Hot on the heels of Sir Michael Pitt's review of last summer's flooding was a white paper setting out the Labour government's thoughts on community empowerment; then, within days, a green paper on policing. Pitt proposed extending the formal responsibilities of councils, in effect making counties and unitary councils the flood risk managers in their areas.
They would collaborate with the Environment Agency, which will have regional and national responsibilities, but locally the buck would, in future, stop at the town and county hall.
It's a significant extension of the council role, and on past form there will be a fight between councils and Whitehall over who pays. The new role also implies councils are going to take a tough line with the water companies, get stroppy with developers - especially over connections to over-burdened drainage systems - and force householders to do a lot more planning and preparation for emergencies .
Pitt derives his conclusion from what last year's floods showed about the absence of a single authority over drainage. Perhaps because he was reporting to the Cabinet Office, he did not seem to glance at other departments' agendas.
How easily might councils' enhanced role in water management mesh with the communities department encouraging citizens to stand up and be counted, asserting themselves against councillors? Water management could pit one local area against another - how are councils to adjudicate, let alone follow the widest public interest, if people put the parish pump first?
And what to make of Pitt's recommendations for more local coordination of emergency response when the Home Office's paper proposes the removal of councillors from police authorities, albeit while seeking to preserve councils' voice in the administration of the police?
Pitt recommends a substantial strengthening of the local authority's practical management of this latest dimension of climate change: the risk that drainage systems can't cope with today's levels of rainfall and run off. Two thirds of the 55,000 homes and business affected last summer were flooded because drains, sewers and ditches overflowed. Agreeing a division of labour between councils and the Environment Agency is one thing (which will need to be "carefully articulated and defined in order to produce lines of accountability", the House of Commons environment committee recently concluded), but it's something else to reconcile Pitt with the swirl of other policies touching on councils' powers and competence.
What if "place shaping" led to conflicts between the council as planner and water manager and the council as site of local democracy? It's not so far fetched to imagine residents of one neighbourhood demanding urgent work on the brook at the end of their gardens when the council's strategic priority is work at the other end of town.
In a response to the MPs' report, the government said it intended that councils should take responsibility for surface water management under the Environment Agency's overview.
Collaboration between the agency and councils has already produced results. In Catcliffe, the Rotherham district badly hit last year, six portable pumps were installed earlier this year to divert flood water into the river Rother basin - the two bodies sharing the £200,000 cost. A first phase of flood protection for Rotherham town centre was completed this summer, offering residents and business "welcome relief" says Karl Battersby, director for environment and development services. The next priority is the removal of the Don Bridge, a major obstruction to flows into the river. These works are being supported by the Environment Agency, the European Regional Development Fund, the council and the regional development agency.
In addition, it is accepted that counties and unitary councils should look at all emergency plans within their areas and make sure they complement and reinforce each other. They will have to compile registers of the drains, culverts, streams and waterways that constitute a flood risk. It's suggested they be put online, but by doing so councils are opening themselves to public accountability and will need to report who owns these "drainage assets" and who is responsible for their upkeep. That will not lack controversy when up to a quarter of all sewers are privately owned and maintained, and the privatised water companies sometimes resist linking them to main sewers on the grounds they are not up to standard.
Behind that lie questions about the right of developers to build on land they own - including developers of the government's favoured eco towns - leading to a question broached but not resolved in the Pitt report: must development control, let alone planning permission, become much more restrictive if floods are to be minimised in future?
This soon becomes an issue for party politics. Pitt prescribes a more intrusive role for councils, both in managing flood risk and preparing for emergencies. Will the political parties take differing tacks over how interventionist councils should be? Some Conservatives seem keen to see councils intervene. Over the role of builders in the wake of the floods Paul Bettison, the Tory spokesman on environment for the Local Government Association, said he wanted councils to "crack down on rogue traders and sloppy workmanship".
The Tory-controlled LGA welcomed Pitt. The floods and water bill promised by the government for next year would need to enhance councils' statutory powers and put a duty on other players to cooperate, but will it be disappointed in its wish to see a review of the "fiscal framework for flood risk"? Will its apparent enthusiasm for new charges for surface water management - to be paid, presumably, by households along with businesses - be matched by the Tory front bench?
