The Committee on Climate Change, the UK Government’s independent adviser on climate change, says early action in the new Parliament is needed to keep the UK’s emissions reductions on track and to adapt to climate change, including measures to address water scarcity and increasing flood risk.
The call comes with the publication today of the Committee’s new progress report which says that many policies designed to reduce future emissions are due to expire over the course of this Parliament. The report warns uncertainty created by the lack of policies after 2020 will lead to stop-start investment, higher costs for all and risks failing to meet legal obligations to reduce emissions.
The UK also needs to prepare for the inevitable impacts of climate change caused by continuing emissions. The Committee’s evaluation of the UK National Adaptation Programme concludes that more households will be at high risk of flooding, despite the increase in spending on flood defence. In addition, farming in some of the most productive parts of the country is at risk within a generation, and higher temperatures pose risks to health that are not being properly addressed.
"Climate change will necessitate further strategic investments by water companies"
The report says there are four key areas of climate change risk where progress has been made but further steps are necessary: water scarcity; flood risks; heat stress in the built environment; and impacts on natural assets and agriculture.
Commenting on water scarcity, the report says that upwards pressure on demand will continue due to population growth and that structural reform of the water licencing regime is necessary to promote the right combination of price and regulatory signals during dry periods. Climate change will also “necessitate further strategic investments” by water companies. The Committee says that significant decisions in terms of new water storage, treatment and supply infrastructure will need to be taken which must “fully account for climate change.”
The report also says that reforming the water abstraction licencing regime is an urgent priority to ensure water is allocated efficiently between different industries and sectors whilst safeguarding the natural environment. There is also significant scope to manage water in a more efficient and integrated way in the urban and rural environments at the catchment scale, according to the Committee.
The report says Ofwat, the Environment Agency and water companies should work together to ensure the next round of long-term water resources management plans in 2019 includes “ambitious commitments” to manage demand for water.
Even in best case scenario more homes at risk of flooding
Commenting on increasing flood risk, the report says investment in flood and coastal defence assets will need to steadily increase in the future to counter the impacts of climate change. Concerted efforts will also be needed by local authorities and partner organisations to improve the management of catchments, the coast, and urban areas in ways that alleviate the potential for flooding.
However, the Committee is warning that even in the best case scenario, with sustained increases in spending at optimal levels over many years, 45,000 more homes and other properties are expected to fall in to the highest flood risk category by mid-century (i.e. at a 1-in-30 annual chance of flooding or greater).
While planning policy is ensuring that three-quarters of new development in the floodplain is located in low risk areas, each year 1,500 new homes are built in areas of high flood risk and 3,100 homes per year in areas of medium flood risk (at a 1-in-100 annual chance of flooding or greater). New development will add to future flood protection costs and result in flood events causing more damage, the report says.
The Committee is calling for Defra to take steps to address the increasing number of homes expected to be at high flood risk in the coming decades and publish a strategy within a year.
Local authorities must do more to manage risks of surface water flooding, including use of SUDS
The Report says the Government’s plans to subsidise flood insurance represent “poor value for public money” unless, as part of the ‘Flood Re’ scheme, high risk households are given the information they need to make informed choices and prompted to take action to prevent flood damage.
On surface water flood management, the CCC says Defra should firstly amend the Water Industries Act 1991 to remove the automatic right to connect new development to public sewers and, secondly publish an action plan within one year of today’s report to improve local flood risk management arrangements.
More also needs to be done by local authorities to manage the risk of surface water flooding from heavy rainfall, including by requiring the use of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and enforcing controls on the use of impermeable surfacing.
The report also says that the Department for Communities and Local Government should, firstly, make water companies statutory consultees on all planning applications that have implications for the public sewer network and, secondly, by early 2017 have put in place a process for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of planning policy in delivering an uptake of SuDS in new development. The report says DCLG should publish an assessment quantifying the impact of new development on long-term flood risk and that evidence from the assessment should be used to inform subsequent Environment Agency Long Term Investment Scenarios.
The Committee also wants water companies to report to Ofwat at the end of AMP6 in 2020 on the area each company has retrofitted with above-ground SuDS and/or permeable paving in order to deliver the industry-wide commitment of a 33% reduction in sewer flooding incidents.
The report highlights the fact that local flood risk management strategies have yet to be finalised by most local authorities despite this being a legal requirement for the last five years.
Report reflects engineers' concerns about resilience of UK infrastructure networks
Nick Baveystock, Director General of the Institution of Civil Engineers said that fears around the resilience of the UK’s infrastructure networks in the face more frequent extreme weather, echoed the UK’s leading engineering body’s own concerns: “We would like to see Government put resilience at the heart of its plans, and the upcoming Budget presents an opportunity.”
There is a growing need for a more comprehensive approach to UK resilience, one that better reflects interdependencies - or the “domino effect” where the failure of one system such as a flood defence affects the operation of the other networks, he said.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said:
“We are committed to meeting our climate change target of an 80% emissions reduction by 2050. We have already made great strides to that goal, with emissions down 30% since 1990.
“We welcome the report and are grateful to the CCC for the effort that has been undertaken to provide robust scrutiny of Government’s progress towards our important climate change targets.”
We made public the projected shortfall on the fourth carbon budget some time ago.It has been the intention since the fourth carbon budget was set in 2011 that we would review options to close the gap in this Parliament - this work is underway, the spokesperson added.
The new progress report is published half way through a crucial year for global climate action. 196 nations will meet in Paris in December to agree a new international deal to limit global warming. DECC will provide a full response to the CCC’s report in October 2015.
Click here to download the Executive Summary and reccomendations of Reducing emissions and preparing for climate change: 2015 Progress Report to Parliament