[ Pitt Review: Key Implications for Insurers ]

Source: Edited and amended by Ambiental from the Pitt Review: Learning lessons from the 2007 floods; 2008.
Full Pitt Report Available here.

The 400+ page Pitt Review, published in June presents findings and outcomes from the 2007 summer flooding in the UK. These include guidelines to improve flood planning, prediction, mitigation, response and recovery.

The 92 recommendations of the review comprise steps to ensure:

• Accurate prediction and modelling for flood events.
• A well-planned and well co-ordinated emergency response.
• The impact of flooding is reduced and better advice and help is provided to households and businesses to mitigate flood effects.
• Essential services are maintained and protected to encourage a speedy recovery and protect the health of those affected.

Outlined below is a summary of the relevant information and Pitt’s recommendations for insurers as compiled by Ambiental from the Pitt Review 2008.

[ INSURANCE-SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATION ]

Recommendation 31: In flood risk areas, insurance notices should include information on flood risk and the simple steps that can be taken to mitigate the effects.

• Insurers have suggested that the National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) information is neither as accurate nor as up to date as it could be.
• Insurers have concerns that the data on flood defences and their condition is incomplete and in the case of condition, not accessible to them.
• They would also like more information on planned defences in order to provide this information to households and businesses.
• The review presses for a general opt-out system for Flood Warning Direct.

[ RISK TO ASSETS ]

Recommendation 51: Relevant government departments and the Environment Agency should work with infrastructure operators to identify the vulnerability and risk of assets to flooding and a summary of the analysis should be published in Sector Resilience Plans.

Recommendation 54: The Government should extend the duty to undertake business continuity planning to infrastructure operating Category 2 responders to a standard equivalent to BS25999, and that accountability is ensured through an annual benchmarking exercise within each sector.

[ LEGISLATION ]

Recommendation 28: The forthcoming flooding legislation should be a single unifying Act that addresses all sources of flooding, clarifies responsibilities and facilitates flood risk management.

• There is a proposed Floods and Water Bill for consultation in 2009.
• The current legislation is not fit for today’s challenges. It does not deal with other sources of flooding. We believe there is a need for a single unifying Act to clarify the present flood legislation.
• This future framework should designate the roles and responsibilities needed for the management of flood risks from all sources.

[ MODELLING AND SURFACE WATER FLOODING ]

Recommendations 2-5: The Environment Agency should work with partners to urgently take forward work to develop tools and techniques to model surface water flooding.

• The first step in this process should be to understand surface water flood risk.
• The areas that are at highest risk from surface water flooding should urgently be identified.
• The review encourages continuous updating of flood maps.
• The EU Floods Directive requires that flood depths and velocities in high-risk areas are mapped.
• Coincident flooding should be taken into account. Some properties were already flooded due to surface water flooding by the time the river flood warning was issued by the EA.
• It is vital that the EA also engages with those responsible for different aspects of the drainage and sewerage system – including water companies, local authorities, internal drainage boards, highways authorities, navigation authorities and riparian owners. This will help the EA to understand how surface water runoff is discharged by the system, what knowledge and data is absent and what steps need to be taken to obtain them.

[ PLANNING ]

Recommendation 7: There should be a presumption against building in high flood risk areas, in accordance with PPS25, including giving consideration to all sources of flood risk, and ensuring that developers make a full contribution to the costs both of building and maintaining any necessary defences.

• A quarter of the properties that flooded in summer 2007 were built in the last 25 years.
• Local authorities should ensure that Strategic Flood Risk Assessments (SFRA) carried out on their behalf adequately address surface water flooding.
• Sequential testing should be applied to all flood risk areas, including surface water flood risk areas.
• Good information is needed from sewerage undertakers and other sources, including local knowledge, historic flooding and risk modelling.

Recommendation 8: The operation and effectiveness of PPS25 and the Environment Agency’s powers to challenge development should be kept under review and strengthened if and when necessary.

• The Review has received evidence from CLG on its plans to develop a full evaluation strategy for PPS25 by December 2008. This will seek to measure the effectiveness of PPS25 and the new call-in powers by drawing data from a range of sources that monitor PPS25.

Recommendation 9: Householders should no longer be able to lay impermeable surfaces as of right on front gardens and the Government should consult on extending this policy to back gardens and business premises.

Recommendation 10: The automatic right to connect surface water drainage of new developments to the sewerage systems should be removed.

Recommendation 16: Local authorities should collate and map the main flood risk management and drainage assets (over and underground), including a record of their ownership and condition.

[ DAMS AND RESERVOIRS ]

Recommendation 57: The Government should provide Local Resilience Forums with the inundation maps for both large and small reservoirs to enable them to assess risks and plan for contingency, warning and evacuation and the outline maps be made available to the public online as part of wider flood risk information.

• Reservoir flood plans to include:
• On-site plan detailing the response to a potential breach to reduce the risk or extent of any uncontrolled escape of water.
• A reservoir inundation map, showing the area that would be affected by any escape of water.
• A communications plan setting out how the reservoir undertaker and local emergency services should communicate with each other.

[ IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DIRECTIVE ]

Recommendation 86: The Government should publish an action plan to implement the recommendations of this Review, with a Director in DEFRA overseeing the programme of delivery and issuing regular progress updates.

Recommendation 87: The Government should establish a Cabinet Committee with a remit to improve the country’s ability to deal with flooding and implement the recommendations of this Review.