National Assembly for Wales

Carolyn, very briefly, do you want to come in on something?

The portfolios have changed as well as the Ministers. So, if you've been to look at different areas of Government, such as looking at flood resilience—I don't mean just in higher levels—that will feed into another person's portfolio, rather than maybe Rebecca's. So, how would you feed that into that area as well then?

So, with flooding as an example, we deal directly with Huw Irranca-Davies on that. So, we've had meetings with him and his officials.

Okay. Thank you.

Diolch. Janet.

You've touched on independence. How do you manage that—an independence-type relationship with the Welsh Government?

This comes up every year, and for good reason, because Welsh Government pays for us to operate, and therefore you need to have confidence that we can make a robust challenge to Welsh Government on any issues. So, I think we've demonstrated that through our correspondence. So, we push back where we feel that Welsh Government is not listening to us. We continue to push back, for example, on issues with renewable energy, where we think that they haven't responded satisfactorily. So, you'll see evidence in our correspondence that we keep trying to go back to them. We set our programme of work independently, particularly now, because the original remit set out expectations for the first two years. So, now, we're coming in to the next two years, having set our own areas of activity. So, of course, we would discuss those with Welsh Government. But, by and large, as I say, they're interested in what we do, they seem to trust us to get on with the work, and then they respond to our recommendations on various work areas.

But we also produce opinions, which are not formal recommendations. And I think what we aim to do is not just provide recommendations to Welsh Government, but to build areas of consensus with stakeholders, which is also part of our remit, in fairness, but thereby providing information that can be helpful to all sorts of different parties, whether they're community actors or engineering organisations, to help build that body of knowledge and influence people to make changes that are not necessarily directly within the purview of Welsh Government.

Okay. Would you say your relationship has changed since you started challenging the Government, in terms of the independence? And how do you know that they are actually taking on board your recommendations—what's changing?

Well, the first set of recommendations made was on renewable energy, and I think it's fair to say that we haven't been entirely satisfied with their appetite for change. That process was definitely impacted by the change of Minister. So, first of all, our recommendations were not responded to for just over six months, actually—so, it went over the normal agreed time limit. Then, I think we felt that the responses were rather superficial. So, they seemed to respond to our headline recommendations without looking at what was a considerable amount of detail behind them. So, that's why we pushed back. I think we had a very good meeting with Jeremy Miles. We said, 'We want to challenge you', and he said, 'I accept that challenge.' Of course, within a month, he was gone. So, then we had correspondence with Ken Skates, but that was over the summer. So, in fact, it wasn't really until Rebecca was appointed that we were able to continue that dialogue, which is a bit frustrating, because our recommendations were published in October 2023, and it's then basically a year before we have any kind of traction.

By that time, some of the external situation had changed. So, some of our recommendations had—I'm not going to say 'timed out', but there was an urgency about the recommendations, and we were frustrated with some of the delays that we saw within Welsh Government policy. The urgency of them, if you don't act on them fairly quickly, then the urgency is gone, and the opportunity then is lost as well. So, we did feel that there was a bit of an opportunity lost there, even though, now, we can see that some of the reasons for wanting to act on them immediately have gone. So, for example, we said air-source heat pumps, there should be permitted development, because the policy in England makes them far easier to install. So, effectively, we saw that Welsh taxpayers were subsidising English home owners to have renewable energy installed, whereas it should be, in a sense, the other way around, if Wales is the poorer country. Well, by now, the situation has changed in England and in Wales, and there are going to be changes made, but maybe a year and a half or two years later than we would have liked.

So, we're a little bit frustrated, and I think there are still things we would want to see. So, for example, we said, 'What's Welsh Government's vision for renewable energy by 2050?' That was something that came up consistently with stakeholders. They want to understand are we going to be a net energy exporter, what's our view on ownership, what role is community energy going to play, how much installed capacity is there going to be, what's your view on grid, and, really, we didn't see that; we haven't seen that. So, there was a commitment to produce a national renewable energy plan by the end of 2024. That wasn't produced, and there's a rationale for that, which we accept, which is largely to do with the National Energy System Operator, the strategic energy operator. So, there are changes at the UK level, which you might say, 'Okay, well—', you can understand why there might be reasons you can't go into Welsh Government now taking ownership of those aspects. But nonetheless, we still feel that there's a role for a vision that hasn't been outlined. So, I think that that's still something we would want to push on.

Thank you very much. Given media stories around potential conflicts of interest, are you confident that those are being handled effectively?

Yes. Well, we responded to those. The investigation was undertaken, we were judged to be dealing with conflicts of interest appropriately. The internal independent investigation—I'll say 'evaluation'— carried out by Welsh Government on the commission's performance over the last few years gave us a clean bill of health on that. So, just to put your minds at rest, we have a component of our meetings every month, where we, at the start, say, 'Here's the agenda; has anybody got any conflicts of interest?' We expect people to declare them in the meeting, and also things that are not relevant to that meeting. So, whenever anything has changed in somebody's employment or a partner's employment, we update that. So, I think we're actually doing extremely well on transparency. If you go to our website and click on any of the individual commissioners, you'll find there are declarations of interests listed under their personal profile, as well as updating on the more formal Welsh Government pro forma.

Thank you.

Thank you. There we are. Julie.

Bore da. I wanted to ask you about your relationship with the UK National Infrastructure Commission, and I think in the past you've said that you had a good relationship. Could you say a bit about the relationship now and perhaps give us some examples of some joint working?

I can. Unfortunately, Jen leads on that, so I was hoping to pass that question on to her this morning. So, I can give you a top-level summary, which is that Jenifer Baxter, the deputy chair, has responsibility for that relationship. She has regular meetings with her counterparts—I think, every quarter, at least. The National Infrastructure Commission UK has sat on two of our previous advisory groups, both for renewable energy and flooding. So, we aim to provide that information flow to ensure that we're not duplicating what's already happened over the border. As I understand it, the National Infrastructure Commission UK is currently in the process of being dissolved or incorporated into a UK project authority or similar, so it's possible that we will actually outlast our colleagues over the border and they may persist in some form, but within UK Government. So, I'm not quite sure where that relationship is going to end up, but it's likely to change. Hopefully, we will still maintain a good level of interaction with similar sorts of stakeholders within Government in the UK.

Yes. Are there any specific projects where you feel—? Or is there any particular area of work that you've carried out that you've both worked together on, in a way? I'm aware that perhaps you don't have a detailed knowledge of this.

I think it's probably unrealistic to expect that we can work collaboratively on projects other than involving our colleagues in England on a sort of project advisory group to just ensure that what we're doing is not vastly different from what's happening over the border. And by that, I don't mean that we're not doing things radically or differently, because that's part of the reason we were set up, but that we're not ignoring evidence, for example. So, I know that the National Infrastructure Commission of the UK did a study on flash flooding and measures that could be taken to reduce the impact of that in England. So, the fact that we had somebody who was involved in that project sitting on our project advisory group for flooding ensured that what we weren't doing was going against the evidence that had been provided there.

So, I think because the bodies are so different—. As it's currently instituted, I think the National Infrastructure Commission has about 50 full-time staff and we have 1.8 secretariat and the rest of us are part-time. We're so different that I can't really conceive of how we would have worked together practically on a project.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Joyce.

Bore da. The Welsh Government has been involved in a review of the commission. Are you able to give an overview of the scope and the process that was involved in that?

Yes. So, this was a review that was mandated as part of our remit. There's an expectation that we have an external review, I think it's every five years, so this was the point at which—. Last year was the last year that it could have happened. We had good engagement with the audit team. They carried out—I think for about six months—a review into our processes; they attended a couple of our meetings; and they engaged widely with stakeholders. They have a standard process, I think, that they carry out within Welsh Government institutions. I think we were a bit different from their normal audit organisation, but they carried out their scrutiny diligently. They've made a number of recommendations, most of which we've already implemented. As I say, I think we received a reasonably clean bill of health for our first audit, and hopefully, we can put in place improvements to the processes to make sure that, next time, it's full green rather than light green, or whatever it was this time.

So, did you feel that it was a comprehensive review of your commission?

I did, yes. You know, I think there were areas where they said that management of risk was something we need to do a bit more of, which we are doing—starting tomorrow, actually, because it's our commission meeting tomorrow. Something on more strategic success factors; so, our key performance indicators, if you like, are very—they're sort of vague at the moment. We have to advise Welsh Government and show that we're advising Welsh Government, and we have to help Welsh Government achieve its well-being objectives, but aside from that, I think the audit suggested that we should have something a bit more specific. And stuff on—a bit more information, perhaps, on providing papers on specific issues ahead of our commission meetings.

But generally, I felt that the response was very good, the evaluation was positive and, in particular, I was pleased with the response from the stakeholders, who gave us extremely high scores for all of the activities under our remit. So, I think, on average, we scored about nine out of 10, which I would have definitely taken ahead of that evaluation taking place.

I'm sure most of us would take nine out of 10, too. But—

Sorry. Can I just come in on one short question? 

Yes.

It felt more like an audit than a comprehensive review, though, didn't it? You know, I mean, it's very much through a sort of auditing lens rather than a review of what you do.

I feel that a review of what we do would probably be more of a political choice, because that would then inform the remit or the terms of reference. So, my feeling is that, if we call it an audit, it's a clean bill of health on how this organisation is operating. And then come May next year, there’ll be a new Minister, up to them to take a view. Is this money being spent well? Are there outcomes being produced? Therefore, within that context now, how is the remit and the terms of reference—? So, I think it did its job as part of what will be a process that concludes, probably, in May or June next year.

Okay, diolch.

So, there were, as you've just mentioned, six observations, and you said you've started working on those. And the Welsh Government said that they're within the gift of the chair. So, do you think that that is a correct statement? You said that you are addressing them; could you give us a bit of detail about how you're addressing them?

Yes. So, for example, on risk, we had a risk of register, reviewed every quarter. They felt that perhaps we needed to have ownership of each of those risks. So, implicitly, I was owning all of those risks. So, I think that we've changed that now. So, we're going to have a deep-dive into one of our strategic risks at every commission meeting, starting tomorrow, and somebody will take ownership of each of those risks, which isn't necessarily me. So, we're still going to have an overview every quarter, but we're going to have that deep-dive to try and ensure that we're not missing anything that might be less well scrutinised in a quarterly overview.

On information to the commission, we are going to be providing more written information on our project updates for commissioners, which will enable us, hopefully, to spend less time on oral updates in the meeting and then focus on other things. So, definitely, some of those recommendations we've implemented immediately, which we hope will make our meetings more interesting and productive for the commissioners and address some of those issues that were highlighted.

You say that you've only got part-time staff, and I can't remember the admin—was it 1.5 admin?

I think it's 1.8 full time.

Yes. So, is that realistic?

Well, all I can say is that our secretariat is excellent. They provide us with brilliant support. If you think about the sorts of things that we do every year—publishing at least one major report, often carrying out several minor projects, study tours away, an annual report as well, plus the monthly meetings—I think we do a lot for the time allocation that we have, while, on top of that, managing contracts for the research that we undertake, which enables us to make our recommendations. So, I think we perform very well for the time allocation, but that's not a plea for more time and more money; I'm satisfied with what we do, and I think we do deliver. A couple of years ago, I think the question was, 'Do you deliver good value for money?' and I said, 'We have to wait and see', and I do feel as though we're delivering good value for money. Hopefully, the recommendations we're making on flooding will demonstrate that, and certainly the feedback we've had from stakeholders has been very positive, and I'm confident on that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Julie.

You've already responded a bit to the Government response to the renewable energy report, and you did highlight some things that you were concerned about, and I think you said you were looking for more of a vision for the future. Do you want to expand on that?

Yes. This was really—. Our first recommendation, I think, was: what do Welsh Government want from energy in Wales? So, I know that energy is a complex subject because it's mostly non-devolved, although planning is devolved, so it's one of those areas where there's a bit of tension between UK and Welsh Government, with various issues. But, I think, if there's no vision, that leaves a bit of a void in which others can't have their own strategic understanding of what is needed—so, energy developers or community participants. So, for example, one of the quotes from one of the three reports that we commissioned to build up our recommendations said,

'There is no Welsh Energy Strategy or Policy, and tensions arise from a lack of consistency and uncertainty around the overall picture for Wales.'

Now, I think that's a political piece, and does Wales want, does Welsh Government want greater levels of ownership? To what extent is ownership of energy important? Those things, for me, would feel very reasonable to implement—high-level ideas on how much electricity should be generated and owned by Wales. So, whilst there are things that are taking place—Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, for example, I think, is a brilliant initiative, which should go some way towards ensuring that at least there’s some ownership of projects in Wales—we said, ‘Why not make ownership of projects a material consideration in the planning?’ Well, aspects like that weren’t really responded to, and we said, ‘Well, community ownership and local ownership should both be components.'

Another thing we said was that, when it comes to repowering—so, if a windfarm, for example, is coming to the end of its life, and you go for a planning application to replace it, perhaps, with bigger turbines—we said, ‘Well, if you then go above and beyond what we’d originally suggested, which was 10 per cent community ownership and 10 per cent local ownership’, and say, ‘Right, now we’re going to repower and we’re going to have 20 per cent community ownership and 20 per cent local ownership,' there’ll be a more streamlined process, so there would be a bit of a quid pro quo. Again, no real response on that. So, I think, again, it feels to me like there’s a bit of a missed opportunity there, because the developers wouldn’t miss out. We’re not saying, ‘Give part of your project to a community or to local ownership’; we’re saying, ‘Let the community raise the funds and buy in.' We feel—

Are you saying, then, that you think it’s fear of developers?

Well, I don’t think people fear developers. I think developers, broadly speaking, support—. There’s good interaction. I used to work as a representative of the renewable energy sector. For me, the interactions were always very positive with the Welsh Government, although there’s bound to be frustrations on both sides, as there is with any sort of commercial entity. I think developers would be responsive to changes in policy from the Welsh Government on this. So, yes, I honestly can’t answer for that. I think there are—. We could go further and faster. We could have greater ambition, but, I think, if we don’t have that vision piece, then it’s difficult for us, as an infrastructure commission, as developers, to know, really, in what direction we’re heading. At the moment, it seems that, rather than providing leadership on energy, the Welsh Government is more responding to external influences.

Thank you. 

Carolyn, do you want to come in on this?

We’ve got a few proposals for onshore wind, and, I believe, if the communities were able to have lower energy bills, it might help, really, in a way.

Yes. 

But is that possible, in your opinion?

Yes, it’s definitely possible. When I used to work for RenewableUK, there were companies there that had lower electricity tariffs for people who were resident around their developments. I used to be on the board of a wind energy co-operative in Rhondda Cynon Taf, which was started up by Ripple Energy, which is a commercial company but which enables people to buy into that turbine, or solar park or whatever, and then get reductions on their bill. So, this is something that exists right now. I would love to see that deployed right across Wales, because I think there’s a huge thing here for positive support for renewables, if you can buy into it or if you have that local benefit. So, I’m a big supporter of those sorts of initiatives.

Okay. Thank you. 

Could you write to us with more information on that, if that’s possible?

Yes. 

Yes, if you’re happy to do that.

That would be really useful. Thank you. 

Okay. Thank you very much. Right, we'll move on to Delyth next. 

Diolch. I think that this work that you're doing is so important, because it's exactly that gap that you've identified that is going to be of fundamental importance to fill if we're going to overcome the fear that people have about what the future holds, drawing on exactly what you were just saying.

In terms of the scoping work for the resilient infrastructure project, you've said that the scoping work led you to conclude that infrastructure providers and planners aren't fully thinking about the next 60 to 70 years in terms of climate change effects on infrastructure networks across Wales. Could you expand a little on that, please?

I think there's no common understanding of what 'long term' means for different infrastructure providers. So, part of what we were doing was trying to understand, from all of the different infrastructure sectors, what they think is long term and what modelling they're using to try and ensure that their infrastructure is resilient.

There are some really good examples of organisations that are thinking long term. I think the Climate Change Committee also takes views on this. There are particular sectors that are more at risk than others, some that are perhaps obvious to us—railways, for example, in coastal areas—and some less so. So, I'm not quite sure at the moment what National Grid is doing and whether they're considering wildfires, for example, as part of their modelling for the long term, but hopefully this project will provide that evidence and we'll be able to make some recommendations on that. 

That's quite fascinating, in terms of how different sectors conceptualise the idea of 'long term' as well. Just briefly, is there any example internationally that you feel that Wales could be learning from, where there is more of a focus across different sectors in that way, in terms of thinking in the long term, whatever that might mean, in terms of climate adaptations?

So, whilst I'm not an expert on this, I think that the UK is considered one of the better, more prepared countries in the European context. I may be wrong on that, but that's my feeling, from the last time I looked at it. In general, I would say, look at the EU, see what the EU is doing and use that as a benchmark. For example, just to hop back to renewables for a moment, one of the things that we recommended was that new builds have solar photovoltaics mandated, and Welsh Government said, 'No, that's going to close down innovation', but that's exactly what the EU has said. So, by 2026, all public and commercial buildings will have PV; by 2029, all residential new build will have PV. So, keeping up to date with what the EU is doing on aspects of adaptation to take this part, but also energy in other parts, I think is really good, because it shows the art of the possible and, in principle, places where we might be leading.

I do think that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and requiring people to try and think long term is quite innovative within the European policy context, and does help us to carry out these sorts of projects, where we can say to infrastructure providers, 'You may not have to think about this in policy terms in England, but, in Wales, there's a requirement on public bodies to do it', so perhaps that helps us, in principle, to be more prepared than they might be in other places. 

The Welsh Government has suggested a comprehensive infrastructure assessment for Wales, and that it could cost in the region of £2.5 million, yet the draft budget allocation is £400,000 for the commission next year. Do you have sufficient budget and resources to undertake that work?

Not a comprehensive study. So, when I was first appointed, I spent quite a bit of time talking to different infrastructure commissions or equivalent bodies around the world. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission was extremely helpful in this regard, and they quoted, I think, about £5 million equivalent, if I recall correctly, to do their national infrastructure assessment. Now, clearly, we’re not going to get the funding for that, but what they also did were these smaller studies on particular topic areas. So, I think that, within a budget that’s realistic for us, we can still provide a lot of value by taking a snapshot of particular sectors and then trying to rank those within some sort of priority for our investigations over the coming years.

I think that, in principle, doing a national infrastructure assessment would be valuable, particularly if you did it in some sort of way to incorporate a digital twin—so, in other words, having a digital map or a digital component of all of the existing infrastructure, pulling together all of the different assets—but that, I think, would be very, very ambitious, and outwith our scope, even though it was within the original scope of what NICW was supposed to be doing.

Okay, thanks.

Diolch yn fawr. Joyce, yes. Sorry.

You started talking about succession planning. Have you got any particular measures that are being put in place to aid that transition towards the new commission next year?

Yes, we are mindful of our current appointments coming to an end in December this year. What I’m very keen to do is to avoid everybody leaving at once, which is almost what happened last time, so we’re encouraging some people that want to to stay on, and giving the opportunity to others to leave. 

I still don’t know quite what’s going to happen with my own term. I’ve had some suggestion it might be helpful for me to stay on until after the election next year to provide continuity of leadership. I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen there, but I can assure the Members here that we will be putting in place, in good time, a recruitment process, to ensure that, whatever happens, there will be continuity—so, we will have existing commissioners; we will have new commissioners.

More importantly, I think, we also have platforms and processes that simply didn’t exist when I took over. So, there was almost no written material, and no systems of any description, really, when I started my role. What we have now is good systems, good file storage, good public profile, a website, social media platforms and copious numbers of interviews, which we’ve got on the equivalent of a YouTube channel. So, the infrastructure that you would expect from a normal body is in place. So, I think that, even were all of the commissioners to leave simultaneously and new ones come on, which would be not ideal and which we’re not aiming for, you would still have a much better succession than previous.

So, we’re planning—. We will start a recruitment process probably over the summer this year, I would think, if some of the commissioners are stepping down, and we will, hopefully, maintain that continuity. I think it’s a good thing to have existing members and new ones bringing some fresh energy. So, I’m confident that that process is going to be well managed.

Okay.

So, just to confirm, you've had confirmation that the commission will continue after this final year, because you sound as if you’re saying that, but, obviously, I wasn’t aware that there was a formal commitment.

My feeling is—so, it's not a formal commitment, but my feeling is—that the commission in its current form will be maintained until May 2026. But, because it's a non-statutory body, there’s no guarantee that an incoming Minister might say, ‘Well, that’s fulfilled its task, now it’s time to close it down.’

And is there not an irony that the body of the commission charged with looking 80 to 100 years into the future doesn’t even know if it’s going to be around next year?

Well, again, that's—

You're allowed to say 'yes'. [Laughter.]

It's a political decision.

Yes, of course, I appreciate that, yes. Okay. Iawn. Diolch yn fawr. Okay. Well, we'll conclude that general scrutiny part of the meeting, and maybe I can invite Dr Eurgain Powell and Eluned Parrott to join us at the table here, diolch yn fawr, and we’ll move on to the second part of our scrutiny with the commission this morning, which is to consider your report on flooding. And, as I explained at the start, this will feed in, hopefully, to the wider piece of work that we’re doing on resilience in the light of recent storms and, no doubt, increasing instances of major weather events that’ll be hitting Wales in years to come as well.

So, I'll turn to Carolyn Thomas to kick off this part of the session.

Okay, morning. What are your overall reflections on the current resilience of Welsh infrastructure to flooding? David mentioned earlier our railways, but what about the rest of the infrastructure?

Thank you. So, in terms of the overall vision, we are concerned that there is a lack of preparedness for the impacts of climate change, and that climate change is developing more rapidly than perhaps had been anticipated. We are concerned that public bodies need to be ready to respond for the future, rather than for what they might have anticipated in the present.

So, we commissioned four pieces of work. One was to look at that idea of vision in the long term, and what living well with water might look like. Because this is Wales; with the best will in the world, we can’t stop the rain from falling. It may from time to time, but we have to live with the water, and we have to do that in a way that’s safe and appropriate and that communities feel confident with.

The second piece of work we looked at was looking at the planning system and how that was prepared, and we had quite a lot of challenges around data, looking at different local authorities managing things in different ways, different local authorities recording and reporting things in different ways, which made it really, really difficult to get an overall picture of what the governance structures around flooding look like.

There are more than 30 bodies that are principal flood bodies, essentially, and, if your home floods, the responsibility—. Would you know who to talk to?

Yes. [Laughter.]

Because there are—. It depends what the water is, it depends where the water has come from. For individuals and for communities, that’s not really an adequate situation. So, I think that that’s another big challenge.

We had a look at the resource implications, and one of the things with a short-term horizon on planning is that you also have a short-term horizon on funding, and that gives really big problems, particularly if you want to move towards more nature-based solutions that require—. It’s not, 'This year, we have an extra £10 million and so we're going to pour concrete here.' It is, 'Over the next 15, 20 years, we need more skills, we need investment in our landscapes, we need a long-term commitment to funding, which the current systems don't provide for.' 

The final piece of work we looked at, then, was to look at catchment-based approaches, because another challenge with the way that flooding is managed at the moment, with local authorities taking a huge amount of responsibility, is that, of course, a river a doesn't respect—water does not respect—the political boundaries that we have set up. And many of the boundaries that we have, they overlap. If we look at the River Taf, for example, if you look at the situation in Pontypridd that we've seen, yes, the local authority in RCT need to respond to that, but, of course, actions further up the river will have had an impact on what happened in Pontypridd as well. So, those are some of the overall challenges. So, the short answer is, 'No, we're not ready.'

As you said earlier, many people do not know who's responsible, and who to go to in an emergency. I think there have been calls previously for a plan, a policy in place, so that, if people are impacted by flooding: who do they ring? Are they entitled to sand bags—basically, who will provide them? It seems quite complicated. And also, if our local authorities, our lead flood authorities, have been impacted by cuts—. So, like you said, there could be different reactions from different local authorities, because they might not each have the same resilience, because they might not have officers in place and operatives in place the same as another authority that might have more resilience. I think that's an issue going forward. We'll be meeting with local authorities later, so, we can chat to them about this. So, what are the obstacles, do you think, to developing approaches to flood risk management, and having a catchment-based approach going forward?

As Eluned has already mentioned, there are lots of different authorities responsible for managing flood risk. One of the pieces of work that we commissioned was to look at how to deal with this on a more strategic and spatial level. So, in terms of the obstacles, you've already heard a few, but the roles and responsibilities are really complicated: multiple agencies involved in different ways, often leading to a lack of co-ordination, we felt, and a lack of unified action.

You've already touched on the role of communities. So, again, we found that community engagement, and the response in terms of community engagement, was very different across different authorities in Wales. So, how to support them to engage with communities more effectively, ensuring active participation, is currently really challenging.

And Eluned has already mentioned that the current structures in terms of responding to flood risk are based on artificial boundaries, and the flood risk management authorities seem to have limited capacity to collaborate with each other. So, the workstream that we had looking at catchment approaches has got lots of recommendations around how that could change, and really trying to encourage a different approach in terms of more catchment working, catchment planning and strategies at that level, instead of doing everything at the local authority level, as it is currently.

Do you believe that landowners know their responsibilities regarding maintaining the culverts and ditches under riparian ownership—has that been an issue? Do you feed into other policies, such as the SFS, and other portfolios, regarding land management?

So, we looked at the role of land management, because it is, as you say, really important. We visited lots of different areas to see how they were working on a catchment scale. So, we saw a really good example up in north Wales, in the Conwy valley, where NRW are engaging with the National Trust, and there's a great project happening there. So, again, it's probably a mixed bag in terms of some areas where the agencies are working really well with landowners, and then some areas where that probably isn't happening at the level it needs to.

If we look at what happens on the ground, some of the places we visited—. So, for example, when we did go to the Conwy valley, you have the benefit there—they’re restoring peatlands in the uplands, which is obviously partially in the hope of improving flood management further down the river. There you have large institutional landowners, you have the National Trust, you have NRW, and that makes things much simpler. But we went then to Brecon, to have a look at some local groups there, and there it was much more local farmers working together in a collaborative way.

So, there are some really good examples, but we've got to be really careful when we think about private landowners and cleaning culverts, because I was in Pontypridd on Saturday talking to some of the local authority representatives there, and they were saying, ‘Well, actually a lot of people in very modest homes, they have culverts underneath their homes and they don't know’, because we have Victorian infrastructure that was quite rapidly built, not terribly robustly built. And yes, it is the private owner's responsibility, but that's not to say that the private owner is wealthy enough to be able to manage that kind of risk, or even knows that it's there.

So, we have to be mindful when we're working with private landowners that there's a huge variation in terms of what we're talking about and what their responsibilities might be. And we might need to think in the longer term, particularly in places like RCT where you have a lot of Victorian, very rapidly built properties, about looking at whether the local authority can provide some kind of assistance, not assuming that there's a duty on them, but thinking about what can we do practically to help local authorities to actually be able to manage a situation that's difficult, and make sure that we're not putting an unbelievable burden then on an individual home owner who may not even know that they've got that responsibility.

But do you feel that there is a lot of buck passing, basically, between different public authorities, local authorities, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, NRW, because they haven't got the funding and the resilience? So, there maybe needs to be a plan in place of who is responsible, or better working together so that residents know who to go to—for example, if they can't afford to do that culvert, they know that the local authority could be the one to go to, or NRW or whoever.

So, we did see evidence that the local authorities and the other flood authorities were working well together, but that that is by will rather than by design of the system. We did also see there were some concerns that there is that sense of confusion and some of our recommendations pertain to that: so, looking at things like creating a water commissioner so that in the future there is some kind of governance structure imposed on this, and some kind of leadership placed on the sector.

The other thing that I think is really important as well is the establishment of a flood resilience forum or water resilience forum of some description. The National Flood Forum does exist in the UK—or there is a Scottish Flood Forum, and there is a National Flood Forum, which is England and Wales. They don't have a huge footprint here in Wales, although I know that they have been supporting, for example, residents in Clydach Terrace in Pontypridd in their recent difficulties.

You just mentioned the water commissioner—that's your first recommendation—to be in place by 2026. Would you expect this office to have new powers over water policy, or would its powers be transferred from existing parts of the public sector? So, each local authority is classed as a lead flood authority, I believe, so, how would it operate? How would it work?

So, we have deliberately chosen not to be too prescriptive with many of our recommendations, because what we want to do is to provide ideas and frameworks for the politicians, essentially, and the decision makers to decide. There are a number of different models that you could pursue. For example, we are non-statutory commissioners. Non-statutory commissioners can be set up relatively quickly, and they can provide leadership and they can provide advice, and they could provide some kind of co-ordination role, but obviously they could not provide something like a regulatory role. If you felt that a regulatory role was something that was more appropriate, then it might be that the centralisation of some of the existing powers of other lead flood authorities might come together under that remit.

So, really, we would see this as a political question. This is a question of just how far would you want this to go. We have many different kinds of commissioners in Wales already. Some are statutory, some are non-statutory; some have regulatory powers, some do not. For us, there are arguments for and against both, and the argument for having a non-statutory commissioner or a commissioner that doesn't have regulatory powers is that they can act as an effective convener, and that they can bring the existing bodies together. But if you did want to be more radical and if you did want to set a much more directorial direction, then you would probably go down the statutory route with regulatory powers of some description.

Which could be a lengthy timescale, possibly. 

Which could be a much more lengthy timescale, but you could, of course, do one initially to set things up and then transition into a statutory framework if you thought that that was necessary in the future. 

Okay, thank you. 

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you. 

That's what happened with Peter Davies, wasn't it, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales? 

The future generations commissioner, yes. Okay. Diolch yn fawr. Julie. 

Diolch. You talk in your report as a key theme about natural flood management. That's obviously very, very important and I think we're all very interested in that. And I think, Eluned, you mentioned good examples of collaboration, of people working together, and David, you mentioned a very good example in your introductory remarks. So, I wondered if you could tell us about some examples where things have been achieved through natural flood management. 

As we've already mentioned, nature is one of the two cross-cutting themes across all of the recommendations within our report, because I guess we felt that, through the work we did looking at this, nature wasn't strong enough in terms of being part of the decision making around flood risk. We've already mentioned a few times that we've been to visit different stakeholders and different projects across Wales—the Conwy valley, the Usk Catchment Partnership. The latter is a really good example, I think, of stakeholders coming together to see what they can do locally to try and develop a more robust approach to managing flood risk. So, yes, we spoke with landowners there, with the farmers, and we saw the natural flood management schemes that they've put in place, which was, I guess, really exciting for us, maybe not for everyone. 

But I guess the issue with natural flood management is they're quite small-scale schemes; they're not particularly visible. So, we haven't seen consistent funding for taking forward natural flood management projects in Wales to date. So, we feel that—

Would you give—? I just wondered if you had an example of the effectiveness of one of these projects. 

Just one example we saw, it was near Llangorse lake, I think, wasn't it? That's where we were. And we were just walking up the hill of the farm, and a large tree had fallen over horizontally to the slope of the hill, and that in itself was leading to benefits in terms of limiting the flow of the water as it fell on the hill and down. It was limiting the flow of the water all the way down to the bottom of the hill. They had a property at the bottom, which was a holiday rental, I believe, which was in the past flooded quite frequently, but because of the felling of the tree, and I think they'd put in some other natural flood defences there as well, they'd noticed quite quickly that the flow of the water had significantly reduced. They are quite simple schemes and we saw quite a few examples like that in the area. 

Can I just build on that, because that was—? 

Just briefly, yes. 

It was fascinating. They had a spring that was active half the year and there was a diseased tree. So, they felled the tree and that provided the first line of defence, and then they took a digger and just dug a small trench across the field. And that diverted all of the water across the field and then it just absorbed into the field. That stopped them having to repair the gate, because the gate was being eroded away every single year, so they were tracking up gravel to rebuild under the gate. It stopped the water going down into the house and it stopped the stuff that was being eroded going onto the road. The local authority was having to clean the road. So, the felling of the tree and the digger cost £250, and it was done by the local farmer, and it has saved thousands of pounds every year for the local authority, for the home owner and for the farmer, and it's super simple but those things never make the headlines. But if you do lots of those, hundreds of thousands of those interventions in the uplands, you make a colossal difference downstream. So, it's really inspiring.

Can I ask who facilitated—?

We're short of time.

Who facilitated that? Because you need people to lead on these things. Was it the landowner or was it the local authority?

It was the Usk Catchment Partnership.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

So, you believe all that should be scaled up?

Yes.

Thank you.

Great. A good example. Diolch yn fawr. Janet.

You also recommend that a water resilience forum for Wales is introduced by 2027. In terms of its response role, how do you envisage this forum fitting into the existing responder framework, and what value would the forum add? Is there a risk it could duplicate current efforts?

I don't think so. I think that it is desperately needed. So, as I say, at the weekend, I was in Pontypridd, talking to the residents of Clydach Terrace, and if you don't know where that is, it is a terrace of houses where an inch of water over the wall floods the houses to 5 ft deep. These people are in urgent and immediate danger, and they don't know where to go to for advice. The National Flood Forum has been to talk to them, to support them, to give them advice on what they should do, to give them advice on how to be ready, to give them advice on what to do to protect their homes.

The National Flood Forum—I think they just don't have the resources, and they don't have the Welsh footprint, essentially, to be able to do that on an extensive basis around Wales. But the support they provide to communities, to individual home owners, is absolutely invaluable. So, it might be, for example, advising people on how to protect their home from a relatively low level of flood risk. So, things like: you could put in a flood gate on your front door. That's great, but if you've got air bricks, then the water's coming in anyway. You can get covers for those, though. But if you're a home owner, and you're relying on people knocking on your door, saying, 'Hey, I see you've been flooded—well, I've got this fantastic gadget for you', that is not, shall we say, a reasonable source of information. You need some independent advice. The National Flood Forum is staffed by volunteers and by paid community organisers who have experienced flooding themselves, so they understand, and they understand the long-term impact, and they're able to give really good, practical advice for prevention and for support, and—

Do you envisage a cost for this?

So, there will be a cost for this.

Any ideas?

It depends on just how extensive you want this to be. The National Flood Forum and the Scottish Flood Forum are relatively small in scale. As climate change progresses, and more and more communities are affected, I think we might need to see more of that, and I think we'll need to see, in some communities—. Not every community is the same, are they, frankly? Different communities will need different things. So, you might have—for example, when we visited Crickhowell—a very active local community, with lots of people with lots of relevant expertise, able to self-advocate. There are other communities in Wales where everyone's working full-time, and they don't have, perhaps, the time, or perhaps the expertise, to put into that. You might have communities who are vulnerable, maybe they are isolated in some way—elderly people, people with disabilities—who have a much, much deeper level of need than some of the more resilient self-driving communities.

We need to be investing in people to support flood management. So, it's about people to do the nature-based solutions, because that requires not an investment in concrete, but an investment in somebody to lead. You also then need investment in people to be able to support communities before, during and after the event. And I think that where it works in Scotland, who we've met with, and we've met with the National Flood Forum as well, is they complement the work of the local authorities really, really effectively. They can help communities to feel like they're taking some of that power back—that they're not just victims waiting for a flood event to devastate their lives, but actually that they have an ability to prepare and to be resilient.

Thank you.

Carolyn.

Your report suggests future flood resilience could be supported by crowdsourcing and philanthropic funding, going forward. So, how do you envisage such funding schemes interacting with public sector-led maintenance?

Well, it probably wouldn't surprise you to hear that, yes, when we looked at this issue of resourcing and funding, we felt that the current funding schemes are far too short term, and they're often scheme focused as well. So, they're providing funding for specific infrastructure schemes rather than funding to maybe support the wider catchment approach that we've talked about already. So, yes, we've got a few recommendations in the report around establishing a cross-sector climate resilience fund, as well as extending the flood and coastal erosion risk management investment programme, and ideally moving towards at least five-year budgets as well, to enable that longer term planning.

We've had a conversation with the Development Bank of Wales as well since publishing the report. So, you're probably already aware that they provide support for energy efficiency. They've just started a new Green Homes Wales scheme, I think it's called, to look at supporting home retrofit. So, we had a conversation with them a few months ago, because they're obviously keen to move into this space, and I think organisations like the Development Bank of Wales could work quite effectively with public sector partners and local authorities to try and leverage in that additional investment that I think we desperately need as well.

Delyth has just indicated she'd like to come in. I'd just like to make the point: we've got just over 20 minutes left, there are quite a few areas we wish to cover, so we will cover them, but, Delyth, if you just want to come in on this.

I will be very brief, in that case. On the point about crowdfunding, is there a danger, exactly as Eluned was just pointing out, that there's a huge variation in terms of not just how much money different areas have, but also how visible the plight of some communities has been compared with others? Is there a danger that if we have—? And I know that you're not for a moment implying that this should be the primary source of funding; I know that's not what the implication is at all. But would that be a concern that you might have, that, if even a portion of this could be focused on that, some areas will have more agency than others?

I think there's definitely a risk that that's the case. We've been trying to look for breadth in terms of the financial opportunities that there are there to support flooding. Because it is a huge challenge for the public sector and it is, potentially, a massive burden on public sector finances as well. So, we did look more broadly: is crowdsourcing a potential option? Yes, perhaps, in some places. Are there ways in which we could work with the insurance industry? Possibly. Are there ways in which we could work with businesses to get some of their corporate social responsibility volunteering programmes out to do some of the work, under the leadership of some of the community organisers? Yes. And in terms of the Development Bank of Wales, we've been talking about all sorts of things, but you might look at something like a Nest-type scheme, with some private and public partnership-type support.

But you could also look at the carbon credits market. So, you have the carbon credits market already. What if we could do something that was value added carbon credits, where—? You know, this is an international financial market, but what if we say, 'We're not just going to plant trees anywhere. This particular tree has value added, because this particular intervention is also going to help support flooding'? So, I think there's local, there's national, and then there's, 'Okay, well, what should we be doing, actually, to raise questions on a more global basis?'

Thank you.

How do your recommendations for community involvement in flood resilience planning differ from the current approach? So, you've talked about what people can do in communities. Is it more of a prevention scenario? Your thoughts on that, again.

Again, as we've said, communities are all different and will want different things from some kind of involvement. But the feedback we've got from meeting with communities is that, particularly with those who have legal duties and responsibilities, what they receive is consultation on schemes and consultation on incidents, but that that long-term investment in community relationship building is not there. If I may be political for a little while, there is a pressure on the budgets of these bodies and, particularly if you want to build community partnerships over a period of time, you need long-term investment to build those relationships. It cannot be, 'Here is £10 million in this year's budget, go and spend it on building a community relationship', and then, next year, it's not going to be there, so drop that community like it's hot. You know, it is something that you have to do over time and it's something that has to be consistent. Now, it may be that there are some communities who will want practical support, such as, you know, a flood forum or a resilience forum might be able to provide, but there is also the question of long-term community relationship building. Some of that might be around decision making, so it might be things like, you know, citizens' jury-type approaches, where there is a scheme or a particular intervention that people want to talk about, but sometimes it might just look slightly different. It might be that we're training local councillors and local community councillors to provide support on the spot, when the local authority is too overstretched to be able to get to everyone. You know, there are all sorts of ways in which community involvement can be developed, but each community will have different needs.

Okay. Thank you. And the 17 recommendations provided in the report are, in general, not directed at specific organisations. So, who should take ownership of the recommendations and what are you doing to ensure the non-specific ownership of recommendations? Does that hinder their uptake? This is going back, perhaps, to that buck passing and, you know, who is responsible for different parts of the recommendations.

So, the recommendations within our report are obviously aimed at Welsh Government Ministers and officials. That's our role: to advise Welsh Government. And, obviously, Welsh Government will have a key role to play in taking forward a lot of the recommendations, but we did feel that the majority of the recommendations need to be taken forward collectively and collaboratively, by Welsh Government working with NRW, working with local authorities and the other flood risk management authorities, to try and have that kind of shared ownership. And I realise that that is challenging in terms of, maybe, accountability and pinning down responsibility, but we do need to see a lot more collaboration on this agenda in terms of, you know, looking to the long-term response to flood resilience.

We've been looking at some of the recommendations ourselves, as a commission, as well. So, an example of that is, we're having conversations around putting nature on the board recommendations. So, we're looking at what that might mean for us as a commission, and also how Welsh Government might be able to encourage other organisations to take that recommendation forward as well.

Okay. Thank you.

Diolch yn fawr. Janet.

Thank you. To what extent do you feel that the Welsh Government's recent climate adaptation strategy addresses your report's recommendations, and were you consulted in the production of that strategy?

I can take that one. Yes, we were in touch with them. We obviously knew the timelines for developing that strategy and publication. So, we had sight of many drafts of that strategy. It was published, I think, just a week before our report. It was very close. And obviously, flooding is an important aspect of their strategy. And lots of recommendations, I think, within the Welsh Government's strategy align with ours, around the integration of nature-based solutions, the establishment of long-term resilience plans, as well. But we would say that—. I think it's a five-year strategy, actually, isn't it? So, obviously, our work was looking at flood resilience to 2050, so we're very much mindful of that long-term approach. And I guess our feeling is that the Welsh Government's strategy doesn't go far enough in terms of that longer term approach and also looking at maybe funding allocations, and also community kind of engagement and empowerment as well.

Sorry, Janet. Joyce, do you want to come in just specifically on this?

I wanted to talk about community engagement and I wanted to talk about whether you play a role at all in helping people—I wasn't actually being rude, I was Googling something—with what they can do to help within their own footprint of their own homes, for example. You won't be surprised to hear me talking about surface water and the use, perhaps, of water butts. If you put a shed up, for example, you've created a hard surface in the roof of that shed, which people don't get. So, they could put a water butt, which stops any of that water going into the drainage system, which will flood someone somewhere. And also, just in communities, for them to understand that, if they put fat down their drains—I know NRW do a lot of work in this area—but if you're on the ground, and then they put a wet wipe behind it, it's going to block that drain, which, invariably, is going to cause flooding somewhere. And these are simple messages, especially when people have been flooded, for them to understand the impact, sometimes, of what they actually create within their own homes, but unwittingly, sometimes.

Completely, and I think it's a really important point. We talk in our recommendations about education, and we don't just mean in schools; we mean about how can we talk to communities about what they can do: 'Please stop paving over your front drive'; 'Please stop putting down concrete in your back garden'; 'Let's ban plastic lawns.' All of those kinds of things are relatively simple things if people know what the impact of those actually is. But we need to make sure that those messages are getting out there. And there needs to be some form of enforcement as well, so that if people are not obeying the planning regulations that already exist about how much of your garden you should be allowed to pave, then not allowing that. But, yes, giving people good advice and educating people as a community is definitely important. Thank you.

Diolch yn fawr. Sorry, Janet.

The flood and coastal erosion committee says that your report does not capture the economic impact of flooding, nor does it sufficiently address the role and responsibilities of the business community. How do you respond to that assessment?

Shall I have a look? So, there are lots of things that we don't capture because other people are already capturing it. And what we did in our first scoping exercise was to work out who has already done what work and where are the gaps.

And did you find that they would share the data with you?

Yes, in most cases, if they had it. The places where there were data gaps were because people weren't collecting the data, and the really worrying one was around permitting on the flood plains. So, we didn't have good data about that—very, very different from one local authority to the next. So, there were all sorts of gaps in terms of the data that was there. We tried to identify them and go and investigate what the challenges were.

In terms of the private sector responsibilities, I think, again, it depends a little bit on who we're talking about, because the private sector is an incredibly varied beast. So, we might be talking about tiny businesses. There may be opportunities if we think about smaller communities, and one of the things you might say is, 'If there is a role for local communities doing things, maybe the post office is a great opportunity for a place for sand bags to be stored in a local community, rather than having to come every time from the depot 15 miles away up that one single road up the valley, which is blocked because there's water all over it already.' So, there are opportunities there for some of our local community-owned businesses.

In terms of the wider private sector, you could be talking about the insurance industry and clearly, they've got a really big stake in this. We need to engage with the insurance industry. We thought it was perhaps a bit more than we could bite off alongside everything else we were doing—

Yes. I'm sure, yes.

—but we wanted to think about those things as well. But I also think, as well, in terms of the private sector, we've got people looking at things like corporate social responsibility programmes; they go off and do volunteering days, well, let's see if we can actually mobilise some of that. But we need some sense of urgency here. We need some sense of co-ordination, hence the idea of things like the water commissioner, to drive some of this new thinking forward and try and bring some of those conversations further on.

Thanks for that.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much. Okay, Delyth.

Diolch. I just have to say 'amen' to Eluned's point earlier about banning plastic grass. [Laughter.] My God, why can't it be banned already? I wanted to ask you, finally, about ongoing engagement work, please. Could you talk us through, firstly, what conversations you've had; what engagement you've had with stakeholders since the publication of the report—anything extra to what you've already said on that?

We've had really positive engagement with stakeholders, both in terms of developing the work in the first place, and also following the publication. We've had conversations with the Deputy First Minister, with Welsh Government officials, being able to present the findings at lots of different conferences and fora, et cetera. So, we're really pleased with the positive response we've had, and we are obviously waiting for the formal response from Welsh Government, which we will hopefully get by the end of March, I think, which is the six-month deadline. But they’ve really welcomed a lot of the recommendations, and I think they are thinking through them quite seriously, which is really positive.

We’ve had engagement with the chair of NRW as well, haven’t we, briefly? So, yes, we are very keen. We feel invested in this work now, I think. Eluned and I are definitely not flood experts; we weren’t when we started the work and wouldn’t claim to be now, but we feel quite invested in seeing the recommendations being taken forward by Welsh Government, working with those key stakeholders.

Diolch. The passion that you have for this, and the different ideas of thinking outside the box, that is clear to see, and it’s really welcome.

I appreciate, as you’ve just said, that you’re waiting for that formal response from the Welsh Government. But, in terms of any conversations you’ve had with them about the recommendations, are you getting any initial sense about whether there are any particular recommendations that are going to be more problematic? Again, I know you haven’t had the formal response yet.

It is difficult because we haven’t had a formal response. We’ve had some conversations where we’re talking about some of the individual, specific things in more detail, and, as I say, we’ve actually met with the development bank on a number of occasions, now, to talk about how some of these things might work.

The thing that I would say is that it’s some of the bigger ticket items that are harder, sometimes, to justify or to deliver, particularly as, obviously, we’re running into a not-quite-full political year, and it’s difficult to make decisions at this kind of time. But there is a sense of urgency here. There are people whose lives are in danger right now. We have to move forward with pace and with passion, because if we don’t pick up some of these difficult issues, then we are letting people down.

Thank you, that's very clear. Do you think that—? The director had said earlier that different sectors, in terms of looking towards the future with adaptations to climate change, and how that’s communicated, have different conceptions of what 'long term' might mean, and work at different scales in terms of 'long term'. Do you think that there needs to be a fundamental shift in terms of how resource is allocated, not just resource in terms of monetary resource, but the fact that, as has been clear throughout these evidence sessions, the climate catastrophe is happening at a far quicker pace than people had anticipated already? And do you think that, what we think of now as being long-term solutions, we’re going to have to start changing fundamentally how we think and conceptualise how we adapt to climate change, and that it isn’t just something in terms of the five, 10-year plan, but that it has to be happening now? And do you think that most people, most stakeholders that you’re talking to, do they get that shift? Do they get the fact that we’re going to have to change things fundamentally?

That's a tricky one. [Laughter.]

It's difficult. It's difficult, because when we talk about the different timescales, a lot of that is dependent on the life cycle of the infrastructure you’re talking about. So, if you’re talking to a windfarm developer, 30 years is the life cycle of, perhaps, a wind turbine installation; if you’re talking to the rail industry, we’re talking about 200-year-old infrastructure, in some cases. So, 'long term' is a different thing.

We need to start raising our eyes to this horizon, because it’s coming towards us really quickly. And when we have—. We have five-year plans from almost every public body, because that’s the political cycle, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons we think we need to take this a little bit out of the political cycles, because you have a five-year plan from the Welsh Government, five-year plans from different local authorities, the election cycles are different, so they’re not in sync with one another, and then you have all of these kind of governance challenges on top of each other—people responding to the immediate here and now, but nobody raising their eyes to the future, and the future is coming towards us.

Can I just add to that?

Yes.

This year, we are marking 10 years since the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 was passed by the Senedd. So, obviously, a proud moment for everyone, but, I think, one of my big anxieties following doing this work is trying to think about how we transition between how public bodies are having to react to current events, responding to the here and now, and moving on towards thinking about how we plan for the long term. I've been grappling with this question for quite a while and I'm really not sure how we manage that, but it needs to happen and it needs to happen quickly. 

Yes, absolutely, because, in a time when there are so many crises in the present, it makes it even more difficult to even think of the future. Finally from me, are you concerned that any of your recommendations might not be taken up by public sector bodies because of the cost that's associated with them? You've already touched on this in terms of some creative ways that that might be got around or alleviated in some way, but is there anything further you'd like to add on that in terms of the cost and how you think that that might be addressed? 

I think if we take a long-term view, things like natural flood management interventions are going to be a lot cheaper than building walls and building large flood defences. So, actually, if we take that preventative and long-term approach, which we are doing as public bodies under the well-being of future generations Act, then we would see, ideally, a financial saving in the long term. But, obviously, we recognise as well that we need to invest in adequate resource, adequate skills as well across the public sector to be able to deal with these long-term challenges. 

Yes, it's an invest-to-save type of situation as well because, of course, the damage that the flooding costs is enormous, and that is also something that the public purse has to bear. 

Diolch. 

Good morning and thank you, Chair, and thank you for the invite from yourself and the committee. So, as director of services at the Met Office, I cover our observations infrastructure across the UK and where we've got overseas territories, our weather forecasting services and all our digital outputs, which go to Government, industry and citizens on a daily basis. We're a 24/7 organisation. We're an executive agency of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology within UK Government and we're also the home of the Hadley centre, which provides climate advice around climate change and variability.

Part of being the UK national weather service provider is we provide a number of different weather services, whether that's day-to-day weather services to transport, sport, media, et cetera, but a fundamental part of that is providing a national severe weather service that is where we issue weather warnings from, so the yellow, amber or red, which you'll all be familiar with, particularly in recent months. So, that's the Met Office's role, to provide those weather warnings, to take our forecasting from our models, to interpret that, to provide human advice and then work that into a matrix that is based on likelihood of the events happening. Of course, weather has uncertainty and there are times where we've got much more certainty and confidence and we will be generally much higher on the matrix to say, 'We've got a medium to high level of confidence.' And there are occasions when we're more on the low end of the certainty, and I'll come on probably later on to talk about some of the scenarios that we run and how that works within our modelling system.

The other factor that goes into that is impacts, and impacts will vary depending on weather types, so, particularly with rainfall, we will work with our flooding partners, and, in Wales, we'll work with Natural Resources Wales to work out what are the flood impacts we're expecting to see from this volume of rainfall, and, again, that will be based on a confidence level. So, that's how we work from a warning perspective. Clearly, we had different warnings in place for Bert and Darragh, and I'm sure we will come on to that.

To complement that service, we are a category 2 responder, which came into force a couple of years ago. That really hasn't changed much for us, because we had already got 22 civil contingency advisers across the UK who work with local resilience forums, emergency planners, local government, to both support preparedness for severe weather, and so will involve themselves in training exercises when severe weather happens. They're the people who are going in talking to local resilience forums, sending the e-mails out, working on the preparation and also the recovery, because, obviously, weather continues to happen; part of the recovery efforts that happen across the UK and in Wales is to be able to make sure we can support the recovery of any weather events that happen. The CCAs, the civil contingencies advisers, will work, particularly in Wales, with the local resilience forums and local authorities to provide that advice. And, of course, we work with Russ's team, the Flood Forecasting Centre.

Indeed, and I was going to turn to you next for a similar kind of overview.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Bore da. Russell Turner, head of the joint Environment Agency, Met Office Flood Forecasting Centre, so the Flood Forecasting Centre came about following the catastrophic flooding of 2007 when we saw 56,000 properties flooded across England and Wales, and, in response to that, the detailed review that was undertaken was really to look for how we'd bring together the meteorological forecasting and the hydrological forecasting. So, the FFC covers both those areas. We sit in the Met Office, but work closely with the local forecasting centres around the country as well. So, there are seven local forecasting centres for England, and one for Wales in Cardiff. So, we cover England and Wales, and that is as we were set up prior to the vesting of Natural Resources Wales, but we very much still provide services for England and Wales on a 24/7 basis.

So, my team work operationally 24/7 and have been running that way for over 15 years now, which reflects the flood risk across England and Wales. And that’s a reflection of the coastal risk—which is extremely complicated around the coast of England and Wales, a very dynamic coastal environment with high tides, large Atlantic waves, and storm surges as well—river flooding, obviously, which is the subject of today’s discussion more, and also surface water, which is a really growing area of concern. As you’ll understand and no doubt know, the legislation behind that is extremely complicated with different responsibilities in different places, which we’ll probably touch on. We also cover groundwater flooding as well, which is a very persistent type of flooding, which isn’t as high an issue in Wales, but certainly is across southern England where communities can be affected for months on end.

So, we cover four sources of flooding, we run 24/7, and our main role is to really help the local centres understand the Met Office forecasts on the flood-modelling side, and then looking at how those impacts may play out, presenting scenarios and really informing the national response, whether that’s England or Wales. So, all category 1 and 2 responders are signed up for our services. We don’t face the public primarily, we face the emergency community. So, they get an advance heads-up on a situation that’s developing five days in advance, and we also provide some products and services for longer than that, so a 30-day flood outlook, and in slower times ahead of winter season, and in the summer season as well, training and exercise materials. That really covers, in a nutshell, the breadth of what we do.

Excellent, okay. That's a good starter for 10. Thank you so much, both of you. Right, Janet.

Thank you and welcome. I do not envy your role at the moment with such unpredictability in terms of what is a flooding incident—I don’t know how you do what you do. Anyway, how do you interact, both your organisations, with Natural Resources Wales?

Do you want to start, and then—?

Yes. So, we work really closely. As I say, we’ve got services in both England and Wales. Whilst the risk is comparable, there are unique features to Wales, so we work with NRW on tailored briefings in advance of flooding, and exercise material as well. But there is a commonality so responders can receive the same information, and if responders need to move across the border they can do that and receive the information. So, with our services, whilst they are common, there is a technical difference, which explains some of the differences. There’s a different level of scenarios provided for England and Wales, so we have to work technically in a different way with Wales than we do for England.

It's what I was going to ask you next.

And we are seeing this now. Whilst we started on common ground, the service is diverging as the needs diverge and investment levels diverge as well. So, it’s fair to say there’s a gap at the moment, and that gap potentially is growing in terms of the service that's provided.

There’s an increased interest in providing longer lead times for the response in England and more focus on extreme events, and there’s investment following that. The approach in Wales is linked to a scenario approach, rather than putting all of the rainfall information that we can through the flood models.

If I kind of explain it, the traditional approach would be to run a rainfall forecast once and put that through a flood model once. That’s only so much use at a certain level. So, the smaller your catchments and the longer the lead time and the more interested you are in extreme events, the more you want to run multiple rainfall forecasts through multiple flood models to give you a real spread of understanding the possible outcomes that we might face in three, four, five days’ time.

That’s quite hard to put into the emergency responder community, so what we do is we talk about scenarios. We’ll talk about providing the best estimate or a most likely scenario of what should happen in the next few days, and then an extreme of what could happen. That’s really what the response should be based on.

So, that’s the state of play at the moment, but what we’re developing for England is a full trial of putting the whole rainfall forecast through all of the flood models so we can really objectively assess those scenarios. That’s taking quite a lot of time and effort and investment, because, technically, moving a huge amount of data through from rainfall forecasts into flood models takes a lot of computer power, a lot of time, and a lot of resource from flood forecasters as well. It basically becomes a permanent job, rather than just something you can do in a short period of time. So, there is that gap between the scenarios, and that's something we're having to work on at the moment. So, we started on a common ground. The information for responders is common, but the technical way we do it behind the scenes is different, and invariably that's going to play out sometimes into the level of certainty that we've got in information. 

Okay. So, on that, then, Russell, given that NRW exercises similar functions in Wales as the Environment Agency does in England, why is NRW not formally incorporated into the Flood Forecasting Centre in the same way as the Environment Agency? And should it be? 

The staffing comes from the Environment Agency and the Met Office. There isn't currently the critical mass to draw on from Natural Resources Wales of forecasters. So, the—

Are we losing out here in Wales by not having that?

Well, the arrangement is to provide services into Wales, not staff the centre, and there’s a well-established service provision there. So, I think, at the moment, I wouldn’t say ‘losing out’, but there is a gap and it's opening up, because of the different levels of investment in the technical solutions. Now, across the country, this is what we see. Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales, they all have different flood forecasting systems, but all, essentially, by the same flood forecasting—.  

But we have a lot of rain.

But the risk is different, and I think that’s the decision then. It is, ‘What is the right level of investment?’ So, I can say there's a gap, there is a growing gap, based on the different investment. And the investment is really following in England the increase from surface water flooding.

Right. 

Okay. So, if you look at the overall national risk assessment, that’s where we’re putting more of our effort. So, we ran a trial this summer on rapid flood guidance, to provide the local flood authorities, risk management agencies, with more information through the summer. But we’re already thinking we now need to run that through the winter as well. So, the risk is changing very quickly on this.

Yes, it is. 

So, it is right to consider what is the right level of service for Wales, and that's obviously your decision, based on what's right for communities. 

And how urgent do you think it is to fill that gap?

I think there are long-running issues that come up time and time again in flood events. If I look at this Bert report, I look back at the Dennis report, there are still things to tick off there to be done, okay? And the risk is increasing as the climate warms. So, I don't think we can stand still. We need to start closing that gap, because where do we want to be? Do we want to be ahead of climate change or always chasing it?

Absolutely. Well, certainly, further ahead than we are now. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Did you want to come in, Carolyn? And then I'll come to Julie. 

We heard that NRW were not called until flooding was actually happening in one of the areas we're looking at today. So, if the lead flood authorities get alerts, if they're all signed into alerts, and if they don't have the buy in with this, NRW, like the Environment Agency does, and they're not made aware of when a flood incident might happen, is that going to be an issue going forward?  

I'd like to correct that. We discuss the risk every day. So, we're working 24/7 and it happens every day. We will talk to the local centres we need to. So, categorically, we did talk to Natural Resources Wales, and the decision on flood risk rests with Natural Resources Wales for days one and two. So, we look at the five days ahead. We've got the national models and tools for five days, so we do days three, four and five. So, we'll set out the broad scene. That worked well. The general heads up, 'This is coming', works well, and then we're looking at adding in the local models and the assessment then. That's why we need local centres. Across England and Wales, we've got 2,000 local flood models, so it's a massive exercise. There are 200 in Wales. They take the Met Office data, run that through the flood models and really jointly agree flood risk. That happens day in, day out. And it's happened this morning, ahead of Sunday's potential rainfall as well.   

I think it's fair to say, if you look at the weather forecast, the rainfall we observed for storm Bert was pretty much in line with what we forecast. But the forecast is only then as good as the value chain and the comms you do to get people to take action. So, it's a decision not just about the weather forecast. Storm Bert was a really good example. The FFC flood models, in conjunction with NRW, were not showing the risk of flooding and I'm sure NRW will get into those reasons. This is why we kept the weather warning as yellow, because we saw the risk of medium impacts, but 150 ml-worth of rain over the Brecon Beacons hills is a lot of rain. But you know this. But, actually, the flooding impacts were not supporting—. So, this is really a team sport. So, we've got to get the weather forecast right, the flood models have got to show the impact, the responder community has got to work, and local communities have got to take action. So, that whole jigsaw puzzle has to work, to really make sure we're looking after the citizens of Wales.

Thank you. Julie.

Do you think that there is a risk of overcomplexity with the forecasting framework for Wales, bearing in mind that three different organisations may have different ways of communicating?

Do you want me to start with that?

Yes.

I'll come on to whether I think we've got some complexity. If you look at the role of the Met Office, that's worked for the last 170 years, and we continue to evolve. The FFC for England and Wales was set up following the 2007 floods. I think that's always been seen as a really strong partnership for England and Wales, working in partnership with NRW, the Environment Agency and the Met Office. It really should be held up as a world-leading partnership. And then, naturally, you'll have the responder community. I think, if you look back at storm Dennis, some of the things we've been working on is to make weather warnings less confusing, to make maps clearer. We've been working with broadcasters to do that.

Secondly, we're working with our flooding partners across the UK, including NRW, on a common warning framework, to, firstly, get to a standardised risk matrix, which will make it easier for the public to understand. So, we're looking at impacts, thresholds and likelihood, getting to a level of standardised language—and we absolutely need to look at the language around what action we need people to take. There's a very important role for social science within that because different cultures, and even regional cultures, will react in different ways. I talk to our European colleagues, and the way they message weather warnings will be slightly different to us, and similar to the US. So, there is definitely a social science and communication element to that.

And then, the third part of the common warning framework is absolutely to look at a common altering protocol, which is around standard dissemination of messaging. So, it can go on to radio, tv, social media channels, out through Amazon Alexa, adopting the latest technology. We use a European service called MeteoAlarm, which gets the warnings onto people's iPhones and Android phones. But that will also add some value, in terms of the common alerting protocol, to be able to help vulnerable people, visually impaired people, people who are deaf, people who have got cognitive impairments. So, we're constantly trying to advance the warning framework and the communication.

I think where we potentially do have some challenges, following our review of storm Bert—. Actually, in Wales, people look at the weather forecast less than in the rest of the UK, so, only about once a day. You can see in some of our responder feedback—. Actually, our responder feedback is that people are satisfied—it's at greater than 90 per cent—but, in Wales, that's slightly lower. So, there is something for us to look at, with the responder community, around how we can get that greater engagement.

The other bit I would point to is we do have a public weather customer group, and we have a Welsh seat on that. That's been inconsistent over the last few years. So, our independent chair will come out and meet representatives of Welsh Government and the responder community, but they've been less frequent than in other places, like Scotland and Northern Ireland. So, actually, if there's an ask of this committee, it would be getting more representatives from Wales on that public weather customer group, which is independent of us—it's independently chaired and it's run by our sponsoring department.

Okay. A brief intervention from Delyth then.

Diolch. I find that fascinating that people in Wales look at the weather less frequently, because I think of us as being obsessed with the weather. I just wanted to check: is that something that's true across different communities in Wales, or is there quite a variation? I can imagine, for example, that communities that have been hit time and again by flooding, are they much more likely than other communities in Wales to be looking more frequently at the weather?

So, I haven't got the local information, I only had at the high-level, helicopter view, but if we have the local information, we can provide that to the committee. That was done by our marketing team. I actually do find that stat surprising as well, but that's what our marketing team found. What I would say, in terms of flood warnings, people who sign up for flood warnings, actually, where we do see regional differences is people in affluent areas are more likely to sign up to flood warnings. People in deprived areas are less likely to sign up to flood warnings. And it's actually those in the most deprived areas is where, collectively, through the value chain, we all need to get better at.

Indeed.

How big is the gap, in terms of between Wales and England, for example, in looking at weather warnings?

So, it's less about the weather warnings; it's in terms of looking at the weather daily. So, I think Scotland was 88 per cent—I'll have to just check my numbers. Wales was around 51 per cent.

Fifty-one. Quite a big gap, then.

Yes.

That's very interesting. So, are you saying there's not overcomplexity? It sounded all very complex when you went through it, but you—

So, I don't think it is. If I look at the way we do weather warnings, it's impact based. We moved to being impact based in 2011; it used to be threshold based. So, threshold means that if there are 90 mph winds or 50 mph winds, 90 mph winds would be red, 50 mph might be a yellow wind warning. We work on impact based. So, we might not want one for a certain amount of rainfall overnight, because we know there are going to be fewer impacts on transport, roads, et cetera, but we might want one for that same type of weather system during the day. So, we are held up as a world-leading example of impact-based weather forecasting by our international partners, and I think you could say the same: people come and visit us from the Flood Forecasting Centre. I think we should be proud of the world-leading service we provide. But, likewise, there are always improvements you can make, and there are improvements definitely around the comms, how people take action, et cetera. You can only remain world leading if you strive for that continuous improvement.

Thank you. Do you have anything to add?

Yes, just to add, I accept it is complicated, but I'd say it is proportional to the risk we're facing. So, if we have a team set up to run 24/7 for 15 years, it does suggest there is a lot of risk that we're looking at. Whilst it is complicated, there are gaps. There is no surface water flood warning service in either England or Wales, and that accounts for the majority of risk to properties. So, there would have been no flood warning for surface water going out for south Wales at the moment; we're not at that point yet. So, it is complicated, but it's not completely comprehensive; there are gaps in that service provision. So, how would a lead local flood authority, with accountability for surface water, get that message out? So, that's going to add even more. So, I accept it's challenging, but it's not completely comprehensive at the moment.

Thank you. And then just one more question, really, for Simon: how has the role changed within the resilience landscape since you became a category 2 responder?

The honest answer to that is that it has not. It's probably strengthened our role and cemented it into law, but we're doing all the same things: we're interacting with local resilience forums and we've had our 22 civil contingency advisers across the UK. They're operating no differently. They were always working on training exercises, working with local resilience forums to prepare. And in severe weather, they're working at local level and briefing major incident teams, whether that's COBRA from the UK, whether that's the Wales civil contingencies committee, whether that's the Scottish Government equivalent. So, they are working in the same way. It's really more just cemented and strengthened, and ensured that was written in law.

Thank you.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you. Joyce.

I'm going to ask the FFC whether you provide—because you've got different roles—any discrete flood risk information and databases to NRW, with a range of possible scenarios.

Yes. So, we run a range of national models. As I mentioned, Cardiff had the local models. So, we operate something called the grid-to-grid model, which covers all of England and Wales, and all the rivers, and we take the rainfall input for all scenarios, and run that through the national model for England and Wales, and we provide that to Cardiff, to NRW, and that helps then inform standing up the risk assessment, and running the local models when needed as well. So, most of what we provide is based on that output. Similarly, we take for the coastal side Met Office output for wave heights and storm surges as well.

So, all of that data goes into the NRW system, and we provide consultancy to support NRW, but also all category 1 and 2 responders in Wales. So, anybody can phone us 24/7, and I would encourage responders to do that. We also provide local flood advisory service calls at the local level as well, where civil contingencies advisers dial into those, and Natural Resources Wales as well. As Simon says, it's a team sport, and people are coming together to discuss flood risk in advance. So, the whole move to providing more lead time is to enable those discussions to happen, and that planning to take place, and it's only one part of it. So, the flood guidance statement that we issue every day is important, but it will never really capture the exact local, local detail that needs to be worked through at the LRF level, which is what then should be happening in advance of a key decision about when it's the best time to warn the public. And, clearly, if that's in daylight hours, that's much more advantageous than out of hours. So, the information we provide enables those earlier discussions to happen, really.

The bit that I would add on when stand-up is—. We do see variations in local resilience forums, when they stand up within the matrix. So, it's really understanding what the matrix is saying. And particularly where we've got medium and high-impact risk, we definitely see that, across the UK, different resilience forums will stand up, and there's a cost-loss decision to be made around resources, risk-based decisions. Go to Northern Ireland and they say, 'If it's a medium or high impact, we stand up our tactical co-ordination groups.' But other people will do things in different ways.

Right, that's interesting. So, following storm Bert, have you identified any ways in which either of you—your organisations, not you individually—could improve the handling of that prediction data?

So, there are three—. We're still reviewing storm Bert, and obviously we're now into the fifth named storm, so it's been a busy operational period. We've got three strands of work happening. So, one of the things we are reflecting internally on is our own internal decision making. We absolutely do align, particularly around rainfall events, with our partners and the flood models. The reason we do that is if you end up misaligning, and we are saying, 'It's an amber weather warning' and NRW are saying, 'There's no flood risk', that's really confusing for the public, and that's really confusing for the responder community. The question I've been asking is: are there times when we do need to misalign? This was 150 mm worth of rain—that was a lot of rain. So, we are going to do a review of our internal decision-making process to look at whether there are rare occasions when we might misalign with our partners. That obviously carries reputational risk, and it carries the risk around confusion.

The second thing we are doing is working with NRW to talk about what the lessons learnt are, and I'm actually with NRW at 2 o'clock today, and we started that conversation with the acting chief executive last week. That will follow lines such as what data can be provided and how the NRW flood models take that. It will cover things like nowcasting, so on the back of storm Bert, there was, I would say, a convective, and that's a heavy downburst of rain, of about 20 mm to 30 mm of rain, and that was quite tricky, spatially, to track down. You need good radar data to do that and you need to improve the modelling capability. So, there's work to be done in that area. And then the other part of that conversation with NRW is the radar coverage in Wales.

The third thing we are doing is looking at yellow weather warnings. People really act on ambers and reds, and we typically see about 30 to 40 amber weather warnings a year, and we have now seen our sixteenth red warning since impact-based forecasting warnings were introduced in 2011. We're going to really have a look at where we do have those medium and high-impact yellows, and what is it we can do to improve people taking the necessary action. And actually, one of the reasons we haven't kicked that piece of work off yet is that we're getting someone external in to review that, so we don't provide a conscious bias into our process.

Interesting. So, you did just mention about local authorities convening pre-emergency assessment teleconferences with local resilience forums for yellow weather warnings due to the number of them. You were talking about that now. So, how do you manage the risk of responders becoming desensitised, because that's another issue, potentially, by the frequency of weather warnings, or is that part of the work you're doing?

I think that is one part of the work we are doing. Secondly, we've got the civil contingency advisers; they've got local knowledge and they work really well with the local responder community. My general response to that is that this is a risk-based decision. When we are into medium-impact or high-impact yellows, for me, that is when the responder community should be really looking at, 'What is our risk here?' I can find the e-mail in a bit, but we were signalling on the Friday significant difficult local conditions for communities, and for me, when I read that language, it means, 'Okay, do need to do something different?' North Wales did stand up a call involving all four local resilience forums, but there was no tactical co-ordination group set up until the Sunday, and at that point, the flooding was happening.

And we’re talking about local resilience forums following weather warnings. So, what avenues do you have to sustain communication with those local responders during the storm preparation phase?

So, during Bert, there were over 50 calls held by our civil contingency advisers, and as Russell’s already mentioned, they can pick up the phone and operate 24/7. We will attend the tactical co-ordination groups, we will attend the strategic co-ordination groups and we will attend meetings with Welsh Government. 

If we talk about what happened during Bert, the initial warning was on the Wednesday, which was 20 November, with the weather event happening on the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth, so it was four days' lead time leading up to Bert. To give you some examples of the types of calls we had, we had a call with the head of Cardiff emergency division on the Wednesday, we were talking to Welsh Government on the Friday and we prepared a briefing note for the Deputy First Minister. We talked to NRW on the Thursday, and we attended the north Wales local resilience forum call on the Friday. So, there were multiple calls happening, and we attended all but one of the tactical co-ordination groups that were set up on the Sunday. And we have that team rostered on a 24/7 basis, so when we are in a severe weather event, they effectively surge; they work 24/7, assuming they can enough rest and sleep as well, and then, when we’ve got quieter periods of weather, we stand them down so that they can take some time off. So, we are fully able to provide that service into the responder community.

I’m assuming that you take different approaches communicating the risks according to whether they’re low likelihood, or high-impact events, compared with high likelihood, low-impact events. And both of those would be a yellow warning at the moment, if I’m right.

I think the approach depends on the structures and frameworks set out by local resilience forums, and what, then, the escalations are. So, if it then escalates into a Government-type awareness, again, we will respond. We generally fit into those structures and frameworks. 

Mr Turner, anything?

Just to reflect, the risk matrix, while complicated, was progressed in Bert in terms of understanding at a local level. So, what I heard at the press conference on the Sunday was clearly around that we were prepared for a significant low likelihood event. That is a real step on from Dennis, when it was solely based on colour coding. So, there was that understanding there. So, it’s probably around the planning for those events, because one of the things with climate change is that it’s not only the extreme events that go up; it’s all the middle level that goes up as well. So, whilst we can make improvements to the risk matrix and the communication of it, we won’t take away all that uncertainty, in terms of whether to stand up or not. And that will still need to be a discussion and a decision that’s kind of worked through, and then looking at that is, ‘What is the tolerance for false alarms?’

So, we can improve the system, but we won’t remove all of the uncertainty in the system. It will be clearer to people, but there will still need to be a judgment about whether to stand up or not, and that’s down to what’s right for local communities, what’s right on the ground.

And I think it’s fair to say that there will be occasional false flags—there will be. In the pack today, there's the isle of Anglesey comment about a couple of missed events, and I think they had the snow events that have happened post Bert, and one last year, and we’re talking about a 10 or 20-mile difference on the snow. The rest of north Wales was impacted—schools were shut and it was the right call. But you’re just dealing with some of the spatial variations, and sometimes teams will stand up, and the impact just isn’t there. But we don’t issue weather warnings lightly; we don’t sit there pressing our button every day, issuing them. I’d rather we didn’t issue them. I’d rather we had benign weather, but unfortunately we don’t have benign weather in the UK and, as Russell said, more and more, this is going to happen with climate change.

So, how frustrating is it for you, then, if you issue a warning and you don’t see authorities stepping up in a way that you would perceive to be the proper reaction, or, as well, that you see an inconsistency between different areas in the ways that they respond to those warnings?

I think, our job at the Met Office is to provide the forecast and communicate it, and what I didn’t say earlier is that we don’t just do that through the local resilience forums, we do that through broadcasters. Our national severe weather warning goes to BBC and S4C, and we have a free public weather media service that goes to ITV, Sky and Channel 5. So, there are different ways to communicate. And I think, coming back to the team sports, that is a different way of playing the team sports—so, how the Met Office communicates working with broadcasters, how we communicate with the local resilience forums.

Clearly, we'd like more consistency, but what I would go back to is that we have knowledgeable civil contingency advisers who know the local teams and know the right messages to land, and actually, across the local responder communities across the UK, you do generally see a good response. Bert was definitely one where communities in Wales felt they needed better warning, and I think we all need to reflect on that.

Okay, thank you. Very, very briefly, then, because we are up against time.

I just wanted Russell to expand on the 'no surface water' warning facility for those most at risk. That is what really impacts on people, and it happens really, really quickly; you can go to bed and wake up and you're flooded, basically. So, what would you like to see in place or what could we do regarding that, or what should we be asking?

So, there is a trial at the moment. We're repeating that trial this summer. We're looking for permanent funding for that. But that's a service for emergency responders, and I think that will help, then, to develop the techniques and approaches to inform a surface water service. But that would then need something comparable to the flood warning service in terms of a lot of local knowledge, working with—. That knowledge isn't necessarily held by NRW, it's all with the lead local flood authorities. So, how is it going to nest into that? And then is that an ask on local authorities to do? So, that is a very challenging area, so I can't give you, 'This is what we need', but—

No, but there is a gap there.

There is a gap, yes.

At the moment, you get a warning from NRW to say that that river catchment is a flood-risk area, so you can sign up to alerts, but it's a huge area, so is that localised as well, so that communities know?

That might be a good enough proxy for surface water. I think I've reflected on—. The whole legal definition around 'river' and 'surface water' is not something you can work out in real time, and to be honest, the communities aren't really bothered about it in real time. So, I think we need to look at what the community need and then work back from that, because the legal definition isn't going to help us with that. So, I think we need to work that out and then have a broader warning that covers, maybe, the initial response to rivers and surface water systems as well.

Okay, thank you.

I think I'd build on that. With climate change, we're seeing more intense downbursts of rainfall. That's going to lead to more surface water flooding, and the reaction, often, to investment, whether it's flooding or weather, is when something happens, like the setting up of the Flood Forecasting Centre after the 2007 floods. We know that surface water is complicated and there are lots of people involved. But having one central team overseeing surface water, like the Flood Forecasting Centre or equivalent, would be very welcome.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Janet.

You told the House of Commons—and this is mainly for you, Russell—Welsh Affairs Committee that adding 20 per cent to the Met Office rainfall forecast for storm Bert did not result in an escalation to a more severe level of risk in your flooding models. Given the severity of flooding in places like the Taf and Ebbw valleys during storm Bert, do you think your models accurately reflected the reality of the situation, and if not, why? Is there a difference in the reliability of your hydrological models in steep, narrow water catchments such as the Taf, compared with broader catchments such as the Wye?

Okay. So, I think that's down to the quality of being able to put all of the rainfall forecast through the flood models. So, at the moment, going back, as I've explained, we currently put one rainfall forecast through and then test that. We should be putting 36 every 12 hours through, not one, and going with that. So, I think that's where we need to move to in terms of providing the best information, because then you can quantify the uncertainty and test it more, whereas in the lead-in to the event, by just taking one rainfall forecast, which was sort of ebbing or flowing around the threshold level, that didn't give enough confidence to escalate the risk there, which is why it stayed as low likelihood. It would have only moved to medium likelihood if we'd had more confidence in that, that there was more likelihood. But you'd have only got that if you'd have put all of the rainfall forecast through. So, I think, technically, there is no real technical argument why we wouldn't do that. There are cost and training and development arguments, but internationally everybody sees that that is the way flood forecasting needs to go.

I've only just realised this today, as I'm sure other Members, that there is this gap. So, how are these differences in uncertainty communicated to relevant stakeholders and also members of the community, because whenever there's a flood, people look to blame somebody? So, how do you communicate these differences in this uncertainty? How do you communicate that to relevant stakeholders, but, more importantly, the community? I have constituents who get terrified now when there's heavy rain, even if it's only for half an hour—they don't know. But how do you communicate that we've got this gap in Wales?

So, we communicate through the flood guidance statement and then the telephone conferences with the responders, and then it's through NRW and the local resilience forums to communicate with the public. And I think that that is quite a challenging area where there's a low likelihood or a medium likelihood of an event. Everybody wants that certainty, everybody wants it to be red. It won't always end up that way. So, that is a difficult area, but that discussion around it, saying, 'It may happen, so let's plan for the worst, but hope for the best.' I think that we can communicate that, and people understand that. 

And have you had conversations with Welsh Government to really point out the inadequate system?

That's known from visits from Welsh Government down to the Flood Forecasting Centre. We do quite a lot of work with them and NRW, and, as Simon has mentioned, we're going there this afternoon to discuss with them how we start to close that gap. But that is invariably linked to—

And you feel you're being listened to.

Yes, yes.

Okay. Thank you. Carolyn—

But to reassure, just to finish off, on the flood-modelling side, the flood model performance is good in Wales, so it's worth investing in those. So, now they've done a lot of work on getting those flood models in place, the next part is to feed them with enough of the rainfall data that will inform the response. 

Are those the ensemble models you—?

Yes. 

Okay. Thank you. So, what are the barriers to introducing ensemble models here, then, for flood forecasts?

So, partly it's moving a huge amount of data from various different organisations through the different systems—so, through the Met Office into NRW—and that we have sight of it as well. It may surprise you to know that I don't have oversight or any visibility of the local models in NRW. That is only at the local level that they see that. So, we need to work out, technically, how we do that from an IT systems point of view. And then, as I explained, we stepped up, so weather forecasting is 24/7, national flood forecasting is 24/7. Is it now time to consider what's right for local forecasting and the next part of the incident management chain? So, is a 24/7 control centre the next development of that? So, once you start putting more of this information in, that needs looking at, processing, decisions made and plans put in place. So, as risk has escalated and increased over time, we have stood up more and more of that chain.

Are you finding, with the change in weather, with the heavier rainfall, that there are more local variables as well?

Yes, definitely. 

Which makes it harder to predict.

Flooding is a very localised problem. We have an awful lot of—

And snow as well.

—flood defence assets that need—. Whether somewhere floods or not can be down to an individual sluice gate, a structure, a weir. It's incredibly localised. So, yes, the difference between it happening or not is sometimes down to some very local situations. 

And the land use as well. So, there are a lot of flood models in place and then land use is constantly changing. So, this isn't just about the rainfall—

Of course, it doesn't stand still.

—it's then about the land use, and then you've got to invest when the land use changes. So, it is partly complex—that question earlier.

Yes. In your written evidence, you say that you're working with flood agency partners to introduce a common warnings framework to reduce any confusion and ambiguity in warnings. So, what are these areas of confusion and ambiguity within the current warning framework? This is something that we keep coming back to with you, I think. It's just from our local point of view. 

So, the matrix is described in different ways. The language around warnings—weather warnings and flood warnings—can be different, and the way that flood agencies and weather forecasting describe likelihood and risk can be different. So, the Met Office are leading a piece of work on both the standardisation of language, the standardisation of the risk matrix, as well as making sure that warnings can be disseminated using the common alerting protocol, which, by the way, is an international standard supported by a number of international organisations—the World Meteorological Organization, the Red Cross, and world broadcasting unions as well—and that will clearly help to disseminate messages better, going forward. 

Just going back to your point around ensembles, and just about the models as well, it's how do you get the public to understand ensembles. And the way that we all understand that is probabilistic. So, if we use a betting analogy, we all understand what a chance of winning a rugby match at 2:1 is, and if it's a 20:1 chance, there's an outside chance of winning a sporting event. But 20:1 is still possible. So, when we see these extremes around rainfall and reasonable worst case, there is still a chance of that happening, and trying to get that communication out to the public in a really easy-to-explain way is going to be really important. One of the ways we are doing that is working particularly with broadcasters and getting them to help us explain the probabilistic forecasting, which we've now started to produce.

I think they like the drama of a red weather warning, or an orange one, don't they? You get that plastered everywhere. But, okay, thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay. Delyth.

Diolch. So, moving beyond what Carolyn was just talking about there, the changes that you are having to foresee making in terms of how your forecasts are broadcast, because of how the climate catastrophe, the emergency that we're in, the pace of it is changing—you've been acknowledging this throughout the session—much more quickly than people have anticipated, possibly, and that makes predicting how quickly it will speed up in the future difficult as well. Could you talk us through, in terms of the models that you use—the metrological models, the hydrological models—how you are continuing to adapt those, to make sure that they will keep capturing real-world conditions accurately, even though we don't know how bad it's going to get?

I will do my best. I'm not a scientist. My scientists are watching to make sure I can explain this really clearly.

We're all cheering you on, you're okay.

Thank you. So, from a weather-modelling perspective, we take the real-time observations that we gather from the observations we've got across the UK, but also globally, bearing in mind we are running both global and regional models, and the regional models run down to 1.5 km grid squares. So, we take that observations data, and based on the physical processes we understand on the atmosphere—we’re doing a lot of research around atmospheric science—that then generates the weather forecasts. And going back to the ensemble question earlier, the reason we get ensembles is we just slightly change the initial starting conditions, which gives us the ensemble-based forecasts, because the globe is complex. It’s a spinning sphere of hot gas—that’s kind of the simplest way to explain it.

We constantly validate those models, based on what we’ve observed, and that gets fed back for our scientists to be able to update those models, and that, in part, answers part of your question around how do we make sure we're on top of climate change. The globe is warming up. For every 1 degree increase in temperatures, we’re seeing 7 per cent more atmosphere. But because of the way the laws of physics work, we’re able to keep updating the models to keep in line with climate change.

Just to give you a couple of good examples—probably three good examples: two big extreme events that have happened in Europe recently, in Germany in 2021 and Valencia last year, our models were able to pick up the high-intensity rainfalls, and our next model upgrade, particularly for the Valencia event, improved the ability to pick up extreme rainfall, and we saw 40 degrees in the UK for the first time in July 2022. Some of the global models were picking that up two weeks in advance; we were picking that up 10 days in advance. So, the 40 degrees is a good example of something never seen in the UK before, and it broke the UK temperature record by 1.5 degrees, and we were able to pick that up. So, we have a team of dedicated world-leading scientists who are constantly updating our models and keeping on top of the latest changes.

What I would say, relevant to Wales, is that it's important to maintain our investment in the observations capability in Wales, because that enables us to get more and more accurate, and more and more precise, around our modelling predictions, whether that’s rainfall gauges, radars, or other observations equipment. So, there’s a continual need to invest in observations data. Observations data is becoming even more important, particularly with artificial intelligence models.

Thank you for that. Presumably, because, as you say, some of those very extreme weather events, like what happened in Valencia last year, were so intense, allowing communities to be able to plan far enough in advance, that is what makes all the difference with something like that. So, that's incredibly useful. And I'm not a scientist, but you explained that in a way that was very understandable. So, thank you very much indeed for that.

Finally, from me: Simon, in your written evidence, you highlight the increasing rainfall frequency and intensity in the coming decades, as you've just been talking about. Now, evidently, you've got a resilience role in terms of those storms, in those extreme weather events that you’ve been talking about. In terms of contributing to long-term climate mitigation and planning on a local level, on a national level, do you see a role for yourselves in that as well, not just in terms of forecasting what will happen, but advising about how adaptations need to work as a result?

We've talked a lot about the weather today, but a very important role we play is that climate advice and that scientific integrity into Government, industry and out to citizens. Our chief scientist, Stephen Belcher, could definitely do a much wider brief around climate, if the committee did want that, at a future point.

As I said, at the start, in my introduction, we've got the Hadley climate centre, which provides advice into UK Government around climate change and variability. At a national level, we've got the UK Climate Projections, which go down to 2.2 km sq, so you can go in and look at the impact of climate change in your local area. We have users who feed into that group and give us feedback of how useful that is. We have representatives from the Welsh Government who are users and help us improve the use of that UKCP projection, and they were, ultimately, on the project board, as part of the UK Government initiative. We've recently introduced a local authority climate service portal. So, people can go in and look at their local climate information, which allows them to make the right decisions around climate adaptation and decision making. And we're also one of the lead producers of the fourth UK climate change risk assessment report, which is really setting out the risks that the UK faces from climate change and will help inform adaptation plans, again, across the UK and for devolved Governments.

The other things we are doing in climate: we've been supporting Welsh Government in Climate Action Week, particularly around misinformation. Welsh Government have been in to film in our headquarters, talking to our climate scientists. And, slightly different from climate, but all our weather readiness is in the Welsh language as well. So, we're doing lots in the climate space. I think, to answer you on adaptation, we can support adaptation, but our main role is about the scientific advice and providing the latest scientific advice for policy makers. 

Okay. We've got two to three minutes left. Delyth, you can come back, and then Julie wants to come in, and then we'll draw it to a conclusion. Delyth. 

Okay. Forgive me if this is an unfair question to be asking you. I was really interested in what you were saying earlier about how the communities that are—I don't like the word 'deprived', but where the highest levels of deprivation are, they are less likely to be, for example, looking up what the weather is going to be, and things like that. And, as we know, there are lots of those areas that are going to be particularly badly affected by flooding, by coal tip slips, by poor infrastructure in their areas. Is there anything that you feel that the Welsh Government should and could be doing, or other bodies should and could be doing, to try and bridge that gap to further empower those communities, so that they will feel more empowered and they've got more agency to be doing things like looking up the weather, so that it isn't something that is just happening to them, that they have more of a stake in this, just to empower those people more? Again, forgive me if this is an unfair question to be asking you. 

You've probably answered your own question. There is always more we can do. Climate change is happening. There's going to be more extreme weather. Getting that whole chain working from weather forecast, flood warnings, local resilience forums to the action communities can take, being really clear what action is required from communities, is going to be really important. More self-help—if you look at the national resilience strategy in the UK, that talks about society helping itself. So, there is definitely more we can do. We don't just do weather forecasting, we do lots of comms, we do lots of weather readiness campaigns, we provide lots of information around climate, but that's why we exist. Our job is to do that and we will need to continue to get better as climate change really starts to bite, and it's already biting. 

Thank you. 

Thank you. Last word to Julie. 

It's been good to hear you talk about your team of world-leading scientists and the fact that people look to the UK for what we're actually doing. Is there any other country that we have got something to learn from in terms of this whole area?  

That's also a good question. Lots of countries do this well. We are held up particularly around our on impact-based forecasting by our international partners. We work as part of about 190 countries through the World Meteorological Organization and there’s constant sharing of best practice. I can take that away, around whether there’s any particular—

It'd just be interesting, because it's good to hear that people come to see what we're doing, but if there is somewhere else that is doing something that we would need to do—. But, really, this is a world-wide issue, isn't it?

Yes. I think my response is that we're constantly learning from each other; we’re constantly holding bilaterals with other countries. We get a lot of visits at the Met Office, and so does the Flood Forecasting Centre, and they generally want to come and see what the Met Office and Flood Forecasting Centre are doing. But we’re not proud, we will take best practice from other countries and we will steal that and plagiarise it, because if it works for them it will work for us, notwithstanding there could be cultural differences in why certain things don’t work.

Excellent. Russell.

Can I ask a question for information?

Yes. Russell first and then—.

Yes, just to build on that, over 200 countries are forecasting a warning service, and 40 of those have exactly the same software as Wales. So, there is a lot to draw on there. There is a lot of experience from different European nations, but also, increasingly, countries looking to set up brand-new services, particularly in south-east Asia. And they won’t have the legacy challenges we’ve got of transforming our service to that—they can put in a completely new service. So, they’re starting from scratch, but they will get ahead very, very quickly. So, some of the newer developments are actually in some of those new areas as well. But, yes, there are international standards for this work. If we can streamline and adopt those, we’ll probably get there more quickly.

I think the other bit just to add is the shared experience around the UK as well and being able to share post-event experience and learning from events, rather than solely within each nation, and that is an area the new floods taskforce is looking at as well—it’s how do nations learn from each other and share experience around the LRF level as well.

Thank you. Joyce, then.

Just to the Flood Forecasting Centre, you highlighted surface water flooding. I’ve been talking about that for 18 years, but what I’m keen to understand is your role in planning, because quite clearly the urban creep is causing big problems, but also your understanding of the extraction of surface water through the new planning systems in Wales that apparently, I’ve been told yesterday, are the best in the UK. But good is maybe not good enough. So, I don’t expect an answer now, but I’m very interested in that hydrological forecasting, which you can understand from my interest, and how you pull all that together in a meaningful way to inform localities that are probably about to put themselves at risk.

Yes. So, briefly, we take the latest modelled surface water risk maps, which look at the risk over the next 30 years, and we’re looking at running that—. I said there are 200 flood models in Wales. That’s for rivers and the coast; there’s no real-time surface water flood model anywhere. So, we’re trialling that this summer and trying to develop that. So, we will take the surface water risk area and apply that, and we’d update that every few years as well. So, we wouldn’t look at individual developments, obviously, but we would be able to look at what’s at risk—the rates of rainfall that could cause flooding issues against those sorts of design standards and develop a service based on that, depending on what NRW and the EA want to do with surface water as a public service. So, that’s back to the gap that is quite a big one to fill.

And just one very quick final one: in that, would you look at soil types?

Yes.

Because, if you looked at Hampshire, it's nearly all chalk, so it's going to go underground. If you look at Wales, where it's clay, it's going to end up in your backyard.

Yes. So, the models take soil moisture into account and soil type into account and the permeability of it, yes.

Thank you.

Well, excellent. Can I thank you both so much for your attendance? It’s been informative, it’s been enlightening, and it’s been great evidence for us to give us that understanding of the services that you provide, and obviously that’ll hold us in good stead as we speak to others—local authorities, NRW, Dŵr Cymru et cetera, et cetera—in the course of this inquiry. So, thank you so much. You’ll be sent a copy of the draft transcript just to check for accuracy. But, with that, can I thank you both? Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you.

The committee will now break for literally five minutes, and we’ll be starting again with local authorities at 12.15 p.m. Diolch yn fawr.

Okay. Thank you. So, the main impact, I think, certainly in the upper catchments, was in terms of run-off. If you look at the figures of both our own rain gauges and NRW rain gauges, we saw that close to seven inches of rain fell in the upper catchments. That's considerably more, and, in fact, almost double what fell, if you imagine, in the Pontypridd area south. So, while river flooding, in particular, hit Pontypridd, that was mainly through water coming off the hills up at the top of the Valleys.

In terms of the figures, that broke storm Dennis records. And in terms of river levels, while Pontypridd didn't exceed storm Dennis, river gauges from NRW at three locations in the Valleys did. So, we saw considerable flooding—over 400 properties, over 100 of them commercial. Some of those properties had been flooded for the second or third time. Some got flooded twice during storm Dennis, over that period, and storm Ciara; similar when we had storm Christoph, a year later. So, the impact on some of those families has been quite profound, because some of the families affected, unfortunately, don't have insurance, and it's affected their well-being and mental health.

And then just to say, in terms of infrastructure, we're currently estimating around £8 million-worth of direct infrastructure damage, but, in addition to that, a £5 million bill to replace a bridge at Abercynon, which has been completely washed away. It was washed away and badly—. Well, it was considerably damaged during storm Dennis. We were in the final stages of putting the new bridge in, where the existing old piers—. The bridge has been there over 100 years. There was some scaffold on there. We were due to complete the work by the end of February now. And, in storm Bert, the entire structure, including the piers, has been swept away. So that now leaves us with just a gap where there should be a bridge. And we estimate the cost of this new bridge, which will probably have to span the complete river, without piers, will cost in excess of £5 million. So, I've written to Welsh Government to make them aware. Our overall costs, we are suggesting, for Bert alone, is around £13 million-worth of infrastructure impact.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr. That's a good snapshot, really, isn't it, of the seriousness of the situation.

Can I—

Very, very briefly, then, because we are up against time today.

Yes. You quoted some big figures there for local authorities, and I know that flooding causes issues with infrastructure: it breaks up roads and culverts. There is an emergency financial assistance fund for local authorities that they can bid for, but it's got to be for anything over £500,000, I think, which is sometimes an issue, isn't it, when putting in bids for those, to get money back, after issues.

Just to be clear: so, we've triggered the emergency financial assistance scheme. 

You have, yes.

We have, yes. There isn't actually a fixed financial figure: it's a percentage of your budget. So, for example, for Rhondda Cynon Taf, we have to fund the first £1.2 million, and then, anything over £1.2 million, we get 85 per cent support for. However, that is only—. And, actually, it's until 28 February, next week, because of the end of the financial year. And also things like a bridge at £5 million that's been swept away—that would be outside it. So, this is only for the immediate clean-up and any emergency works. Any further works needed don't come under the emergency financial assistance scheme.

I know, during these storms, in some local authorities, there were landslips as well, and so that costs money to clear up, and it doesn't trigger that funding but there are costs to the local authorities. So, that's—. I was just raising that, then, as well.

We had three landslips.

Yes. Okay.

Thank you. Joyce.

Good morning and welcome again. So, what procedures do you have in place for handling different tiers of alerts and warnings from forecasting bodies? For example, how does the process of dealing with, say, a yellow weather warning compare to an amber or a red warning?

Okay. So, within Rhondda Cynon Taf, after storm Dennis and the lessons from that, we set up a full protocol system within the borough. So, you heard previously from the Met Office and the flood guidance, so all that information was taken in. So, at the moment, we've got a yellow, amber and an amber-plus protocol, which, effectively, is edging towards red. Each one of those tiers will stand up certain amounts of resources. The yellow warnings will stand up our control centre, or remote control centre, which will be watching all our telemetry, which we may go into later. The depots will stand up a certain amount of resources within a winter period—that's up to 20 individuals plus machines. For an amber plus, then, it will go higher. So, effectively, the information that we receive then will go to those alerts. So, we've got all those presets all ready to go.

And—

Can we just check with Anglesey? Is it a similar set-up in your area as well?

I assume you're talking about the local resilience forums coming into play there. But what I'm also keen to understand, in light of what we've just been talking about, is if you prepare differently or the same if it's heavy rainfall or high wind.

So, our protocol: as Andrew's explained, we'd have 20 operatives on call, plus inspectors, plus engineers, and then we'd have JCBs and other contractors for a yellow, and then an amber is considerably more. And because we had an amber for storm Bert, for example, we put a huge amount of resource in, probably in excess of 50 or 60 operatives on the ground, JCBs and kit et cetera.

For storm Darragh, because there was an amber warning and potentially, you know, we were advised on a call that the Met Office and NRW did have concerns for river flooding—although it didn't materialise like in storm Bert—we basically went to a full scale of probably—. Well, I've said this publicly, it was the most resources that we've ever put in place. We basically asked every available contractor to deploy resources. So, we probably, for storm Darragh, had over 100 staff and contractors available.

But one of things we are looking at is reviewing our lessons learnt on the back of storm Bert. Because storm Bert was only a yellow, we took a decision. We met a couple of days before, both at a senior leadership team level, and then we convened an operational meeting, which I also attended. We stepped up resources because we thought it was going to be bad, however one of the things now that we are looking at is having our own mechanism, slightly different to using the yellow and amber that the Met Office does. And that's because, as I've just discussed with colleagues from the Met Office, 60 mm to 80 mm of rain in a short period of time, say, south of Pontypridd doesn't cause us major issues. You get that level of rainfall in the hills in the upper Cynon and the upper Rhondda, and what we are finding more and more—and a lot of our flooding, our telemetry and our cameras have shown—is that debris is getting washed off the mountain. You know, we finished a brand-new culvert—funded by the Welsh Government, thankfully—a week before storm Bert; we've got closed-circuit television images where it's monitored from our control room, it is completely brand-new—a big concrete chamber like this—it's totally clear, it's flowing, and within half an hour, it is absolutely buried under 50 tonnes of material. And then an hour later, it shows a JCB—because our control room has picked it up—there clearing the culvert. But we are now reviewing, to think that we may have to step up resources a lot more at a lower level going forward.

We discussed last time you were here issues about going on to that land to clear. Is that an issue, or do landowners know their responsibility to keep the culverts clear?

In terms of our own culverts, we have telemetry, obviously, we have pre-inspection regimes. During the events, we'll have people monitoring the cameras, people going around the culverts. One of our big issues—. And we've had, certainly, in one of our locations, a private culvert on private land blocked and caused considerable flooding to a number of properties. We had to send resources there, JCBs et cetera, to get the culvert cleared. The community immediately thinks it's our responsibility and they've been flooded because we have been negligent in not looking after a culvert, and actually it's on private land. And sometimes, when you tell private landowners under a paid ownership, 'You are legally responsible', it comes as a shock to them.

So, does more—?

Sorry. Can I just ask, to what extent—? What does this tell us about the type of infrastructure that we're putting in, then? If Government have just paid for that, clearly it was inadequate in response to this particular storm. Are we not futureproofing sufficiently, then, in terms of the infrastructure we're putting in?

So, on this one in particular, there was a small landslide on the mountain and the landslide—. In effect, you had a small ravine where quite a big stream comes down; there was a landslide in there and that material got mobilised. But one of the things we've taken the decision on since storm Bert—and we've done a lot of debris basins ahead of culverts—so where you have a main culvert screen, if there's land available, we've built a debris basin. So, in effect, anything like branches, rubble et cetera collects in the debris basin and then it should be relatively clean water, without debris in it, that only comes to the culvert. So, we've done that on lots of schemes in the past, but we've taken the decision now that every scheme going forward, where there is the availability of land to do it, we will do it, and if it's not covered by the Welsh Government funding, we will fund it as a council in addition to the scheme the Welsh Government funds.