The Pitt Review - Learning Lessons from the 2007 floods
Society Must Take Flooding More Seriously
Sir Michael will call for change and direction within society to take flooding and natural hazards more seriously, when he speaks at a conference on Critical National Infrastructure on the 16 April 2008.
The full text of this speech is available below.
Progress on urgent recommendations
In December 2007 we published the Interim Report on lessons learned from the 2007 floods. It highlighted 15 urgent recommendations believed to be necessary to prevent or mitigate flooding which might occur before the final report is published. These recommendations were not just for government, they also called for urgent action by local organisations, the private sector and the public.
Hilary Benn, on behalf of the Government, accepted all of the urgent recommendations on the day of publication and undertook to work with all organisations involved to deliver changes as quickly as possible. In the Interim Report, Sir Michael promised to monitor work against the urgent recommendations and committed to publish a commentary on what had been achieved by the end of March of this year.
This commentary can be found here[PDF, 10 pages, 182 KB]. Overall, we are pleased to report that strong progress has been made against the majority of the recommendations. However, there are areas for concern and in the commentary Sir Michael explains what more he believes should be done.
Background
In August 2007, Sir Michael Pitt was asked by Ministers to conduct an independent review of the flooding emergency that took place in June and July 2007.
Sir Michael Pitt
Sir Michael's interim report on the causes and consequences of the floods was published in December 2007 and the Recovery chapter of this interim report was published in March 2008. The consultation period on the interim report ran from January until March 2008. Many thanks to all organisations and members of the public who commented on the interim report, whether by phone, email, letter or through the website. Your feedback is vital to our review and we appreciate the time you have taken to read the interim report and comment on it.
Our final report is due to be published in summer 2008.
