Flood risk management in Scotland: Governance and developing shared agendas

This report looks at the governance of Flood Risk Management (FRM) in Scotland with the aim of identifying areas for improvement to develop shared agendas among all FRM stakeholders. Furthermore, this project includes the additional aim of investigating Transport Scotland’s (TS) role within Scotland’s FRM framework and whether their role should be reconsidered; primarily by discussing the potential for making TS a ‘responsible authority’ (RA) under the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 (FRMA).

This work is useful because there is a need to develop shared agendas among all stakeholders involved in FRM in Scotland. Currently, stakeholder objectives are not aligned on a nationwide level with many stakeholders operating under their own agenda and prerogative. While this is understandable, we believe there is an opportunity to focus on nationwide objectives for the progress of FRM in Scotland. This work is further useful as while TS operates to keep transport networks open and FRM is, therefore, part of what they do. They are not legally required to carry out FRM functions. For that reason, it is at least worth starting the discussion of whether TS should become a ‘responsible authority’.

This project was completed by Blair Mackie as part of a funded internship under the ECCI Consultancy Innovation Programme.