Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)

I want to say a few words in support of another very sensible flooding-related amendment, Amendment 101 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to which I was pleased to add my name. I find it alarming that we seem currently to have a situation where some local authorities are using out-of-date maps that do not reflect the current risk of flooding. For example, in a recent report on flood resilience, the Environmental Audit Committee found that: “Surface water flooding … remains … often underestimated in development decisions”, and recognised that in spite of surface water flooding being the most common source of flooding in England, it remains “poorly quantified” and “inconsistently planned for”. We have an opportunity in this Bill to try to address this gap by strengthening requirements on local authorities to ensure that flood risk assessment maps are updated as soon as reasonably practical after the publication of updated Environment Agency flood risk assessments. In Committee, the Minister said that keeping flood risk assessments up up-to-date is “already expected practice”, but with so many properties still being built in areas of high flood risk, perhaps the Minister can assure us about what more can and will be done to ensure that local authorities are updating their flood risk assessments more regularly to reflect the current risks.