Pitt review calls for new homes to be made more 'flood-resistant' » Housing » 24dash.com

Building regulations must be changed to make new houses more flood-resistant, the author of the Government-commissioned report into last summer's devastating flooding said today.

Sir Michael Pitt, whose independent review is out today on the anniversary of floods which inundated Hull and Sheffield, also called for electronic maps to establish responsibility for drainage - which caused much of the problems last year.

He said people would be "shocked" to discover that 4,700 households had still not returned to their homes a year on from the flooding which hit Yorkshire and Humberside, the Midlands and the West Country last June and July.

Sir Michael said: "First of all, there's the problem that when you do get water into a house because of flooding, if the water is there and it has to dry out, that can take a long period of time. That can take longer if the wrong building materials are used."

He is also calling for local authorities to create electronic maps of ditches, streams and rivers to ascertain who is responsible for drainage.

Currently, there can be up to six owners responsible for one site. Surface water which did not drain away caused much of the flooding last year.

Sir Michael said a range of changes can be made so the UK is better prepared for floods.

He said: "There are many more provisions that can be made. We need to have more sharing of information, more joint working in advance of a flood and more cooperation in event of an emergency."

His Government-commissioned review contains 92 recommendations on how the country could be better equipped in the event of another flooding crisis.

Sir Michael, who published his interim findings last December, has already warned that flood planning should be on a par with fighting terrorism or a flu pandemic.

The floods last June and July across swathes of the country left 13 dead, forced thousands from their homes and caused £3 billion-worth of damage.

In his review Sir Michael argues that the Government's £800 million flood defence budget for 2010/11 was "about right" but a big difference could be made by spending the money more wisely.

Sir Michael said the Pitt Review's recommendations include:

• Local authorities must be given a more clearly defined leadership role in overseeing the maintenance of drainage networks.
• The Met Office and the Environment Agency should have a joint nerve centre from which to issue better flood warnings based on their collective information.
• Flood warnings must be easier to understand. Sir Michael said some warnings last year were "given in very technical terms which I think the public found very difficult to understand".
• Utility companies - water and power firms - should safeguard key infrastructure sites.

Sir Michael said: "Implementing these recommendations will need powerful, Cabinet-level leadership. We can be much better prepared. In fact, we are already better prepared now than a year ago."

He also said householders in areas at risk should be registered with the Environment Agency's Flood Line Direct to receive flood warnings and have an emergency kit in their homes in the event of a disaster.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said that the Government was determined to learn the lessons of the floods.

"Sir Michael's report is a wake-up call for us," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. "We will of course look very carefully at all the recommendations in the report when he publishes it later today."

Sir Michael published his report in London today, with 92 recommendations, including calls for the Ministry of Defence to identify a number of trained armed forces personnel to be deployed to advise those working in the response to civil emergencies.

He also said the Met Office should continue to improve its forecasting and prediction abilities, more work needed to be done to protect critical infrastructure such as water treatment and power plants and railways against flooding, and the Government should put in place a "fully funded" capability for flood rescue, with fire and rescue services playing a central role.

All relevant organisations should have a duty to share information with the Environment Agency and local authorities to help manage flood risk, his report recommended.

He also said authorities needed to be "more willing to tell the truth" about the risk of flooding, because a lack of clarity and transparency was putting people's homes and lives in danger.