MPs warn of 'inadequate' flood cash

The Environment Select Committee said the infrastructure to deal with the kind of flooding witnessed across parts of England in June and July was in "an unclear and chaotic state".

The public would not forgive the Government if its response to the disaster was not "comprehensive and well funded", the committee's chairman Michael Jack warned.

The committee said ministers had repeatedly suggested that the £800 million a year for flood management by 2010/2011 would allow the Government to deal effectively with flooding in the future. But a report from the Efra committee warned the settlement under the Comprehensive Spending Review was "far less impressive under close analysis" and not sufficient to deal with traditional and new flooding threats.

The committee said it had been told the £800 million figure was heavily influenced by a 2004 Foresight Report which recommended a spend of £1 billion annually by 2015 - but only for coastal and river flooding.

Current flood defences focus almost entirely on river and coastal flooding but some two thirds of the floods last June and July were caused by surface water, often following heavy rainfall. Some of the areas hit by the floods in Yorkshire and Humberside, the Midlands and the West Country were ones not previously thought to be at risk and were therefore ill-prepared.

No organisation has overall responsibility for surface water flooding at a national or local level, nobody was responsible for issuing flood warnings and it was unclear who was responsible for overflowing drains, the MPs said.

Some 13 people lost their lives in the floods, 44,600 homes and 7,100 businesses were flooded and £3 billion of damage was caused. The events of last summer also highlighted the vulnerability of key infrastructure, such as power stations, the report said.

The MPs recommended that the Environment Agency should take a strategic role in dealing with surface water flooding nationally, providing advice and guidance to local authorities who should have a statutory duty to deal with surface drainage.

Recommendations from the MPs also included automatic registering of households for flood warnings in high risk areas with an "opt-out" approach, rather than the current "opt-in" system. And the committee's chairman Michael Jack said Sir Michael Pitt should be appointed as the EA's "flood supremo" to insure his independent review commissioned by the Government into the flooding was implemented.