Local Flood Risk Management Strategy

Our objective is to improve innovation, skills and resourcing in flood risk management in Buckinghamshire.

By making use of innovations in technology, ways of working and funding, our team will have the training, resources and skills it needs. The actions we will be undertaking to address this objective are set out in our action plan.

In order to deliver our statutory duties and our wider strategy objectives, we recognise the importance of continuing to maintain and develop the skills and resources that we have available. Subject to future budgetary decisions we will endeavour to achieve the following:

• Encourage a work environment that values continuous learning, open communication, and shared responsibility for delivering statutory duties and strategy objectives.
• Seek to retain and develop the expertise in the Strategic Flood Management team by providing and valuing continuous professional development opportunities for our staff to enhance knowledge and skillsets. This could include workshops, conferences, webinars, and e-learning courses.
• Invest in our graduates and re-train internal recruits to grow our team.
• Increase our resilience to changes in resourcing by training our staff to be competent in different roles within the team.
• Continue to maintain partnerships with external organisations, governmental bodies, neighbouring local authorities, industry experts and other stakeholders to share resources, knowledge, and best practices.
• Identify opportunities for sharing training and skills within the Council and with neighbouring LLFAs. For example, training with the Ecology teams to ensure the delivery of high-quality Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) that meet Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements; training with the Resilience teams on Community Resilience; training for new Council members on flood risk management.
• Identify opportunities within the Council and with external partner organisations to promote and share knowledge on climate adaptation and resilience, particularly to further embed nature-based solutions, green infrastructure, and nature recovery into our flood risk management practices. Identify training needed in preparation to fulfil our future duties as a SuDS Approval Body (SAB), and ensure it is completed before our new duties commence.
• Identify training and resource that we are likely to need to implement the recommendations of the National Infrastructure Commission's 'Reducing the risk of surface water flooding' report and the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management's 'Surface water management: A review of the opportunities and challenges' report.
• Develop our skills and capabilities in inspecting the condition of flood risk assets
• Actively seek out and take opportunities for the council to work together with other Risk Management Authorities (e.g. Environment Agency, water companies, neighbouring Local Authorities) to share skills, training and exercising opportunities, resources, and engagement events.
• Explore opportunities to work with communities to increase their capacity and skills in flood risk management e.g. training for Flood Action Groups

We recognise the importance of using flood risk schemes and nature-based solutions as an educational resource for children in the community to encourage an understanding of the water cycle, climate change, the environment, and safety around open water bodies. We will take opportunities through Project Groundwater and other projects to engage with schools and communities.

We deliver seminars at local higher education institutions to promote flood risk management and nature-based solutions techniques. For example, our team give an annual lecture at Oxford Brookes University on SuDS.

Where possible, we will engage with partners such as Anglian Water involved in initiatives to encourage development of skills in environmental and sustainable water management in syllabuses for local colleges and universities in the region.

Encouraging innovation in technical areas of flood risk management is essential for continued success. Technical innovations include:

• Embedding the technical learning and outcomes of Project Groundwater (and other relevant Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation projects) in our Business as Usual, and disseminating it nationally
• Monitoring and evaluating the benefits of our natural flood management projects
• Improve publicly available flood risk mapping especially for groundwater flood risk
• Exploring new techniques in land use management which bring flood risk benefits, e.g. introducing beavers
• Use of low carbon materials and techniques in design and construction of flood risk schemes

Innovations in ways of working can bring efficiencies in the way we use our budgets and work with our partner Risk Management Authorities. These include:

• Exploring new ways to work with communities in ways that are more collaborative and more effective for the community.
• Working more closely with other Risk Management Authorities by sharing knowledge, lessons learnt and best practice.
• Working more closely with other Risk Management Authorities in particular locations or projects to ensure issues where there are several sources of flooding are dealt with efficiently and consistently.
• A system to allow for risk-based responses to enquiries.
• Use of a joint web-based platform for flood data and project information sharing across Risk Management Authorities

In the future we will need new ways of partnership working to make sure we can successfully reduce the risk of flooding as well as exploring new ways to pay for improvements. Whilst it may be possible to fully pay for some projects using available national sources of funding, it is likely they will require a wider range of funding sources (including contributions from other Risk Management Authorities, developers, local communities, and businesses as beneficiaries). A partnership funding approach will be prioritised, both to improve the likelihood of a successful application and also to foster buy-in and engagement among those involved.

One of our key aspirations is to maximise multi-beneficial outcomes of new schemes or activities and understand their socio-economic and natural capital value. This could open up more avenues of revenue than purely flood risk management, particularly where measures address existing issues such as managing the environment, improving the health and wellbeing of communities.

Where appropriate we will take an adaptive pathways approach, building resilience to changing flood risk due to future climate hazard, population growth and shifts in environmental conditions. This will involve monitoring our approach and progress with resilience measures at regular time intervals, to appraise strategic investment decisions and make necessary changes to investment pathways. This process will allow us to ensure the most effective combination of actions is being undertaken at the right time, while prioritising the maintenance of a healthy water environment.

We will continue to seek and apply for funding for nature-based solutions schemes as it becomes available.