5. How has the Welsh Government been supporting Natural Resources Wales to take forward the recommendations listed in its report on the 2020 floods? OQ56603

Diolch. It's clear lessons needed to be learned following the devastating flooding in 2020, which NRW’s review acknowledges. This year, we are investing record levels of funding for flood risk management. In 2020-21, NRW’s revenue funding was increased by £1.25 million to £21 million, which is being sustained in 2021-22.

Thank you for that response. It's clear from the report that staffing levels in NRW have been utterly inadequate to deal with the destructive floods of 2020, as was confirmed by the fact that 41 more staff have been working on flood risk management since then, which is still lower than the report reveals is required. Time and time again, the Welsh Government has refused to hold an independent inquiry into the floods, which would, as is clear from the NRW report, reveal totally inadequate funding for the body established by Welsh Labour to protect us from flooding.

It would also reveal, as the NRW report does, that there are too many bodies and groups that have responsibility for flood mitigation. Isn't it time now to establish a task and finish group that would include experts from across the water sector in Wales to advise the Senedd on a better way of managing surface water particularly, so that there are clearer lines of responsibility in terms of flood management and mitigation related to that?

Thank you for that. I understand where the Member is coming from, for sure, but it's simply not true to say that we've been underinvesting in it. In 2021-22, the Welsh Government will be investing over £65 million in flood risk management, which is the largest amount invested in a single year since the beginning of devolution. 

This financial year, we've allocated NRW £21 million in revenue and £17.211 million of capital funding to progress their flood risk management programme. This represents 56 per cent of our total flood and coastal erosion risk management budget for the year, so not insubstantial amounts of money.

Since February 2020, we've increased NRW's revenue budget to record levels of revenue, with £21 million, which represents a 6 per cent increase from the year prior to the flooding. That represents nearly 90 per cent of the core flood revenue budget for the year.

The NRW review is an honest assessment of their own performance and contains recommendations for how they can improve their flood response. Flood risk management funding in NRW is ring-fenced for those activities. As the Member actually said herself, since February 2020 NRW have themselves increased their staff working solely on flood risk management by 41 posts, full-time equivalent. 

Last financial year, NRW received over £13.5 million worth of capital funding for flood risk management activities, which included an additional £3.7 million allocated in year, including repair work following flood events, mapping, modelling work and further work on improvements to the flood warning system. Last financial year, NRW put forward three requests for additional funding during the year, all of which were granted.

The Government has clearly set out its priorities for flood and coastal risk management in its new national strategy, published in October 2020, incorporating some of the initial lessons learnt from the February flooding. We're looking forward to the section 19 report from Rhondda Cynon Taf, so that we can pull together the lessons learnt from the flooding, Llywydd, to ensure that we do as much as we can to ensure that no other community experiences what the communities experienced last year during the floods.

Minister, on three separate occasions over the last 14 months, the town of Carmarthen has suffered major incidences of flooding as the River Tywi burst its banks, affecting a number of businesses along the quay and the Pensarn area. Looking at the programme for government, launched yesterday to big fanfare, the climate change section had little reference to improving flood defences. With climate change likely to make such occurrences more regular, will you outline what progress has been made on providing immediate protection for the town of Carmarthen against further such flooding events?

As I said, I've just outlined a series of additional funding that we've put into NRW. That funding is, of course, across Wales, and not for any specific community. We also work very closely with our local authority partners in ensuring that they do the right assessments and we have the right kind of flood management projects coming forward for capital funding. Local authorities themselves have a range of projects in this regard, and we work very closely with them and NRW to ensure that we have a holistic programme right across Wales.

Back in March, a £65.415 million programme of flood risk management activities across Wales was announced for this financial year we're currently in. That includes £36 million capital spend on new projects and maintenance of existing assets. As I've already said, it's our biggest capital budget ever.

The capital budget this year includes £4 million for post-storm repairs, following the flooding in December 2020 and January 2021, and to date, £1.9 million of that has been already allocated for the purpose. So, we have a number of—. So, we have—I'm sorry, I can't do the maths off the top of my head—around £2 million left to allocate, which we will be working with local authorities across Wales, to make sure that we have the right schemes in place. But I can assure the Member that we work very closely with our local authority partners to make sure that we have the best protection available and to understand what their capital and revenue requirements for flood prevention schemes look like, and to make sure that we also have maintenance programmes in place for existing flood protection assets.

I'd also like to congratulate both Ministers on their new appointments. Minister, the NRW report following the floods of 2020 matters a great deal to the Rhondda residents, in particular, residents of Pentre, where 169 homes and 12 businesses flooded internally. The NRW duty manager at the time said, on record, and I quote:

'From the photographs and pictures available it is evident that wooded material entered the watercourse and ended up blocking the grid.'

I recently met with RCT council leader Andrew Morgan, who confirmed to me that the council's section 19 report is in its final stages and will be released later this month. If the report confirms wooded debris significantly contributed to the flooding in Pentre by blocking the culvert grids, will the Minister meet NRW with me to discuss the impact and cost on the community I represent?

Well, thank you very much, Buffy, and I don't share my colleague Lee's tendency, I'm afraid, Llywydd, to overcome the congratulations all in one burst. I think we should take congratulations where we can find them—[Laughter.]—so, I'm very pleased to be welcomed to my post, and I'm very glad to see you here too, Buffy.

I'm with Lee on this, I must say. [Laughter.]

Long may it last is all I can say. So, absolutely, just to start with the question at the end: I'm very happy to meet with NRW to discuss it. I'd also like to suggest that I arrange a briefing for yourself, alongside the RCT leader, to just discuss some of the issues upfront, before we get the section 19 report, so that we can understand where we're coming from. We've been working very closely with both NRW and the council in the production of the section 19 report. It's a very important report, as I said to Heledd earlier, that we will want to learn the lessons from. So, it's very important to get it right, and we understand the lessons learnt coming out of it. As I said, we have provided additional funding to local authorities to support their section 19 investigations into the 2020 flooding, and RCT is, right now, in the process of finalising its report into the devastating flooding at Pentre last year. I can't obviously comment on the content of the report, as I have not yet seen it; that would be inappropriate anyway. But we absolutely want to fully assess the findings of the report and learn the lessons that I'm sure it will set out for us.

I absolutely recognise the strength of feeling from Pentre residents, and, indeed, from residents around Wales, who experienced very, very significant levels of flooding. Absolutely, if there are ways to reduce the risk of a repeat of such events, then we expect our risk management authorities to work together to implement them. We conducted, right at the end of the last Senedd, an exercise— a civil contingencies exercise—to look at how our response to flooding works. We will be doing a leadership version of that across the Welsh Government, NRW and local authorities, to make sure that each leader plays their role, if we do experience such an event, and that we have the maximum amount of speed, and we all know what we're doing, if something of that sort does happen again. But, actually, I very much hope that the lessons we learn will help us to assist in making sure that it does not happen again, including a review, for example, that we're doing across all coal tips, a better data management system, and you'll know, Llywydd, that the Government has also got, in its manifesto, a commitment to improving coal tip safety across Wales, which will be very much a part of that work.

Thank you to the Minister and the Deputy Minister.