FLOOD
DEFENCE spending must be increased to a
minimum of £750m warned the Association
of British Insurers (ABI)
FLOOD DEFENCE spending must be increased
to a minimum of £750M to protect homes
and businesses from a regular dousing,
the Association of British Insurers (ABI)
warned this week.
Many defences are not being
maintained to their design standard,
dramatically increasing the risk of
flooding, the ABI claimed.
It is calling on the government to
bump up funding when it announces the
results of its comprehensive spending
review this autumn.
“The government’s own research shows
that return on (such an) investment
would be in the order of between six and
10 to one,” said an ABI spokesman.
The annual cost of maintaining
existing defences to their design
standard and improving them in line with
climate change is insignificant compared
to the cost of flooding to the economy,
he said.
A National Audit Office report on
Environment Agency flood protection
spending published last Friday, Building
and maintaining river and coastal flood
defences in England, also recommends
that the Agency focuses on improving
maintenance of defences considered to be
at medium or high risk.
Environment Agency head of flood risk
management David Rooke said that climate
change would increase flood risk,
pushing the annual defence funding
requirement to £1bn.
“We currently spend £500M a year.
We’re looking at a very substantial
increase but we have some £20bn worth of
assets to protect at the current [flood
risk] level.”
Rooke added that only about 1% of
flooding results from the failure of
defence. Most flooding is caused when
water spills over embankments.
“We are building new defences to 2050
protection standards, but there are a
lot of legacy assets that we need to
upgrade.”
This will require additional funding,
Rooke said.
But MWH technical director David
Balmforth argued that it would be
impossible to provide failsafe flood
protection as climate change
accelerates.
“Money needs to be targeted at
improving flood forecasting and finding
alternative methods of flood
management,” he said.
He added that all new developments
should be planned with flooding in mind,
and that flood-prone towns and villages
should reconsider how they use their
land.
“Traditionally we’ve tried to prevent
flooding but that’s not sustainable.
Water moves through urban environments
in a completely random and unpredictable
way.
“We need to look at ways of managing
that. We need to find pathways to allow
water to pass through urban areas in the
least damaging way.
“Roads need to serve a dual role as
flood pathways. Car parks and
playgrounds need to be used to
temporarily store flood water,” said
Balmforth.
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