Flood resilience strategy: consultation

4. Main themes

This part of the consultation outlines the main themes for the Flood Resilience Strategy: People, Places, and Processes.

We are seeking your input to each of these themes and have asked questions at the end of each section to capture your views.

People

Flooding has a devastating impact on communities and people. As well as the direct impacts to flooded homes and business, it can disrupt our lives, livelihoods and impact on our physical and mental health for long after the flood event itself.

We are placing people and communities at the centre of the Flood Resilience Strategy. It is vital that people are included in the decision-making process for their places and that they are given the right information and evidence to enable them to meaningfully contribute.

Helping people to understand their exposure to flooding, what actions might help their community become more flood resilient and how they can contribute is a key part of this.

Meaningfully involving communities in decisions about their places is a complex and long-term process that requires commitment, having the right structures in place, and having information that is readily accessible and up to date.

Outcomes

We want to build a flood resilient future where communities are meaningfully included in decisions about their places and have the resources, knowledge and information they require to contribute. Structures will need to be in place to enable this to happen, with mediators and facilitators advising and supporting delivery partners to involve their communities in the process.

In the short term, there are a number of actions that could facilitate meaningful community engagement to help improve flood resilience across Scotland. Communities should be empowered to contribute to decisions about their places through access to high quality, up-to-date information about their current and future flood exposure and the options they have to mitigate it.

One way to work towards this could be by considering how existing data may be best used to support communities and practitioners, to better understand their current and future flood exposure and options that they have for improving their flood resilience.

In the longer term, continuous improvements are needed to how we collaborate with communities. This can be achieved by following the National Standards for Community Engagement and developing support structures that help people to understand and engage with decision making processes through trusted organisations and mediators.

We also need to consider how people and communities can be given the tools, support and knowledge needed to build their own flood resilience, including through property-based resilience measures and through community resilience groups.

This will include raising awareness of how existing resources such as Ready Scotland's learning hub can help.

Questions

4. What support do communities need to become involved/engaged in climate adaptation and flood resilience planning?

5. What should local authorities be doing to ensure meaningful community participation when taking decisions about improving flood resilience?

6. What would help communities understand their current and future flood exposure and the range of options available to them to help them become more flood resilient? (Please rank from most to least important)

a. Access to flood maps showing current and future flood exposure

b. Access to local flood history

c. Access to information on community “self-help” options.

d. Access to flood resilience advice/support

e. Access to information on the range of flood resilience options available for their community

f. Other (please specify)

7. What actions could communities take to improve their flood resilience? (Please rank from most to least important)

a. Set up a local community flood resilience group

b. Develop a local community flood response plan

c. Share local knowledge of what happens during floods with organisations like SEPA and local authorities

d. Link up with their local climate action group

e. Other (please specify)

8. What actions could householders/businesses take to improve their flood resilience? (Please rank from most to least important)

a. Learn about flood exposure in their area

b. Invest in property resilience measures, such as installing flood gates, raising electrical wall sockets and using flood resilient building materials

c. Join a community flood action group

d. Sign up to Floodline for flood alerts and warnings

e. Seek advice on flood resilience

f. Make sure they have flood insurance

g. Other (please specify)

9. What would you do to improve your personal flood resilience? (Please rank by importance)

a. Find out how exposed you are to floods

b. Sign-up to Floodline for flood alerts and warnings

c. Have a personal flood plan ready to put into action when flooding is expected

d. Ensure you know what to do if your property was to get flooded

e. Check your flood exposure before buying or renting a property

f. Make sure you have flood insurance

g. Other (please specify)

Places

Flood resilience can be improved through better design of our places and management of our river catchments and coastline.

As our villages, towns, and cities change over time we need to work together across sectors to ensure that we take all opportunities to design-in flood resilience improvements.

For example, introducing blue and green infrastructure into our towns and cities can bring multiple benefits including improving flood resilience, biodiversity, water resource management and well-being.

We also need to ensure that we are making the most of our river catchments and coastline to reduce the impacts of flooding. For example, we can use land upstream of flood prone areas, such as peatlands, to capture water and slow down river flows and we can use natural dune systems at our coastline to protect from erosion and flooding.

This section also focuses on actions we should stop doing in our places to ensure that we don’t reduce our flood resilience or increase our flood exposure, such as building on floodplains.

Outcomes

We believe that actions taken to build flood resilience should take a place-based approach, with decisions made in a joined-up way across responsible authorities, delivery partners and communities to provide multiple benefits to a community. Planners and developers should consider how their decisions affect flood resilience in both rural and urban areas. Flooding should be routinely taken into account when building things, particularly in urban areas.

For example, a council may want to build a new car park in a town centre to promote the economic development of their high street. However, doing this may mean that water falling on the surface would run off and potentially cause flooding in the town unless otherwise addressed.

In the shorter term, delivery partners should consider how to adopt a whole-catchment approach to their planning to enable more joined-up decisions about how to manage water effectively. As part of this catchment approach, consideration must be given to urban and rural land use and how to make space for water recognising that water will always want to follow its natural course.

At a household level, making space for water could be something as simple as installing a raingarden to reduce the amount of rainwater entering drainage systems during storms. For a community it could be thinking about how they can reduce the number of properties on the floodplain and at a catchment level this could mean changing land use practices to slow the flow of water into rivers and allow more water to be retained in upland areas.

Making space for water includes using floodplains for natural processes such as holding and conveying water. We would like your views on how we can gradually reduce our flood exposure on floodplains. For example, by reducing the number of properties on floodplains or using floodplains for activities that are flood resilient.

In the longer-term Scottish Government will seek to work collaboratively with planning authorities and councils to ensure that decisions made about a place consider flooding in everything they do, meaning that through any action the flood resilience of a place is increased or, at minimum, not reduced. Using the placemaking principles, we should optimise land use and land management practices for multiple benefits.

Questions

10. How can we ensure that our places are designed to be flood resilient in future?

11. To what extent do you agree that there is a need to make space for water to improve the flood resilience of our villages, towns and cities?

a. Strongly agree

b. Mostly agree

c. Mostly disagree

d. Strongly disagree

In urban areas, we should make more use of our greenspace and urban watercourses to help manage increased rainfall and reduce the impacts of surface water flooding.

12. Which of the following do you think would be helpful? (Please rank by importance)

a. Increasing the use of sustainable drainage systems

b. Creating blue and green drainage networks to enhance existing drainage systems

c. Using available greenspace such parks and sports pitches to help soak up and store water in the heaviest rainfall events to prevent drainage systems becoming overwhelmed

d. Creating raingardens in public parks and streets

e. Other (please specify)

If we are to make more use of our river catchments and coastal areas to increase our flood resilience,

13. Which of the following do you think would be helpful? (Please rank by importance)

a. Using soil, and land management techniques to slow down the flow of water and increase infiltration and water retention

b. Using river and floodplain management techniques such as re-introducing meanders to rivers to slow flow and enhancing floodplains and wetlands to increase storage

c. Increasing woodland to help intercept, slow and store water throughout a catchment

d. Restoring peatlands to absorb, store and release water slowly.

e. Enhancing natural dune systems to maintain a natural barrier that reduces the risk of tidal inundation

f. Managing saltmarsh and mudflats in estuaries to store water and dissipate wave energy

g. Other (please specify)

Properties on floodplains will become increasingly exposed to flooding with climate change. Communities in some areas around our coast will also have an increased exposure to flooding where the combined impacts of sea level rise and coastal erosion come together.

It may not be possible for the most exposed communities to maintain a level of flood resilience indefinitely and alternative long-term planning needs to take place.

14. Should moving communities away from areas with the highest exposure be considered as an option?

Yes/No - please give the reason(s) for your answer.

Processes

To make the shift from fixing flooding problems to creating flood resilient places we need to adapt the processes that we go through when making decisions related to flooding. This will include making changes to:

• The way we work together.
• How we provide support for delivery partners to deliver a broader range of actions.
• How things are funded and what actions we spend our available funding on.

Outcomes

We want to ensure that the processes in place to improve flood resilience make the best use of resources we have available and deliver multiple benefits for places and communities. We also want to make sure that everyone involved in flooding in Scotland has access to the information and support that they need to contribute.

Supporting delivery partners

To make the shift from fixing flooding problems to creating flood resilient places communities and delivery partners will need access to advice and support.

This is especially important if we want to enable a broader range of delivery partners to contribute to flood resilience in Scotland.

Here in Scotland we have an excellent knowledge and skills base within the 36 flood management responsible authorities – the 32 local authorities, SEPA, Scottish Water and the two national parks. We are keen to hear views on how we can create greater efficiency, consistency and value, and how we can become better at sharing our knowledge, skills and experience across this group. We would like to hear from you whether there is any value in realigning, clarifying or modifying the roles across these partners to support this.

Making the change from fixing flooding problems to creating flood resilient places will require sharing advice, knowledge, skills and best practice between delivery partners on topics including:

• Embedding flood resilience in the design of our places
• Community involvement
• Climate adaptation
• Coastal erosion
• Flood resilience options
• Early design of actions
• Natural flood management
• Blue and Green infrastructure
• Funding options

Funding

The cost of flooding impacts and of implementing flood measures continues to increase, so it is critical that we make the most of our available resources to have the greatest impact on our outcomes and seek to widen the sources of funding available to improve flood resilience. Under the current flood risk management legislation, and the “fixing flooding problems” approach, Scottish Government and local authority flooding budgets are largely focused on flood protection schemes such as those completed recently for Stonehaven, Arbroath, and Caol and Lochyside.

Shifting the narrative to “creating flood resilient places” widens the number of flood resilience actions that can be taken forward and may provide opportunities to better connect budgets for multiple benefits and widen sources of funding available beyond Scottish Government and local authorities. For example, urban regeneration projects- joint funded by developers and local authorities can reduce flood exposure through good design and urban greenspace projects can be combined with flood storage to reduce flood impacts. Making this change will require providing information, support and guidance to communities and flood management organisations.

The Scottish Government is also working with COSLA, the voice of Local Government in Scotland, to reform the current approach to funding flood resilience actions. In particular to see how we can increase the affordability of flood protection schemes and consider what other actions can be taken forward in combination with flood protection schemes to improve our flood resilience. This work is ongoing in parallel to developing this strategy. The initial focus of the work is on the affordability of the flood protection schemes we are already committed to deliver and how we can improve how schemes are schemes are funded and delivered in future. Part of this work with COSLA is considering what other flood resilience actions should be funded and this consultation has the opportunity to influence that work.

What does the Scottish Government currently spend the flooding budget on?

The Scottish Government has allocated £42 million per year, plus £150 million until the end of this parliament, for local authorities to spend on measures to manage their flood risk. This is largely spent on Flood Protection Schemes, which include those at Stonehaven, Brechin, and Caol and Lochyside. Further funding supports the operations of the Scottish Flood Forum, which provides advice and support for people that have been flooded, and flood forecasting and warning services, provided by SEPA. Additionally, £12m is being provided over four years to support coastal change adaptation. All of these elements are very important for reducing our flood exposure, but we are keen to take views on whether a portion of this funding would have a greater impact if it was redistributed to other actions, such as towards a property flood protection grant, natural flood management measures or training and equipping community resilience groups.

Questions

To distribute available funding across a wider range of flood resilience actions would potentially mean reducing spending on new large flood protection schemes.

15. How might information, guidance, direction and technical support be provided for communities and flood management organisations?

16. How can we improve efficiency, consistency and value in delivering flood actions?

17. Other than large flood protection schemes, what other flood resilience actions should we focus on supporting/spending available funding on? (Please rank by importance)

a. Maintaining existing flood protection

b. Small flood protection schemes

c. Natural flood management

d. Blue and green infrastructure (e.g. multi-purpose green space, such as floodable sports pitches)

e. Flood forecasting and warning

f. Property level flood resilience measures

g. Supporting local community flood resilience groups

h. None – all funding should be spent on large flood protection schemes

i. Other (please specify)

18. Do you think there is enough evidence and information to support the delivery of a broader range of flood resilience actions? Yes/No –

If No, please let us know what you think our evidence and information gaps are.

19. What other funding sources or mechanisms could be used to support flood resilience? (Please rank by importance)

a. Financial contributions from those who directly benefit from improved flood resilience (e.g. private sector/businesses)

b. All new development makes a contribution to improving flood resilience

c. Support natural flood management through payments to farmers, crofters and land managers (for example, Forestry Grant Scheme, the future agricultural support framework or PeatlandACTION payments)

d. Other (please specify)

And finally:

20. What is your main concern about flooding?

21. What one thing would do the most to improve Scotland’s flood resilience?