After the water recedes – a long-term approach to flood risk

Amongst its beauty nature has a devastating ability to prove its dominance over human activity. No-one should doubt the terrible damage that flooding does.  Rushing to deal with flood warnings, the sandbagging, the high-water mark and the long, slow process of putting homes and communities back together. Flooding poses a stark dilemma to governments about dealing with immediate devastation and responding to long-term risk.

Exactly two years ago the government published its first ever Climate Change Risk Assessment as mandated under the Climate Change Act (2008). This is was yet another scientific assessment that placed flooding as the greatest risk our country faces from a changing climate. That year – 2012 – we had a drought followed by the wettest summer on record. Two years on we start another New Year with more floods.

Whilst it is welcome that the government have convened COBRA to co-ordinate the national response to the current threat, Ministers have bigger questions to answer about their approach to flooding.  Long-before the obsession with ‘green crap’, David Cameron took a sledgehammer to the department for the environment with a 30% cut in funding months after taking office. In 2010, investment in England and Wales’ flood defences fell from £354m
to £259m a year for each of the next four years. The Environment Agency faced its own cuts to important environmental provision, yet innocuous sounding, for river dredging and maintenance. The Environment Agency still has a further 1,500 staff to cut as part of the most recent spending settlement, including around 500 people working on flooding.

The size of the hammer taken to Defra revealed more about the government’s approach than simply its antipathy to the meddlesome pursuit of environmental protection. In a period of austerity, the premium was on protecting front-line services. For most, this meant the visible image of schools, hospitals and the police.  River dredgers, environmental planners and field officers did not meet that definition.  The dilemma still stands: when money is tight what is the right balance in protecting services that much of the public will never come across, unless perhaps in an emergency.

But let’s be clear about what the government did on flooding.  In 2010, the government didn’t just cut funding they tore apart the cross-party consensus forged out of the terrible floods of 2007. The 2007 floods were the largest peacetime emergency since World War Two. Around 40,000 homes were flooded, 13 people lost their lives and it cost £3bn in insurance claims and clean-up.

The floods led the then Labour government to commission the Pitt Review to set out a long-term and sustainable approach to managing future risk.  One of its central recommendations was that flood spending should increase substantially, a commitment that Labour Ministers honoured. The Conservatives also supported that consensus, before the election. That doesn’t mean that Labour wouldn’t have faced difficult choices if the party had won in 2010, but those challenges are in direct contrast to the cavalier approach taken by coalition ministers in the aftermath of their victory.

None of this means that had the axe not fallen in 2010 homes would not be at threat now. The Government has admitted it got it wrong and put an extra £120 million into flood defences in the 2012 Autumn Statement.  Further announcements have been made about extra investment in flood infrastructure, but the momentum has been lost. Even with the extra money the Government will still spend less on flood defences in 2013/14 than was spent in 2008.

A long-term sustainable approach is needed to help the UK adapt to its changing climate and the increasing likelihood of extreme weather, be that flooding or drought. Every £1 invested in flood prevention saves £8 later.  The nature of the risk goes beyond the lifetime of any one elected government, so it also requires a political consensus about investment and the scale of the challenges facing us.

Andrew Pakes is the Labour & Co-operative Parliamentary Candidate for Milton Keynes South and is a former advisor to the Shadow Environment team