On Christmas Day, Stephen Baker will, all being well, enjoy a family Christmas lunch at his home just outside Ipswich.
But there will be one intrusive presence at the meal: Baker’s Blackberry will be on the table. That’s because Baker, chief executive of two district councils, Suffolk Coastal and Waveney, is on call for the possibility of coastal floods.
Christmas Day this year will see very high tides along the whole Suffolk coast, all part of Baker’s patch, stretching from Lowestoft to Felixstowe, the largest container port in the UK. On Christmas Day, high tide at the pretty seaside town of Aldeburgh will be just before lunch. It will be as high as 2.7m – two metres less than the maximum high tide for the town.
“A high tide is forecast on Christmas Day, which means that if we also have an area of low pressure and onshore winds, we could have a problem,” explains Baker.
Just two years ago, in 2013, Suffolk suffered flooding that Baker describes as devastating. Several streets in Lowestoft town centre were flooded, with people having to move out of their houses and businesses facing big losses, including the new branch of Wetherspoons, which had only just opened.
But it’s not just towns that are under threat along the Suffolk coast. The county has many small hamlets and villages along its shores and inland that are also at risk: Snape, home to the music venue Snape Maltings, was flooded in 2013. In all, there are 118 towns and parishes in the huge rural hinterland of Suffolk, which also contains the Sizewell nuclear power station right on the coast at Leiston, between Aldeburgh and Southwold.
If Baker’s Blackberry does go off on Christmas Day, it will be one event in a sequence of well-planned responses to an emergency. There’s no individual emergency planning officers in Baker’s two district councils, but the county council runs a joint emergency planning unit and when there are crises such as a major flood, there’s a clear chain of response that links up all the different agencies involved.
It’s the Environment Agency’s job to monitor flood risk from main rivers, reservoirs, estuaries and the sea; if there is a flood, the agency will alert local police. In Suffolk, strategic command centre is at the force’s HQ in Martlesham, just outside Ipswich, so Baker, if needed, will leave the family turkey and drive over to the HQ.
While the police and other emergency services attend to the immediate needs, to make sure people are safe and property and businesses are protected, it’s the job of local government to run the longer-term recovery and response.
As chief executive, Baker is on hand from the start of any major emergency. One of the challenges for him and his team is that, unlike the emergency services, they are not usually resourced for 24-hour working. “In 2013, as it happens, although I have two directors who should be able to take over from me, one was sick and the other was on the verge of being sick,” he explains. “So I pulled a straight 24-hour shift. Then one of our directors was able to come in, which gave me eight hours for some sleep before I went back. You obviously have to be there for as long as it takes.”
Baker, who is also deputy spokesperson on civil resilience for Solace, the association of local authority chief executives, says most people don’t realise the huge role played by councils, who step in once the police and other blue-light services have moved on to deal with other emergencies.
“The burden on local authorities is immense. It takes absolutely ages in the aftermath of floods and other emergencies. I really feel for colleagues in Cumbria,” says Baker.
The financial burden is also huge, according to Baker. While there is a formula that provides compensation to local government from central funds for emergency response, the recovery phase is a “different kettle of fish” he says. Recovery takes much longer and the costs involved can be hard to quantify. “I don’t think people understand what councils or their chief executives do, partly because it is so varied,” he says. “We could and perhaps should be smarter about branding. But our focus is always on the community and on helping people get back into their homes and businesses.”
Baker is hoping that this year, his Christmas lunch won’t be interrupted. But if it is, he and his team have learned one small lesson from the floods of 2013. This year, council workers will be wearing high-vis jackets with their council logos clearly on show, just to let people know that the flood response comes from all local services. And so they know who to hold to account, as well.
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