Last summer, unprecedented rainfall brought catastrophic floods to Britain, devastating large parts of the country and affecting 48,000 homes.

Keen to be seen to act in the immediate aftermath, the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, appointed a floods recovery minister, John Healey, the Minister for Local Government. It was Healey's first full day in the job. “Gordon said: ‘We need someone to coordinate the recovery.' There had never been a role like this in government.”

Healey was given the task of being the face of a government that was taking the situation seriously. And serious the situation undoubtedly was.

The Pitt Review: Lessons Learned from the 2007 Floods estimated that they were a one in 200-year occurrence, Healey says. But freak weather does occur, and less often here than in some countries. Flooding is a major hazard of climate change. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has responsibi-lity for flood protection. Could the Government have been better prepared? “We do have to improve [flood] defences. That is one of the really sharp lessons from last summer, that we hadn't given enough attention to the prevention and preparation,” he says.

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Yet the full scale of the damage could not have been prevented, he insists. The floods were not caused by river or coastal weakness, but the sheer scale of the rain. Even flood-protection campaigners concede that the full scale of the damage could not have been prevented. “Many of the flooded areas had never experienced flooding before.”

It prompted a recovery effort like never before: almost £90 million going to local authority coffers, bypassing the usual Whitehall constraints. Healey was generally impres-sed with the way councils handled the process and recounts tales of councils handing tenants cash payments, schools that set up makeshift launderettes and gave laptops to children living in caravans.

But almost one year on from the floods, as many as 11,000 people are still not back in their homes. Some are still in caravans. Would they agree that the recovery effort has been sufficient?

“It's hard to see what more we could have done. Local authorities pulled out all the stops,” he says. Insurers have inevitably borne the brunt of the estimated £3 billion cost, but Healey insists that they are not a scapegoat. “That's their job - they are there to pay out on the valid claims that people have. By and large they have done a good job.”

With the recovery nearly complete, the attention is shifting back to prevention. Flood defences are clearly crucial, but planning is an equal, if not more important factor. The Government wants three million new homes by 2020. Where will they build them?

“The history of Britain is that we do build on flood plains. The question is: can you do so without ... unreasonable risk? There will be pressure because we badly need so many new homes in Britain,” he says.

New rules introduced in December 2006 require developers to consider low-risk areas first. If the area is prone to flooding, the developer must get advice from the Environment Agency. If planning authorities still want to proceed, ministers can intervene. “We can and will call in and stop such applications,” he says. But it seems to fall far short of a blanket ban on building on flood plains.

In a classic example of government rhetoric, the Pitt review famously described the threat as being “as big as terrorism”? Healey refuses to accept the comparison, but agrees that we are far from immune to devastation in future.

“It could happen again. Of course it could,” he says.

Born: February 13, 1960, in Wakefield
Career: Attended Christ's College, Cambridge. Campaigner for national disability charities and for trade unions before being elected Labour MP for Wentworth in 1997. Appointed Adult Skills Minister in 2001 and joined the Treasury in 2002, first as Economic Secretary, then Financial Secretary. Appointed Local Government Minister in July 2007.
What he says: “I must be the only Government minister trying to work [himself] out of a job.”
Little-known fact: He sailed both ways across the Atlantic. The return journey was aboard a 30ft yacht with a broken engine and just one other person.

No refuge for contractors

The bad news is that private-sector building work is on the slide. Even worse is the news that construction companies hoping to take refuge in the public sector are in for a disappointment. Public Agenda reported two weeks ago that building firms were hoping to weather the current construction storm by winning public contracts.

Now, though, Building (July 11) quotes research indicating that the public sector is incapable of acting as a safety net. To make up for the fall in private work, public sector contracts would need to increase by 34 per cent between now and 2010. But the study predicts no such growth. It says instead that public-sector work will fall by 5 per cent. So hard hats on.

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