WET News

14 WET NEWS MAY 2016 ONSITE Flood risk MAnAgeMent Building a better system for flood resilience • A consistent, comprehensive and transparent framework should be adopted to ensure the full range of impacts are identified and assessed for flood resilience. MWH's dr Bruce Horton explains why. projEcT SpEcS • revise the current funding regime to incentivise more sustainable approaches to flood resilience • Consider the full environmental and social impacts of land use in the decision-making M ore than six million properties are currently at risk of flooding. More people are being affected by more severe and more frequent flooding, and this is a situation that is likely to worsen. The drivers, which include land use change, housing and infrastructure growth (caused by population growth and demographic changes), climate change and deteriorating assets, are well understood. The impacts of flooding are also well known, albeit difficult to estimate. They include risk to life, damage to property, distress and anxiety, environmental damage, disruption to families, communities, infrastructure, and to the economy. According to one estimate, this winter's floods are expected to cost the insurance industry, homeowners, businesses, infrastructure providers and others more than £5bn*. But how is flood risk management funded now? The majority of funding for flood risk management goes on flood defences, rather than increasing our general resilience against flooding. Capital spending on flood defences of around £0.7bn a year comes from the general taxpayer, via Treasury grant- in-aid (Defra, 2015). Last year, maintenance accounted for a further £171M. In total, this represents around 90% of total spending on flood risk management. High risk areas There is an array of other, smaller sources of funding. These include the Local Levy (a levy on local authorities raised by the Environment Agency's Regional Flood and Coastal Committees), Partnership Funding (with contributions from local communities and central government), drainage charges (raised by Internal Drainage Boards), local authorities and European funding. Most (though not all) families and businesses affected by flooding are protected by insurance policies. The new Flood Re scheme, operational from last month, aims to ensure that affordable flood insurance remains widely available to those in high risk areas for the next 25 years. Is there anything wrong with the funding regime? Well, the current funding regime could be revised to incentivise more sustainable approaches to flood resilience. There are two underlying issues that we need to resolve: Firstly, the bulk of funding on flood defence, including capital spending and emergency assistance, is provided by the general taxpayer. This could be changed to strengthen the relationship between those who contribute to flood risk, those who benefit from flood risk reduction*, and those who pay Secondly, the full environmental and social impacts of land use decisions need to be considered in the decision making of planners, developers, farmers and others. This will help optimise flood risk management decisions from a societal perspective What principles, then, should we use to build a better system for flood resilience, and how could we implement it? There are a number of small steps that can be taken to move us in the right direction. 1. Since there are scarce resources for flood risk management funding (it is not practical to protect all properties in all circumstances), a fair and transparent means of making investment decisions is needed. This should be based on an analysis of costs and benefits at the overall programme level to decide how much should be invested overall in flood risk management generally, and flood defence specifically, as well as at the individual scheme level, to decide how to allocate this expenditure. 2. The full range of financial, environmental and social impacts - both public and private - should be considered in all flood risk management programmes, projects and schemes. As well as 'traditional' flood defence, this includes sewer flooding, sustainable drainage (SuDS) and green infrastructure. It also includes wider land use planning, development and management in both urban and rural areas. A range of tools are available for this purpose and can account for positive and negative impacts on areas like health, recreation and biodiversity, as well as on flood risk itself. 3. A consistent, comprehensive and transparent framework should be adopted for ensuring the full range of impacts are the majority of funding goes on flood defence rather than increasing resilience

• Cover