24 July 2024
The Scottish Government is currently developing its flood resilience strategy, as part of Scotland’s National Adaptation Plan. This will outline long term plans and actions to make communities across Scotland more resilient to flooding, and change the narrative from fixing flooding issues to creating flood resilient places, to acknowledge the need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. July 2024
APRS responded to this consultation as landscape and rural land use is inherently linked to, and impacted by, the issue of flooding. We highlighted the need to take catchment-based approaches to creating flood resilience, which aims to store and slow the flow of water throughout an entire river catchment, and to use the Local Development Planning process to plan for flooding and create resilient communities. We also discussed the need for nature-based solutions, in particular the potential for green belts to act as ‘sponges’ around urban areas, and the need for them to be enhanced and protected to create more flood resilient urban areas.
Our response
Closing date: 13th August
1. Do you support the change from fixing flooding problems to creating flood resilient places? Yes/No – please give the reason(s) for your answer.
Yes
The real scale of the impacts of climate change that is already ‘baked in’ is yet to be felt so resilience is going to be even more important in years to come.
3. Who do you think has a role in Scotland to help us become more flood resilient and to help us adapt to the impacts of climate change? (Please rank from most to least important)
a. Individuals
b. Homeowners
c. Businesses
d. Scottish Government
e. Scottish Water
f. Local Authorities
g. Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)
h. Land owners/land managers
i. Farmers and crofters
j. House builders/developers
k. Community groups
l. Other (please specify)
A collaborative, catchment management approach is needed to bring together communities, land owners, government officials, local authorities and experts to best increase flood management and resilience in catchments.
4. What support do communities need to become involved/engaged in climate adaptation and flood resilience planning?
We need to foster greater understanding of catchment scale causes and solutions and encourage open discussion of types of solutions and their wider impacts – eg using concrete defences and the embodied carbon it entails as well as landscape impacts, negative nature impacts versus nature-based solutions. Sometimes that engagement and support could be initiated via Local Development Plan reviews, or developing local place plans.
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)
Including future flood exposure in Local Development Plans. Community groups preparing Local Place Plans should also have access to flood history, future flood exposure, and information on flood resilience options available to their community.
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)
10. How can we ensure that our places are designed to be flood resilient in future?
Effectively deployed nature-based solutions will ensure greater flood resilience while also benefiting biodiversity and sequestering carbon. Green spaces and green belts around urban areas should be better protected and enhanced with their flood resilience potential in mind.
Green Belts can effectively act as ‘sponges’, absorbing water and reducing run-off to urban areas. Building over more of these mainly open landscapes will remove this flood break and prevent the absorption of water, making flooding worse. This would also increase runoff into drainage systems, increasing the frequency of Combined Sewage Overflows and the release of sewage into waterways.
Many Green Belts already contain nature-based solutions to flood management, such as woodlands and well designed forestry, peatlands, and ponds but these could be deliberately enhanced. A core focus of the Flood Resilience Strategy should be to enhance, create, and restore these habitats where possible to protect communities in urban and peri urban areas from flooding. This should be done through a water catchment scale approach. Long term significant investment in nature-based solutions in Green Belts will reduce spending on the impacts of flooding in these areas and their surroundings.
When preparing Local Development Plans, planning authorities should have regard to future flooding scenarios and assess the impacts of sites allocated for development on flooding resilience. The Scottish Government’s Local Development Plan Guidance (May 2023) already suggests that planning authorities consider building the spatial strategy up from the perspective of protecting and promoting the assets, including nature-based assets, and infrastructure, needed to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The role of Green Belts is highlighted, alongside ‘blue and green infrastructure, green networks, nature networks and other countryside around towns in order to progress action towards climate mitigation and adaptation… including for water management and storage (eg safeguarding floodplain capacity and areas that do or could provide key flood risk management services to safeguard communities’.
Adequate guidance in integrating flood management into development plans and information on any Scottish Government flooding strategies should be created to aid planning authorities in doing so. Planning advice note 79 (water and drainage) was written in 2006, and should also be updated to consider current contexts. The idea of a ‘planning hub’ previously consulted on in the Resourcing Planning consultation could also be a source of advice on flood resilience in planning. Planning authorities could also be encouraged to share such guidance with community groups preparing Local Place Plans.
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
Strongly agree
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)
All are important and flood resilience should take a place-based approach. Engaging local people so that there is an awareness of why these measures are happening to gain support will help. Encouraging individual households to keep as much private ground (gardens, driveways etc) as permeable as possible would also help.
We would also add proactively using Green Belt and other peri-urban greenspace areas as flood management tools. This should take a water catchment approach. Nature-based solutions should be used to enhance the capacity of greenbelts to mitigate the impacts of flooding, including exploring beaver reintroduction as in outer West London (https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-returns-beavers-west-london-first-time-400-years).
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)
These are all important and a place-based approach should be taken, using whatever tools are most appropriate and beneficial to the area. Action to address flooding should take a water catchment based approach. .
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.
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)
All these points (apart from h) are important. Focus should be on nature-based solutions to flood management which also work for biodiversity, rather than purely grey infrastructure.
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)
C, B/A
In space given for D – Regarding ‘B’, it is unclear whether this means a physical or financial contribution to improving flood resilience. In the case it means physical, these should be nature-based, designed to improve resilience while also benefiting biodiversity. In terms of financial contributions this could be via the new infrastructure levy – and could be applied to any development that makes a site less permeable/able to absorb water rather than only to buildings.