If areas at high risk of flooding in Britain are to remain habitable, let alone investable, we will need an approach to flooding that takes advantage of the full suite of tools available, in a coordinated way. Yet, while communities and businesses are stepping up, central government can be frustratingly aloof. Its approach is sometimes contradictory and risks undermining the work being done by others.
One difficult issue, as always, concerns development. Indeed, of the 1.5m homes the government wants to build, some estimates suggest that 100,000 could be built in Flood Zone 3. From the standpoint of communities working relentlessly to diminish their flood risk, this can look like saying it is ok to flood after all, discounting their lived experience and ignoring the evidence that flooding causes PTSD.
As the government promotes PFR use by communities and individuals, it is reluctant to mandate any level of it in building regulations, even for buildings in flood risk areas. This ignores repeated calls from the ABI, Flood Re, and the Town and Country Planning Association for its inclusion. In light of such contradictory messages, it can feel like communities are the only ones expected to deliver resilience. This will not work.
Another example of governments missing in action concerns sewer flooding. Ofwat estimates that 5,700 properties have flooded internally with sewage in the 2024-2025 year. The overwhelming consensus is that Schedule 3 of the 2010 Flood and Water Management Act, which mandates SUDs and diminishes pressure on sewers, should be implemented. The government, however, paused Schedule 3 rollout within weeks of arriving in office, even after Emma Hardy had championed it and taken the last government to task over failing to implement it.
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Sadly the list of inconsistencies continues. Flooded People UK staff travel across the country and repeatedly meet surface-water-flooded people who live in areas scheduled for more development, which is likely to worsen their problem. From their standpoint, this is maddening. And, even with the recent announcements that 1,000 flood alleviation schemes would go ahead, rumours are now swirling that Defra is considering cuts to the flood defence capital scheme the last government secured.
A chorus of experts ranging from the ABI to the National Infrastructure Commission is united in calling for more spending on defences, not less, with particular attention to the need for long-term commitments and maintenance budgets. Going against this advice would be a profound betrayal of flooded communities, who are already showing exceptional resilience. They are leading the way at the local level, doing what they can to prepare, mitigate, and coordinate.
Community action can help, but it has a ceiling. While communities are capable of local heroism and getting back on their feet after devastating events, they cannot deliver an entire flood alleviation scheme or a protection standard across the country. Nor can they compensate for a failure to transition to a risk-reflective and affordable market for home insurance if the government fails to meet its commitments under the Flood Re scheme. And their resilience must never be used to justify government inaction.
In the absence of long-term targets and a strategy for delivering them, the resolute actions of communities and businesses will lack coherence and effectiveness. There is a need for coordination and resourcing, which is where the government must step in and deliver. Flooded people are stepping up. We hope the government can meet us halfway.
Flooded People UK is building a national community of impacted people to facilitate peer support, whether emotional or practical, and collective lobbying.