What can be done about Britain’s floods?

The Christmas weekend downpour in the north of the country could have caused up to £1.5bn of damage. What's to be done about Britain's floods? Simon Wilson reports.

What's happened?

Britain has once again been lashed by heavy winter rainfall, causing major flooding. In early December, Cumbria (an area prone to rain-related flooding) was badly hit, as were parts of Lancashire.

Over Christmas some places saw a month's worth of rain dumped in just a day, causing serious flooding across the north of England this time in major cities such as York (another flooding trouble spot), as well as (less seriously) Leeds and Manchester. Eastern Scotland, too, has been hard hit, as have parts of Wales (and indeed Ireland).

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Ominously, the Cumbria floods are the second in ten years to be billed as once-in-200-years events. December was the second-wettest on record (following the wettest January in 2014). And worryingly, in several places the floods overwhelmed defences that had been improved and strengthened within the past few years.

What's the economic damage?

It's early days, but according to initial estimates from PwC, the flooding in Cumbria and Lancashire following Storm Desmond in early December caused total economic losses of between £900m and £1.3bn, with the insurance industry bearing about three-quarters of that cost. Meanwhile, the impact of the Christmas weekend floods (caused by Storm Eva) could top £1.5bn. Wrangling over whether government cuts are to blame continues to rage.

Has it really cut spending?

Yes. Despite the government's boast that it is investing £2.3bn on 1,400 schemes to protect 300,000 houses across England and Wales and promises of an immediate extra £50m to help Cumbria and £40m to help Yorkshire, the fact is (according to figures cited by The Economist) that the Cameron government cut spending on flood-protection by one-fifth after coming to power in 2010.

Despite a splurge in 2014 (following floods in Somerset) spending has fallen back in real (after-inflation) terms to below the 2010 level. This has "resulted in hundreds of relatively cheap flood-defence schemes being cancelled, including one that could have prevented Leeds city centre flooding" this time round.

Is it about climate change?

Britain is a notably wet island whose towns and cities have been flooding for centuries, so there is doubtless truth to the argument that what has changed most is our expectation of keeping dry. But equally clearly, say scientists, there is a causal relationship between the gradually warming atmosphere and the volume and intensity of rainfall.

The warmer the atmosphere, the more moisture it can hold about an extra 7% of water for each one degree centigrade. Hotter air is also more volatile, meaning more intensive bursts of rainfall are likely. So for Britain, whose weather is frequently shaped by low pressure systems formed in the north Atlantic, the likely impact of rising global temperatures is that we will get more rain and more intensive storms of the type that caused the floods.

How much more?

Estimates vary widely, but according to a National Audit Office report, the cost of repairing flood damage in the UK already stands at about £1.1bn a year, which it reckons could rise to £27bn a year by 2080. And one in six houses is at risk of flooding some 5.2 million properties.

Even if you accept that there is a necessary balance to be struck between the false economy of building inadequate defences, and the unjustifiable expense of attempting to insure against all conceivable risk, the increasing frequency of serious floods has clear implications for how much the UK needs to spend and also for flood-management policy more broadly.

What implications?

First, we need to reconsider where we build (see below). Second, rather than build ever-bigger defences, we may need to rethink how we live in our houses (higher electricity sockets; flagstones rather than carpets on the ground floor; etc) and how to make them more flood-proof (drives built of porous materials; better drainage; watertight doors; the use of materials less prone to water damage). Third, argues Charles Clover in The Sunday Times, we need a policy-making structure that puts the river catchment area at the centre of decision making and focuses on how to slow the water down upstream and release it gradually.

Several commentators have pointed to Pickering, the North York Moors town that has flooded four times between 1999 and 2007. Instead of building a £20m flood defence wall, £2m was invested in upstream, upland schemes (167 porous wooden dams; 187 lesser obstructions; the planting of 29 hectares of woodland; a temporary dam holding 120,000 cubic metres of water) to slow the flood water at source. This winter, Pickering has stayed dry. So far.

How culpable are housebuilders?

Britain currently still builds nearly 10,000 houses a year on floodplains, despite the growing warnings over extreme flooding. One new house in every 14 built in 2013-2014 (the most recent year for which data are available) was built on land that has a significant chance of flooding, either from a river or the sea.

There is an argument (made by Guy Michaels of the London School of Economics, for example) that housebuilders are in effect given an incentive to build there by the state's role in paying for protective and clean-up measures. If we must build on floodplains, then at least builders should be obliged to take on far more of the risk involved in doing so.