Flood Risk Management Committee (FRMC) terms of reference

Terms of Reference agreed: November 2023
Next review date: September 2024

Purpose

The Flood Risk Management Committee (FRMC) is a committee established by the Board to provide timely advice and assurance in relation to its remit and to make specific decisions and undertake specific functions as delegated to it by the Board.

Specifically, the Board has established FRMC in order to discharge a number of NRW’s statutory FRM responsibilities.

In particular, FRMC advises the Board on the investment, management, strategy and planning of flood risk investment proposals.

Scope

FRMC is required and authorised by the Board to:

Assist the Board to fulfil NRW’s statutory flood risk management functions;
To provide scrutiny and approval of the flood risk management capital programme allocations, advising the Board on overall performance of the flood (capital) provisions;
Provide scrutiny and oversight of reservoir safety;
Scrutinise and provide assurance to the Board on performance towards the Corporate Plan Wellbeing Objectives as relevant to FRMC.

Responsibilities

To provide advice to the Executive Team, and make recommendations to the NRW Board as appropriate, on:

the current and medium-term flood risk management investment programmes of NRW, particularly to help ensure that evidence-based investment decisions are made, value for money is achieved, and full utilisation of available budgets is made;
other key flood risk management issues on a ‘needs-be’ basis;
the proposals for rates and levies of Internal Drainage Districts, which are currently set annually;

oversight of reservoir safety.

Meetings

FRMC will aim to meet four times per year, typically including January and June to assist the programming and budgetary cycle.

Additional meetings may be convened as required.

The meetings will be supported by the Secretariat team, the Flood Strategic Planning & Investment team and members of the Finance team.

Membership

FMRC will be chaired by Professor Peter Fox.

Membership will include four non-executive Board members (inclusive of the Committee Chair).

The Executive Director of Operations and the Head of Flood Incident Risk Management will also normally attend meetings.

Members of FRMC should not normally also be members of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) to maintain separation and minimise possible conflicts of interest.

However, where this is not possible or there is a strong case for members to sit on both committees due to their specific areas of expertise, suitable arrangements should be made to manage any conflicts of interest. For example, the committee member may need to absent themselves from any discussions at ARAC pertaining to flood capital funding.

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