The severe flooding of last November and December, as well as recent Storms Ciara and Dennis, have brought renewed focus on whether the Government is doing enough to protect and support high flood risk communities, both before and after flood events. For some hard hit places, for example in the Doncaster area, it has been the second or third major flood event they have experienced in two decades.
The UK needs to become a climate ready nation. We know that flooding is going to get worse with climate change. This means not only that we develop foresight on physical impacts and effective adaptation policies at a technical level, but also that we understand the human impact. Supporting flood-hit communities, rather than leaving them to shoulder crippling financial impacts alone, is a clear test of whether we can respond to climate change as a decent society.
This needs to be viewed not just as a matter of individual tough luck. It is all too easy to foresee scenarios where high-risk communities experience repeat flooding, the flood component of home insurance becomes prohibitively expensive or unavailable for growing numbers of properties, and this has knock-on effects for the entire community and local economy. These impacts could include small businesses being deterred by lack of insurance cover; the cost of uninsured losses hitting spending power on local goods and services; and rows of blighted houses which cannot be mortgaged or sold on —what one commentator has called “flood ghettos”.