Wednesday, January 17, 2024
A deluge of cuts
The Guardian tells us about a report by the House of Commons public accounts committee that has found that deteriorating flood defences mean more than 200,000 homes in England are at risk of flooding due to Environment Agency budget shortfalls.
They say that MPs have concluded that the Agency failed to meet a target of maintaining 98% of “high consequence” flood defences and has had to downgrade the number of properties it aims to protect by 2027 from 336,000 to 200,000:
New houses were being built on floodplains without checks being carried out to make sure suitable flood defences had been put in place, the MPs said. They described the failure as “unforgivable”.
Some 5.7 million properties were at risk of flooding in England in 2022 and 2023 and this number is expected to increase as climate breakdown brings more intense downpours more often.
Flooding across the UK earlier this month damaged nearly 2,000 properties.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chair of the Commons committee, said robust flood resilience must become a priority.
“The depredations caused by such disasters are a matter of life and death for communities up and down the country,” he said. “This inquiry has uncovered the alarming truth that in a number of ways, the approach to keeping our citizens safe in this area is contradictory and self-defeating, not least in the continuing development of new housing in areas of high flood risk without appropriate mitigations.”
The committee said the government should set a measure of how many properties were protected from flooding that took into account the number with poor defences, as well as new constructions.
It should also ensure that smaller projects found it easier to get approval so that rural villages had the same right to protection as others, they said.
What is really bizarre about this report is that the government is still allowing homes to be built on flood plains. Have they learnt nothing?
They say that MPs have concluded that the Agency failed to meet a target of maintaining 98% of “high consequence” flood defences and has had to downgrade the number of properties it aims to protect by 2027 from 336,000 to 200,000:
New houses were being built on floodplains without checks being carried out to make sure suitable flood defences had been put in place, the MPs said. They described the failure as “unforgivable”.
Some 5.7 million properties were at risk of flooding in England in 2022 and 2023 and this number is expected to increase as climate breakdown brings more intense downpours more often.
Flooding across the UK earlier this month damaged nearly 2,000 properties.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chair of the Commons committee, said robust flood resilience must become a priority.
“The depredations caused by such disasters are a matter of life and death for communities up and down the country,” he said. “This inquiry has uncovered the alarming truth that in a number of ways, the approach to keeping our citizens safe in this area is contradictory and self-defeating, not least in the continuing development of new housing in areas of high flood risk without appropriate mitigations.”
The committee said the government should set a measure of how many properties were protected from flooding that took into account the number with poor defences, as well as new constructions.
It should also ensure that smaller projects found it easier to get approval so that rural villages had the same right to protection as others, they said.
What is really bizarre about this report is that the government is still allowing homes to be built on flood plains. Have they learnt nothing?
