Petition to Restart funding from the EA (Environment Agency) to build Flood Risk Management Schemes in Whalley & Billington!
20th of September, 2024
Petition to Restart funding from the EA (Environment Agency) to build Flood Risk Management Schemes in Whalley & Billington!
As of Monday 16th September this is exactly what happened in Padiham. Padiham’s flood defence scheme is set to resume after the Government has committed to meeting the £19 million funding shortfall required to complete it. If the Government is prepared to restart funding in Padiham then it should certainly do the same in Whalley and Billington.
This Petition asks people to Support the following points to prevent further disaster from flooding in Whalley and Billington!
The Petition asks people to Support the following points:
1. The Funding for Whalley, which was paused due to a significant shortfall in funding, stopping the scheme from moving forward, should be re-started.
2. The EA meet the funding gap estimated to be in the region of £11M in Whalley and £2M in Billington caused by the recent rise in inflation and increase in the cost of labour and rise in the price of construction materials. It is now nearly 10 years since the Boxing Day 2015 Flood and over 4 years since the 09th February 2020 Flooding Event which would have been avoided if the funding for Flood Defence Protection Measures had been in place. As of Monday 16th September this is exactly what happened in Padiham. Padiham’s flood defence scheme is set to resume after the Government has committed to meeting the £19 million funding shortfall required to complete it. This announcement follows the recent approval of planning permission for the scheme last month. Work on the Padiham FRMS means that it is imperative that work in Whalley and Billington follows promptly because of the potential downstream effects.
3. The EA submit outline planning applications to Ribble Valley Borough Council so that when funding is available neither scheme gets caught up in unnecessary delays within the planning system which could extend the delivery date for the implementation of the scheme it is estimated by a further two and half years..
4. The EA to implement the Flood Risk Management Schemes as originally proposed by the Whalley and Billington FLAG (Flood Action Group) without the need for re-submission and subsequent scheme reappraisal leading to further additional delays. Neither village can wait another 3 years – the standard length of an EA appraisal period before a new decision is taken and yet a further review looking at the viability of the current proposed scheme not being decided until Spring 2027 is what is being proposed by the EA.
5. The EA to provide regular updates on progress of the two schemes. It is now approaching 6 months since the Lead Whalley and Billington FLAG Director, Andrew Ronnan and County Councillor, Ged Mirfin who represents Whalley as part of the Ribble Valley North East Electoral Division on Lancashire County Council met with Regional Representatives of the EA in Whalley and despite submitting a detailed list of questions to them have heard nothing back in return. Furthermore despite advance notification and an invite to attend a Public Meeting on the withdrawal of funding for Flood Defence Measures which took place in May at Whalley Primary School the EA decided not to send a representative to listen to local resident's concerns.
6. We ask that our newly elected Labour MP for Clitheroe and Pendle which includes Whalley, Jonathan Hinder actively supports this Petition and actively lobbys as well as directly petitions the EA to commit to the key Points of not only to support and fully endorse this Petition. Jonathan attended the Flood Resilience Meeting in May as a Parliamentary Candidate and promised those attending that supporting Flood Defence Measures in Whalley and Billington would be a high priority for him and would be one of the first issues he tackled.
Please Sign it and let's bring about the Flood Risk Management Schemes that Whalley and Billington badly need.
On Boxing Day 2015 catastrophic flooding occurred in Whalley. 135 properties were flooded in the King Street and Queen Street areas of Whalley including King Street, Abbey Mews, Calder Vale, Queen Street, Waters Edge (the clue is in the title), Princess Street and Woodfield View as a consequence of Storm Desmond. Insurance Claims totalled in excess of £3.5M. The Longworth Road area of Billington was even worse affected with all 40 properties in Longworth Road deep under water. Insurance claims totalled in excess of £1.5M and for Harrisons Engineering much more with much of the factory and its workshops under water. The images of the River Calder reaching the Top Spar of Old Sol's Bridge and residents piling up sodden furniture and white goods on the pavements outside their homes will stay with the very many people who witnessed it for the rest of their lives. It was like a war zone. Many residents left their properties, some for more than 18th months. Some never returned. The costs which rapidly escalated were not just financial. The mental trauma suffered by a number of residents was hidden and revealed by a major fire which took place on Queen Street in 2022 when a long-term resident who had been unable to afford repairs due to the flooding to his home was killed as his home went up like a tinder box as the blaze consumed material he had been hoarding since the flood.
We had great faith that government would be able to protect residents in the local area by putting in place flood defence measure schemes and do it quickly within the 3 year time scale that the Environment Agency trumpet, as part of their scheme appraisal process, so that both villages would become more resilient to flooding. Our faith was destroyed when on 09th February 2020 just over 4 years since Whalley and Billington experienced major flooding the same happened again, as Storm Ciara turned left. This time 113 properties in Whalley were affected as the King Street Culvert and Drains could not cope and the Mill Race was overwhelmed by the volume of water flowing from the River Calder. Once again Longworth Road in Billington was completely wiped out as all 40 properties flooded. Residents who had barely recovered from the previous occasion were forced to go through the same experience all over again. In the meantime just over 24 months ago the EA had the audacity to withdraw the use of mobile demountable flood defence equipment which would be deployed when advance weather forecasts indicated that key areas in the 2 villages were at risk. We have become a village of weather watchers in Whalley with a nervous fear rippling through the village during prolonged periods of heavy rain. It is to be noted that we have had 23 Near Misses since 2020 as the level of the River Calder has risen high enough to cover low lying land.
Why has the EA been unable to put measures in place to protect extremely vulnerable households? The Whalley and Billington Flood Action Group rated, according to Senior Officers from the EA who attended a meeting in Whalley with Lead FLAG Director Andy Ronnan and County Councillor Ged Mirfinas, as the most effective FLAG Group in Lancashire, have spent in excess of £150K, monies that they have raised themselves in completing the tortuous appraisal process (including engineering technical feasibility and testing: the economic viability (costs and benefits), environmental impacts and public acceptability) in designing a multi-dimensional flood defence measure scheme. A pity that the EA did not consider worthwhile backing in the early stages before inflation and labour and material costs made the proposed scheme too expensive to support and funding has been paused due to a significant shortfall in funding, stopping the scheme from moving forward.
Government announced a further £370 million of capital funding for 2021–2027 in 2020 for innovative projects and to accelerate work on projects. In 2020 when the capital programme was originally announced, government committed to spend £5.2 billion to better protect 336,000 properties by 2027 amid increasing fears about the risk of dangerous floods. However, EA has since reduced its forecast to 200,000 properties better protected by 2027, a reduction of 40%. - a sizeable reduction on its original commitment of 336,000. In other words 136,000 properties will fail to be protected from flooding. 180 of these are in Whalley and Billington. The final number of properties protected could be even lower. More than 100,000 of those remaining within the forecast are related to schemes with less than 'high' levels of delivery confidence, according. On this basis one wonders whether the flood defence schemes in Whalley and Billington will ever be delivered?
What is worse is that here was an underspend of £310 million in the first two years of the programme and HM Treasury has deferred this funding for use in later years. Why is this capital funding underspend not being used right now? Afterall the primary metric for the capital programme is the number of properties better protected. The previous government acknowledges that building new flood defences and maintaining existing ones is no longer enough and that a wider range of interventions is now needed to build resilience against increasing flood risk. In July 2020, then prime minister Boris Johnson hailed “record investment” to “push back the flood waters through 2,000 new flood defence schemes. Whalley and Billington feel that they are at the end of a long chain of priorities.
Whalley and Billington's needs are small in comparison to other much larger and more ambitious schemes in other parts of the country. 180 properties in Whalley and Billington are at a state of enhanced risk of flooding. A capital cost of in the region of £20 Million is more than adequate to deliver the safety and assurance that both Whalley and Billington require.
It is a deeply frustrating position to be in knowing purse strings are controlled by the Environment Agency and they are being held tightly closed. An inspection of its annual accounts however reveals that the Environment Agency is currently sitting on unallocated reserves totalling £10.063 Billion: what is described as a revaluation reserve totalling £9.1994 – as it states in the notes to the accounts the cumulative position accounting for unspent assets earmarked for capital projects and what is described as a general reserve of £836.3 Million- as it states in the notes to the accounts the cumulative position of net expenditure and funding from the sponsor (Central Government) – in essence current expenditure unspent during the course of the current financial year.
The Environment Agency has enough money in its bottom drawer to deliver small scale flood defence measure schemes in Whalley, Billington, Chew Mill Lane, and Ribchester in the Ribble Valley schemes each costing upwards of no more than £18 to £25M the New Cost the EA advise it would take to deliver a limited schemes in a small village like Whalley and elsewhere. We cannot think of a better way of promoting economic growth than by awarding contracts to deliver civil engineering projects which will employ hundreds of workers in the local area.
Padiham where funding was initially allocated it must be acknowledged is a larger conurbation effectively twice the size of Whalley and Billington put together but does not have that many more High Street based businesses:
Padiham - Population 10,098; Households 4,409; 125 High Street Stores
and yet fewer Households In Padiham were flooded in 2015: 149 and far fewer in 2020: 70.
Whalley Population 4,005; Households 1,541; 114 High Street Stores
Billington Population 1,409 Households 749 1 High Street Store 1 Factory
Total Population 5,414 Households 2,290 115 High Street Stores 1 Factory
The EA divides flood defence assets into high, medium and low consequence asset systems depending on the number of properties they work together to protect: high consequence systems are those that protect a high number of properties. In the recent meeting held with them it was revealed that Whalley had been downgraded to a low risk with the prospect of flooding falling from 1 in 25 years to 1 in 75 years despite the very high number of near misses experienced.
It is unfair and unjust that small community based Flood Action Groups are expected to carry out the same work as their larger and more well-resourced cousins in big towns and cities. There needs to be an equity of approach so that comparatively small village locations aren’t discriminated against and are at such a huge disadvantage when it comes to the appraisal, design and cost-benefit analysis of flood defence schemes enabling the envisaged 3 year time appraisal time horizon to be reduced so that vital schemes are delivered with the requisite degree of urgency and promptitude ensuring that residents who are continuously at risk of large scale flooding events and who have experienced a large number of near misses are effectively protected.
Increased cost uncertainty is being accompanied by longer project business case processes, as uncertainties take time to be resolved: since 2015, project development timescales have approximately trebled for small projects. The methodology for small limited flood protection schemes like Whalley was overcomplex in relation to larger more complex strategic schemes in other areas of the country. It really feels like the EA has decided that it doesn’t want to spend the money. There needs to be a dramatic simplification of the methodology: the green book business case appraisal and approval methodology for small scale flood defence measure schemes in is overly complex for small schemes based in highly vulnerable village locations like Whalley and Billington otherwise they are never going to happen. It really feels like the EA has decided that it doesn’t want to spend the money.
In its October 2022 review, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) concluded that the ‘one size fits all’ approach to project development and governance across large and small projects was a blocker to delivery of the capital programme.
There needs to be an equity of approach so that comparatively small village locations are not discriminated against and are at such a huge disadvantage when it comes to the appraisal, design and cost-benefit analysis of flood defence schemes by what is effectively an amateur body although it must be recognised one possessing deep professional knowledge and skill sets. For that we must applaud the FLAG Directors for what they have achieved.
The current approach is unfair in that comparatively small village locations with small numbers of homes affected by flooding are often overlooked yet the impacts of flooding are equally as bad for the individuals affected. Members of Lancashire's small community-based Flood Action Groups have local knowledge, inspiration and commitment to offer, with ideas that are very practical and relevant to their locality. When it comes to the appraisal, design and cost-benefit analysis of flood defence schemes, we need quicker turn-around on smaller improvement projects so that vital schemes are delivered with the requisite degree of urgency ensuring residents who are continuously at risk of large-scale flooding events and who have experienced a large number of near misses are effectively protected from large scale flooding events.
What is clear is that the envisaged 5-6 year project delivery time scale following the Boxing Day flood in 2015 which wiped out Longworth Road, Queen Street and Calder Vale was too long to prevent a repeat of the flooding in 2020. We are now 10 years down the line and nothing has happened. Are we waiting for the next catastrophic event to happen? It certainly feels like that.
That is why it is so important for our new local MP to get on board. We all look forward to working with him on this critical issue. On that basis we look forward to him outlining a detailed programme of activity in support to secure the funding to make the Flood Protection Measures happen. Over to you Mr. Hinder!
County Councillor Ged Mirfin
Ribble Valley NE
Ribble Valley Borough Councillor Mark Andrew Hindle
Whalley and Painter Wood