Flood insurance in Britain is going to become harder to obtain in the future. An agreement by insurers to provide household flood insurance at a reasonable cost anywhere in Britain expired at the end of 2002, and already many insurers are not offering cover for new business. The stated reasons for this agreement being discontinued are the lack of adequate planning controls and a lack of adequate spending on flood defences. These reasons have caused some surprise in Scotland, where since Devolution in 1999, planning controls have been tightened up by most local planning authorities to limit any building in the floodplain, and spending on flood defences has risen dramatically.