APPG for EBE announces its 3rd Inquiry

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment is pleased to announce its 3rd Inquiry, which will look at the problems caused to the UK by flooding and examine the potential for greater mitigation of these problems and significantly improving flood resilience including the potential for adaptation to changing environmental pressures.

The All Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry now calls upon firms, organisations and individuals to submit evidence on how the country might best be able to deal with the problem posed by flooding and minimise the impact on homes, businesses, lives and the loss to the UK economy as a whole. The Commission is particularly looking for evidence of practical strategies that will, for example, improve flood protection, adaptation and mitigation, enable a better assessment of flood risk and improvement in insurance and valuation issues. The Commission is also looking for evidence that will exemplify effective coordination that will bring together organisations that have a part to play in any aspect of improving our prevention of, or resilience to, flooding.

The APPG for EBE Commission of Inquiry comprises members of both Houses of Parliament, senior members of the construction professions and key influencers and decision makers in other aspects of society.

Written submissions are requested to be received no later than Friday, 3rd October, 2014. There is no prescribed format for written submissions but they should be of reasonable length and possess a clear conclusion and recommendations for action and must be accompanied by all relevant appendices. The Committee is not looking for submissions to merely outline the scope of the problem although identifying challenges and barriers that need to be overcome in order to achieve progress may be an important aspect of submissions.

Written submissions should be send electronically to the APPGEBE Secretary, Graham Watts OBE at gwatts@cic.org.uk

The Commission of Inquiry will examine written submissions and will set up roundtable sessions, at which oral evidence will be presented to the Commission directly. It is hoped that these will give an opportunity for a candid and open discussion, exploring alternative viewpoints and leading to a pragmatic consensus.

The Commission will hold formal sessions, likely to be on Mondays (late afternoons/early evenings) in the Houses of Parliament or Portcullis House in late October and November 2014 and will invite selected organisations to present oral evidence in support of their submissions.

This will be the Committee's third report. It has previously published “A better deal for public building” which set out a number of measures for improving construction procurement, including adopting the 2012 Construction Commitments on all public building projects over £100m; and “Re-energising the green agenda” looking at how we can meet the carbon reduction targets and the need to re-energise the approach to sustainable construction.

Oliver Colvile MP, chair of the APPGEBE said of the inquiry; “As we saw during this winter’s storms, climate change is making flooding an increasingly serious threat to property in this country. Flood mitigation and resilience will need to play a bigger and bigger role in our considerations of the built environment. This is an exciting opportunity to hear from stakeholders about how Government and industry can work to create a more flood resilient built environment and we look forward to receiving evidence from across the sector.”

The findings of the Inquiry into Flood Mitigation and Resilience will be published in early 2015.

Further information about the All Party Parliamentary Group and its work can be accessed from the following link: http://www.appgebe.org.uk/inquiry.shtml

Please address any queries regarding the Inquiry to Graham Watts OBE at gwatts@cic.org.uk or on 0207 399 7402