Report examining impact of flooding in the UK since 2007 makes 24 recommendations for change

A new report from independent think tank Bright Blue has called on government departments, local authorities and even the NHS to instigate change to tackling the UK’s growing flooding problem.

Examining flooding impacts across the UK from 2007, the In Deep Water report argues that Defra, the Environment Agency (EA), the Greater London Authority, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DHULC) and more all have a role to play in a radical rethink in approaches to flood-risk mitigation, management and monitoring/reporting.

The report sets out 24 recommendations for change that it says will better help better prepare public services and key infrastructure for flooding, improve community resilience to flooding, better support local government and improve urban drainage.

Among them is a call for government to conduct a civil resilience exercise for an extreme rainfall event in a major urban area, incorporating significant infrastructure failure.

It also calls on the government to launch a major public information campaign covering all aspects of flooding to increase ‘national resilience’.

Elsewhere the report calls on the CCC to include more explicit assessments of risks to urban transport systems for flooding in future reports to Parliament.

The list of recommendations continues with a call for the DHULC to explicitly acknowledge tackling flooding as part of their remit, and to designate a minister to have overall responsibility for incorporating into policy-making decisions within their department.

The report also calls on Defra and the EA to increase transparency on flood defence spending decisions and extend their new analysis of plausible extreme scenarios for surface water flooding to emergency services and hospitals.

Bright Blue Associate Fellow and report author Helen Jackson commented:

“The disruption caused by Storm Arwen highlights the need to make our infrastructure resilient to extreme weather, and be more preventative and less reactive. Many towns and cities in the UK are seeing repeat episodes of flash flooding affecting households, businesses, and transport systems.

“We need to recognise this trend and do much more to ensure our urban drainage and sewer systems can cope with heavy rainfall as the climate changes. This should include limiting the spread of impermeable surfaces in our cities and ensuring basic measures like drain cleaning are not overlooked.

“The recent furore over sewage spills highlighted the importance of adequate drainage and sewerage systems for environmental quality – but this is not just an environmental issue, it is a public safety issue.”

Read the report in full here.

More on flooding:

Flooding tops list of climate risks posed to physical assets, says UK-US executive survey