20:06 Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat)

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the incredibly hard-working staff at the Environment Agency for everything they have done and continue to do in our community. They do what they can with the funding and resourcing that they have been given. We do not need to hear from the Minister how much money is being spent nationally and how with limited budgets we have to prioritise certain places, because, bluntly, that is not going to help my community. I want to hear from the Minister how the Government plan to help the people of Abingdon, Yarnton, Begbroke and South Hinksey. Climate change means that flooding events are going to become only more frequent and more extreme, and every time they come, anxiety rises. What can we do to give people a sense of relief?

To conclude, the coronavirus pandemic has been awful. We have all had to make incredible sacrifices, but that will be just a dress rehearsal for the ongoing climate emergency. We can either act proactively and future-proof our communities against flood devastation, by doing what we can sooner in Oxford, funding the Abingdon scheme, and fixing the agency’s approach in Yarnton and other villages, or we can wait until it is too late, react desperately after the fact, and see more and more homes damaged and people’s lives ruined.

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20:21 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)

Back in 2018, the Environment Agency investigated the development of a flood storage area upstream of Abingdon on the River Ock. The investigations found that while a flood storage area was technically feasible, the benefits it would provide would not be much greater than those delivered by the Environment Agency’s routine river maintenance. The flood storage area would have provided better protection from flooding to 30 houses initially; when climate change is taken into account, that drops to just three properties at the end of the scheme’s lifetime. That means that the flood storage area would deliver additional benefits worth only £2 million to homes and businesses, but they would come at an estimated cost of £10 million. Quite clearly, it did not represent value for money to the taxpayer, and that is why this option could not be progressed. I asked particular questions about that to check up on the detail of it.

On the question of funding, Oxford is receiving a large amount of money, and where costs do stack up, of course schemes are going ahead. The Oxford flood alleviation scheme will cost around £150 million and is one of the biggest flood schemes in the country. Construction on the scheme was expected to start in 2020, subject to a compulsory purchase order. However, Oxfordshire County Council found that a bridge was in need of replacement, so that has to be sorted out before progress can be made, but surely it will be made. The benefits of this programme to the huge wider area of the community will be really significant. Similarly, the EA is working with partners on the Thames Valley flood scheme, which involves a wide catchment approach to mitigating the increasing flood risk resulting from climate change.

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