Implementation of the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009: report to the Scottish Parliament - 2019

7. Delivering Responsibilities Collectively

Responsibilities for flood risk management are divided between different organisations. Strong partnerships, founded on common aspirations, are needed to deliver coordinated or joint actions, aligned investment planning and efficient use of resources. Finding new ways to share skills, expertise and services is important to delivering partnership working. A summary of the partnership groups contributing towards flood risk management is outlined in Annex B.

7.1 Co-design and Co-delivery

SEPA have undertaken a number of partnership projects to support consumers, including community engagement and information initiatives, training packages and briefings including

Neighbourhood Watch Scotland (NWS)

• Featuring the Floodline service and flooding advice in Scotland’s reissued Scotland’s Community Safety Booklet; and
• Working with NWS to help improve local engagement and promote community understanding and uptake of the Floodline service e.g. use of neighbourhood alert to disseminate flood warning advice and information to communities.

Citizen's Advice Scotland

• Development and ongoing relationship for a flooding assistance training package for advisors in Scotland’s Citizen Advice Scotland, to better reach those potentially at greater flooding disadvantage.

Association of British Insurers and other Representative Bodies

• Briefings for membership on topics such as use of the SEPA flood maps and other sources of information they can access incuding the Scottish Flood Defence Asset Database (SFDAD).
• Briefings, presentations and membership engagement on flood warning services with the Road Hauliers Association.

7.2 Sharing Best Practice

The Scottish Government continues to fund an annual two day conference to bring Scotland's flood risk management community together. This is a platform to exchange knowledge, share best practice and explore issues common to those with duties in flooding risk management. The general theme for the 2019 Conference was "Ten years of the Flood Risk Management Act – moving forward together". It looked at achievements and the way forward, linking policy to on the ground experiences. Sub-themes during the conference included community engagement and adapting to climate change with a view to future planning cycles.

During 2019 the Scottish Government also provided funding to SNIFFER to allow them to run knowledge exchange workshops on flood risk management. In June, workshops were held on "Climate Change Allowance for flood risk assessment in Land Use Planning", in September a workshop was held on "Developing and Implementing Flood Studies" and in December a workshop was held on "Accessing Funding for Flood Risk Management".

Scottish stakeholders regularly organise and attend knowledge sharing events across the UK and beyond. For example, the SFF have forged close links with both the National Flood Forum in England, and the Irish National Flood Forum.

The Tweed Forum played host to a range of international practitioners, academics and politicians who visited the Eddleston Water project sites to see the NFM measures and learn about the monitoring. This included Mairi Gougeon MSP, Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, representatives of the Powys Moorland Partnership, a group of local, regional water managers from South East Norway and HRH Prince Charles, who opened their new offices.

7.3 Joint Training and Exercises

SEPA delivers a flood forecasting and warning module in Scottish Fire and Rescue incident management and Police Scotland emergency procedures advisors national training. They also participate in many joint training initiatives and exercises, to test and improve information sharing, procedures and activities between flooding responders.

This includes playing an active role in Scottish Government's Winter Preparedness multi agency briefings and its Voluntary Sector Resilience Partnership, working to increase knowledge and use of flood forecasting and warning information by community responder organisations like the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and British Red Cross.