Debate contribution: Flooding: Six Mile River

Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on 17 February 2026.

MLA

Dr Steve Aiken OBE

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

17 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Flooding: Six Mile River

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5395107

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, indeed, Mr Speaker, and thank you for chairing the Adjournment debate on flooding along the Six Mile river. I start by thanking the many constituents who have been in touch with me on the issue. In particular, I thank the Antrim and District Angling Association; the unfortunate residents whom we have helped whose homes have been inundated with floodwaters or, even more regrettably, with sewage and other grey water effluent; our great local councillors; our mayor, Leah Kirkpatrick; Councillors Vera McWilliam and Stewart Wilson; Robin Swann MP and his and our office teams; our numerous council workers; the PSNI; the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service; and the numerous members of the public who stepped up to deal with the recent floods. I also thank the officials from DAERA, DFI Rivers, Northern Ireland Water (NIW) and our local council who have been speaking with me not just about the recent flooding but about their real concerns raised over the past many years. In addition to council officials and the other public servants who have come to our office, I have been contacted by some officials anonymously. That is because they have come to the conclusion that, regrettably, they are not being listened to. Minister, the sad issue is that the flooding along the Six Mile, its tributaries, its streams and its associated fluvial zones was entirely predictable, and the warning signs have been around for well over a decade or more. As, I am sure, the Minister has been briefed by officials, the Six Mile covers the majority of the South Antrim constituency. It is the riparian heart of Antrim and Newtownabbey. It is the home to species of brown trout, including the rare Dollaghan. It is a salmon spawning ground and is a home to otters, kingfishers, herons, swans, ducks and many aquatic species. It has also been subject to several severe pollution incidents, with fish kills caused by run-offs from waste water treatment plants, slurry inundations and the release of chemicals. The Six Mile is a fragile ecosystem, one that is now under severe and increasing pressure from two significant factors: the first is the climate emergency, and the second is the sclerotic and deadening hand of bureaucracy and regulation. Storm Chandra has been just one of the ever-increasing severe weather events that are deluging Northern Ireland. So-called 100-year weather events now occur with much greater frequency than once a century. It seems and analyses begin to show that storms bring much more concentrated amounts of rainfall. We seem to have 100-year events happening monthly or even bimonthly at the moment. That often overwhelms river banks that have been denuded of vegetation, storm drains that have not been maintained for years and water and sewerage infrastructure that has not been invested in. It runs straight off tarmac, over gardens and along badly drained car parks, trying to find natural watercourses that have been blocked by developments. It is no longer attenuated by dams placed over a century and a half ago and reduced in size because of reservoirs legislation that was, until recently, neglected in departmental reshuffles and runs off super-saturated land. One thing that spending three decades in the Royal Navy taught me was that the water always wins, unless it is carefully managed.

In my constituency, residents of Riverside, Dunadry, Ballyclare, Ballynure and along the length of the Six Mile river have seen their properties damaged, roads cut off and blockages along the river and its tributaries adding to surface flooding on the roads. The effects have been wider, however. With the saturation of the water table, the land cannot absorb any more water, so it continues to run off into the tributaries across most of South Antrim. When the water meets the main river at its highest level, the standing water forces it to back up, meaning that even some homes on higher ground that have never been subject to flooding find that the surface run-off has nowhere to go. With much of our drainage being impeded, blocked or consisting of pipes that are unable to deal with the quantities of water — for instance, on the Ballycorr Road in Ballyclare — water overspills into common storm drains, forcing sewage into the streets or, worse, back up out of toilets and drains in people's homes. That has turned the aforementioned Ballycorr Road's potholes, pot craters and pot canyons into a reasonable scale model of the Grand Canyon with added sludge. Some civil servants love "metsplaining" to me — I declare an interest, because, in a previous job, I helped fund the climate change research centre at the Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services for several years — that such water inundations are unpredictable. They are unpredictable only if you do not bother looking at the latest predictions. I recently took the opportunity to examine the data and modelling being used by the many Departments that should have responsibility for flood management. I have recently tabled questions for written answer on whether the extent of the recent flooding has been mapped against existing flood maps and flood map projections. Members may not be aware that the provision of detailed mapping is the responsibility of the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI). He has to work with the Minister for Infrastructure to keep the mapping updated, as it is also the responsibility of DFI Rivers. Objectives include reducing the number of properties at risk of inundation. The Minister for Infrastructure is also responsible for Northern Ireland Water. Given the real challenges as a result of flooding in the greater Belfast area, Northern Ireland Water produced its Living with Water plan, which could form the basis of a model for other catchment areas, although it has been shelved indefinitely by the Minister. The AERA Minister cannot be left out, as he has responsibility for monitoring emergency water pollution and dealing with it. Local area planning is the responsibility of Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council and is based on the information provided by the statutory agencies. The council seeks to balance the needs of development against the constraints of the environment. Local planners, however, can act only within the guidance that they are given. The most recent strategic planning policy statement (SPPS), which is edition 2 from 2025, clearly states:

"development in areas with increased vulnerability to the effects of climate change, particularly areas at significant risk from flooding"

should be avoided. The flooding guidance that it refers to is Planning Policy Statement 15 (PPS 15), which is the revised statement on planning and flood risk and is dated September 2014. As far as I can see, unless I am corrected, it uses data from Met Office projections for 2004. I can find no modelling or mapping data that is recent, by which I mean from within the past five years. I do hope that my analysis is wrong, but to base local development plans on data that is almost a quarter of a century old at a time of rapidly changing climate conditions seems to be suboptimal at least. I could go on about annual exceedance probability (AEP), which is the annual probability of a flood exceeding the peak floodwater level. It is a method that is utilised in other jurisdictions but, again, relies on having up-to-date mapping data and on when the most recent update using the precautionary approach to susceptibility to floods was done. I suspect that the answer would be similar, however. If data from 2004, which, as I said, has not been updated since then, was used, it is little surprise that the planning guidance did not provide for adequacy. While officials in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) will be using and analysing data from who knows when, the insurance industry definitely will not be. It is making near-real-time actuarial predictions on flood damage and claims, which will be much to the detriment of my constituents, who bought their homes in good faith, based on planning policy that is way out of date. Minister, the Six Mile river also offers an opportunity for environmental and flood management. As local organisations such as the angling association have said, use the river to help us. We should replant suitable vegetation along its banks and create natural sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). After all, the bog meadows in Ballyclare were called that for a reason: the area used to absorb the flooding. We should create biodiversity buffers. We should take the Six Mile river and turn its natural amenities into something that all can enjoy and make much of the river a contiguous park across our council areas.

The floods are also a wake-up call to you and other Ministers to stop ignoring the responsibility to ensure that you have updated policies and, above all, modelling of what is happening and what is likely to happen. The so-called 100-year events will not be 100 years apart, as some think; they will not even be annual events. As we have seen from the rainfall that we are having, we are looking at extreme weather events happening four, five or maybe six times a year. We will be affected not just in the winter but in all seasons, including the summer. The flooding events are not unpredictable. My constituents and other people across Northern Ireland cannot be refused the best guidance and planning policy because officialdom has not updated its basic information or policy for a quarter of a century. Minister, that is not an act of unpredictable, extreme weather; it is a failure of policy.

1,609 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:52 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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