an important part of the process of illuminating this major concern.

The summit was excellent in helping to inform our work, and the clerks have done a good job in pulling all the information together.

I have two small points to make about the inquiry remit, then I will say something about visits.

First, we must make it clear that, within the remit, we will assess the adequacy of the current legislation.

Some aspects of the legislation will endure, but some will not be fit for purpose any more and we must bring those to the surface.

Secondly, the third bullet point of the remit is:

"What role can land-use management, the planning system and building regulations play in mitigating the effects of flooding?"

I wonder whether we need to be more precise and say that we will look specifically at sustainable flood management. Within that context, we could also consider land use and natural flood management—which we heard a bit about at the summit—as well as planning and building regulations and how they contribute to sustainable flood management.

That may sound pedantic, but it is quite important.

Other than that, the remit is good and the clerks have captured everything.

I urge the committee to think strongly about visiting Moray to take evidence.

The Convener: Elgin, by any chance?

Peter Peacock: Elgin is the obvious place in Moray.

I say that not only because it is within my region of the Highlands and Islands, but because the experience there was extraordinarily difficult and intense.

It is a small area that the committee could easily see, and we could hear about the experiences of individuals who were traumatised by the events as well as about the effects on local industries, which were seriously threatened.

Those are important points, but it is perhaps more important that all the statutory procedures and the complex process of planning a scheme are just coming to maturity there.

All that experience is at hand, and people in the local authority, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Water and other organisations that are involved would be able to give us extremely well-informed contemporary evidence about all the procedures.

The other advantage of our visiting Moray would be that, on the way, we could stop at the Inch marshes, which are one of the best examples of a natural flood management system—probably the best example in Scotland.

If the committee wished, we could also nip up to Invergordon to see the work that has been done there on coastal flood management, such as opening flood barriers in a particular way and restoring marshes.

Moray has a lot of the experience that we are looking for that other areas may not have, because of the timing of the planning system there and the geographical advantages of the area.

I urge the committee to think about that.