14 February 2022
Flooding – Letter to Secretary of State

As part of my ongoing campaign to help local communities in Mid Norfolk that have been affected by flooding in recent years, I was delighted to meet with the Minister for Nature Recovery and the Domestic Environment, Rebecca Pow MP, alongside Lord Dannatt (Chair of the Norfolk Strategic Flood Alliance), to discuss the work being done on the frontline here in Norfolk and highlight a number of reforms that we believe need to be implemented if we are to better prepare and mitigate for future flood events.

Several actions arose from that meeting, including an agreement that Lord Dannatt and I would write to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, in order to flag reforms that we believe need to be implemented as part of the forthcoming Planning Bill. Whilst flooding is of course not exclusively a planning issue, there can be no question that many of the worsening problems we are seeing have their roots in poor planning and/or a failure to place sufficient emphasis on addressing it at the planning stage.

I am delighted to share a copy of that letter (see below) and I very much hope to be able to arrange a direct conversation between the Secretary of State, Lord Dannatt and I in the coming weeks so that we can take him through our suggestions in greater detail.

To stay up to date with all of my work on this issue, please do visit my campaign page here.

Letter to Secretary of State Michael Gove MP