| Attendees: |
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| Mark Rice | Environment Agency (Chair) |
| Emily Reed | Devon Climate Emergency (Secretariat) |
| Louise Sawyer | Devon and Cornwall Police |
| Tom Dauben | Environment Agency |
| Elliot Batty | Public Health Devon |
| Deborah Jones | Public Health Devon |
| Emily Widdecombe | Westcountry Rivers Trust |
| James Kershaw | Devon County Council |
| Andrew Robinson | Network Rail |
| Jodie Davis | Forestry Commission |
| George Arnison | Environment Agency |
| Rhys Hobbs | Cornwall Council |
| Carolyn Cadman | South West Water |
| Ed Mellor | DCIoS Local Resilience Forum |
| Harriet Bell | Riverford Organics |
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| Apologies: |
|
| Donna Sibley | Torridge and North Devon Councils |
| Sara Gibbs | Public Health Devon |
| Paul Minshull | Cornwall Council |
| Richard Sweatman | DCIoS Local Resilience Forum |
| Doug Eltham | Devon County Council (Environment) |
| Rebecca Williams | Isles of Scilly |
| Alex Rainbow | Cornwall Council |
| Jess Pryer | Met Office |
| Claire Below | Cornwall Council |
| Nick Paling | South West Water |
| Kathryn Deeney | Plymouth City Council |
| Nathan Streetley | DCIoS Local Resilience Forum |
| John Amosford | Public Health Devon |
| Paul Lunt | University of Plymouth |
| Maria Van Hove | Public Health, Exeter University and Torbay Council |
| Zoe Sydenham | Plymouth City Council |
| Penny Tranter | Met Office |
| Sophie Goodall-Smith | Environment Agency |
| Laurence Couldrick | Westcountry Rivers Trust |
| Liza Oxford | Plymouth City Council |
| Victoria Hatfield | Exeter City Council |
Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed as an accurate record.
The following actions were carried over:
ACTION: Emily to plan an in-person meeting to explore collaboration, somewhere with public transport links.
ACTION: Emily to invite SWW to update on progress – potentially Mark Jacob. (Regarding CIG 27 Risks to public water supplies from reduced water availability (and shifting supply and demand balances).
ACTION: Mark will speak to the Rural Payments Agency to ask if they have data to help with monitoring. (Regarding action NEB1 to promote soil management techniques to improve resilience).
Review of Risks CIG30 – CIG33 and CIG64
Five risks from the Infrastructure section of the regional Climate Adaptation Strategy were scheduled for review at today’s meeting. These are the risks with identification codes CIG30 – CIG33 and CIG64. [Every risk in the Strategy is scheduled for review once a year].
The meeting discussed the risks. No changes regarding the magnitude and likelihood of the risks were raised by the group.
Review of Actions
Two actions in the Action Plan (Appendix 6 of the Strategy) were reviewed at this meeting: INFA1 and INFB1. Ahead of the meeting, Emily circulated a table that has collated local activity that is helping to implement each action. Comments on this were requested.
INFA–1 – Build on and develop resilience partnerships. Ensure their Command, Control and Co-ordination arrangements for an emergency which involves the loss of both power and telecoms, and actively involve utilities companies in local planning where required to ensure linkage with regional and national developments.
Emily highlighted that planning for a national power outage has been a priority for the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Resilience Forum (LRF) for 18 months. A draft plan has been written and considerable engagement with LRF partners has occurred. The risk of a national power outage is one of the highest risks on the National Risk Register, and whilst the likelihood remains low the consequences are considered to be very high.
The updated regional community risk register was published in April by the LRF and can be viewed online here.
No further comments from the group were made.
INFB–1 – Develop joint strategies, research, and longer-term schemes with South West Water and Catchment Partnerships (and other risk management partners where appropriate) to improve catchment management both for high flow areas at flood risk and protect low flow by reducing demand / drought impacts.
Tom Dauben shared that there is a need to document the projects going on and how they interrelate spatially to facilitate better coordination. A coherent overview could inform funding bids and project development.
ACTION: The Climate Impacts Group should consider how to document work happening regarding catchment management in the region, to enable integration between projects and stakeholders.
To update on action INFB1, Carolyn introduced Southwest Water’s pilot of Natural Catchment Management Plans (NCMPs). The NCMPs developed look at the water management challenges in 15 catchments, including how the landcover holds water and implications for wastewater management and water quality. Agricultural runoff, economic activity and urban development are also key factors shaping water management in the catchments. A motivation of the NCMPs is to support collaboration between key stakeholders in catchments. There is potential for blended finance approaches with investment from the water company helping to attract match funding, such as National Lottery funding, and catalysing action. The pilot catchments are across Cornwall and Devon.
However, this is a new way of working for Southwest Water, so there is a process of building capacity, knowledge and skill sets to collaborate with a wide range of partners on nature based solutions, as well as faith that this approach can deliver.
Mark Rice asked Carolyn about the policy context for catchment-based approaches. Carolyn said the Defra Plan for Water indicated that there would be a strengthened role for catchment partnerships and funding for catchment-based approaches. However, the mechanisms for water companies to deliver are getting more restrictive in some regards, for example on storm overflows there’s new price control deliverables that are going to be pushing for harder, faster delivery, which goes against catchment-based approaches and nature-based solutions in some instances, as these take time to deliver. The Local Nature Recovery Strategies, Biodiversity Net Gain and Environmental Land Management scheme are also important mechanisms for action.
Tom Dauben added that for the EA the National Flood Strategy and River Basin Management Plan were key policy pieces, though not always directly compatible with catchment-based approaches. Though this shouldn’t stop the EA pursuing this work locally if it chooses to.
Emily asked if funding was a barrier, to which Tom replied that it was much less of a barrier than the absence of a coherent multi-stakeholder plan was. Carolyn agreed that there is a need for something akin to the formal requirement for local authorities to coordinate nature recovery strategies, to formalise the approach to catchment partnerships.
ACTION: Emily, Tom and Carolyn to discuss how better coordination of catchment partnerships could be achieved and what the recommendations to the climate partnerships in regard to this might be.
Planning of an Extreme Heat Workshop (James Kershaw)
James reported that the Health Protection Board recognise the need to take further action to prepare for heat events, learning from places like Paris and Canada who have had to deal with more acute incidents already. For instance, we need a plan to ensure there are cool places and that homeless people can be kept safe. Extreme heat is a high risk on the register for the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Resilience Forum (LRF) and there is an opportunity to not only prepare for the emergency response but consider wider adaptation. London has just done an exercise called Helios, which covered the emergency response, but also longer-term adaptation.
The LRF are planning to hold an event in February, which would allow time to enact any recommendations before summer.
James asked the group who might want to attend and how they would like to be involved. Emily, Louise, Rhys and Carolyn are keen to attend.
James will be speaking with the Government Office of Science to ask them to speak at the event and share their work on adaptation. It is anticipated that attendees will form two groups, one to look at immediate incident mitigation and the other at longer term adaptation.
Mark asked if natural capital would be considered, James agreed it should be, such as urban natural capital to support cooling, as well as other considerations like the impact on cattle and animal husbandry.
ACTION: Let James Kershaw know if you would like to attend the LRF heat incident and adaptation planning event in February.
Collaborating on Landscape Recovery at a Catchment Scale, Harriet Bell, Riverford Organics
Harriet Bell introduced herself, she is the Regenerative Farming Lead at Riverford Organics. Riverford have been looking into the impact of land use by themselves and their suppliers. A baseline has been established by the Soil Association Exchange, now a continuous improvement programme is being developed.
As there is a cluster of farms which supply Riverford in the Dart catchment, they are considering a landscape recovery bid there. They are keen to ensure climate adaptation is incorporated into the bid.
Riverford would like to put in interventions on their land which are productive, like nut trees. But they are also interested in how land use interacts with infrastructure, such as the roads in and out of the area, which their operations are also reliant on.
They have spoken with some other landowners, such as the Duchy of Somerset who owns stretches of land near Totnes to Paignton, who is interested.
Carolyn from Southwest Water is happy to be involved in this conversation going forward. She noted that there is an Ofwat bid, with Westcountry Rivers Trust, regarding how farmers can be paid to store water in smaller units and release back at times.
ACTION: Emily to organise an in person meeting to discuss collaboration around the Dart Catchment further.
Tom would like to better explore what the commercial benefit to Riverford is, as that is replicable more widely. The Environment Agency has tools that have data with both natural capital mapping and water mapping.
Emily asked Andrew whether interventions in the Dart catchment would be of interest to Network Rail. Andrew advised that Julie Gregory who works on adaptation would be best placed to discuss this. Tom highlighted that the Connecting the Culm project and the benefits to Hele Crossing for Network Rail is a good proxy for this conversation.
The group also agreed that it would be worth involving Defra in meetings exploring collaboration around catchment-based approaches.
ACTION: Emily to contact Ashley Holt and Silas Gairdner at Defra to invite them to the in-person meeting.
Transform AR, Emily Widdecombe, Westcountry Rivers Trust
Emily Widdecombe shared with the group that the Transform AR project has money available to work on climate adaptation in the water environment and are interested to do so in relation to infrastructure. Tim Young from Blackdown Hills National Landscape is keen to participate in this work. Emily W has also spoken with Carolyn at Southwest Water. There is the potential to look at where the hotspots are for at risk infrastructure and produce a commentary on how the natural environment could be enhanced to deal with the risks.
Emily has identified three key aims:
3 Key Aims:
Work with Risk Management Authorities (RMAs) and the Southwest Infrastructure Partnership (SWIP) to identify possible cost-benefit business cases for delivering Nature Based Solutions (NBS) for climate resilience
SWIP already engaged
Engage RMA’s
Identify priority sites – communities with at-risk infrastructure & heritage features at-risk
Develop logic matrix to identify priority communities/’pinch points’
Define critical infrastructure providers & relevant risks
Develop initial maps of at-risk properties, critical infrastructure, flooding, deprivation index
Create business cases to highlight the cost-effectiveness & long-term benefits of catchment scale NBS for successful climate change adaptation, adding to existing weight of evidence.
ACTION: Emily Reed and other interested parties to discuss with Emily Widdecombe how they could integrate the work of Transform AR with existing work being done by other stakeholders.
