Flood risk plans and strategies
There are a number of local strategies and plans that set out how flood risk in Birmingham is managed, the level of flood risk and actions to manage that risk.
Local Flood Risk Management Strategy
The Council as the Lead Local Flood Authority under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 has a duty to develop, maintain, apply and monitor the application of a Local Flood Risk Management Strategy in its area. The strategy sets out the objectives for managing local flood risk and the measures proposed to achieve those objectives. The strategy comprises the following documents:
Surface Water Management Plan
Birmingham City Council and its partners have produced a Surface Water Management Plan for Birmingham. It sets out to understand the causes and effects of surface water flooding and establish an action plan that provides the most cost effective way of managing surface water flood risk for the long term.
Due to the number of properties at risk of surface water flooding, it was not possible to understand the flood risk and develop an action plan to manage the risk to every one of these properties. Therefore it was necessary to develop an approach to determine the areas of the City at significant risk that could be assessed within the budget and timescale available for the project.
The study comprises the following documents:
- Non-Technical Summary of the main report aimed at the general public.
- Project Report outlining the work undertaken as part of the study.
- Action Plan setting out actions proposed to manage surface water flood risk in Birmingham over the long term. This plan will updated as actions are undertaken.
- Surface Water Flood Risk Maps - Plans showing the areas of the city at surface water flood risk at street level can be viewed but can’t be used to identify individual properties.
- Guidance to support the flood risk maps explaining how the flood risk maps have been created and what their uses and limitations are.
Flood Risk Regulations
The Flood Risk Regulations implement the requirements of the European Floods Directive, which aims to provide a consistent approach to managing flood risk across Europe.
The Flood Risk Regulations set out a six year cycle of planning based on a four stage process, outlined below.
- Stage 1: Prepare Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment
- Stage 2: Identify Flood Risk Areas
- Stage 3: Prepare Flood Hazard Maps and Flood Risk Maps for each Flood Risk Area
- Stage 4: Prepare Flood Risk Management Plans for each Flood Risk Area
Flood risk management plans must be reviewed by the Environment Agency and Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) every 6 years under The Flood Risk Regulations 2009 (legislation.gov.uk).
Flood risk management plans describe how the Environment Agency and risk management authorities (RMAs) are working with communities to manage current and future risk of flooding, and identify actions to manage those risks.
Following a public consultation, the first flood risk management plans were published in March 2016, and described actions to manage flood risk across England between 2015 to 2021.
The Environment Agency and LLFAs are currently producing new draft plans to cover the period from 2021 to 2027.
A 3 month public consultation on the draft plans will run from 22 October 2021 to 21 January 2022.
