Flood of Money Wasted on Wrong Flood Protection

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• Flood of Money Wasted on Wrong Flood Protection

02 December 2016 | Updated 01 January 1970

England’s flood strategy failing, says a new study and says a new approach is urgently needed from government to protect communities and stop costs spiralling

New research from the think tank the Green Alliance has revealed that, in England:

• Nearly four times as much money (£1.5 billion) is spent on land management that ignores or even increases flood risk, than on land management that helps to prevent flooding (£419 million).

• Twice as much money (£613 million) is spent on dealing with the after effects of a flood than on hard flood defences (£269 million).

As well as the devastation caused to local communities, flooding in northern England in 2015 cost the economy £5 billion according to the Green Alliance. If floods continue to be managed in the same way, associated damages could increase by as much as 150 per cent by the 2080s. And, in the worst case scenario, the number of people living in properties exposed to flooding could rise by as much as 98%.

The report says a major failing of the current system is its lack of support for natural flood management methods (NFM), which have been proven to reduce flood risk when used alongside traditional flood defences. In the North Yorkshire town of Pickering, methods such as creating woody debris barriers in rivers have reduced peak river flows by as much as 7.5%, which allowed it to escape the floods in 2012.

The report has three chief conclusions:

1. The UK farming support scheme that replaces the Common Agricultural Policy should reward land management that helps to prevent flooding.

2. A dedicated fund for natural flood management projects should be established. This would allow enough evidence to be gathered at larger, catchment scale to demonstrate where NFM is best applied as part of flood risk management programmes.

3. Regional Catchment Management Boards are needed across England, to consolidate decision making powers related to flood risk in a single local body.

Welcoming the report, Patrick Begg, rural enterprises director at National Trust, said: “Post-Brexit we have an opportunity to create a system that rewards and incentivises farmers and land managers to implement natural solutions to slow the flow of flood waters. Farmers are perfectly positioned to make these small interventions in how they manage land that can have a big impact in reducing flooding, saving us all millions of pounds in the long term. Public money is needed to support farmers in delivering these public benefits. But our own work with Green Alliance suggests that it should also be possible to set up a market for services from farming that today go unrewarded, reducing flood risks, improving water quality and boosting biodiversity.

"Natural flood management is effective. On the National Trust’s Holnicote estate we have worked with our tenant farmers to plant trees, create bunds to hold back floods, reinstate functioning water meadows and put back river meanders. During last week’s storms the villages of Allerford and Bossington, which previously would have suffered after heavy rain, avoided flooding largely thanks to these measures.”

Daniel Johns, head of adaptation for the Committe on Climate Change, said: “For too long we have ignored the impact of intensive farming on downstream flood risk. We need to manage catchments more intelligently, for food production but also to hold back and store floodwater where it will do least damage. This isn’t an alternative to continuing to invest in hard flood engineering, but a compliment, by slowing and managing flood flows so that downstream defences can do their job. Leaving the EU means we now have the opportunity to completely rethink our approach to agriculture and land management in the context of climate change and develop policies that value natural features like healthy peatlands, woodlands and functional floodplains for the range of benefits they deliver.”

Article by Angela Francis, senior economist at Green Alliance. afrancis@green-alliance.org.uk

Angela Francis

This analysis reveals how we are spending hundreds of millions of pounds of public money in ways that are perverse. Just by allocating current funding more rationally the government could reduce the burden on the public purse, save vulnerable communities from the misery of flooding, and increase the health of our natural environment.

We welcome the government’s announcement of £15 million of additional funding for natural flood management, and urge that it be used as an innovation fund to support catchment scale trials of these approaches. This is the only way we can understand how cost effective it could be in preventing and managing floods.

Article written by Angela Francis | Published 02 December 2016

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