Guest blog: We must improve how we manage flood risk

Paul Cobbing, Chief Executive of the National Flood Forum

Flood water can drag the heart out of communities.  Once the water, the politicians and the cameras are gone, people have a long hard grind to get their lives back to normal and the trauma can live with people for the rest of their lives. This is why we must get better at managing flood risk to protect our communities. Flooding should be a priority for all of national and local government, both to fund and maintain defences, but also to ensure that this money is not wasted through poor development, lack of maintenance of gullies, culverts and bridges, and inadequate riparian management.

We still have a very long way to go.

Managing flood risk using the full range of tools from catchment management to flood defences, and reducing the impact on individual homes is essential to protect people against the effects on flooding. Though, as the recent report on Defra performance from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee highlighted, the low level of funding for flood risk management, particularly maintenance, is concerning  for the millions of homes at risk of flooding. A much longer-term, more coherent, better co-ordinated approach is desperately needed in this country, that includes all of the factors that affect flood risk.

This is why the National Flood Forum is supporting the Flood Free Homes campaign, for a sensible long term approach to land and water management. We must act now, as climate change and factors such as development and higher population density mean that the problem is getting worse. We need sustained and co-ordinated investment in building and maintaining flood defences, a sensible approach to building new sustainable housing and long-term thinking about flood prevention that does not get caught up in the politics.

Flooding throughout the world is becoming more extreme as a result of changing weather patterns and increasing populations.  Here in the UK we’ve had more severe floods in the last ten years than in the generation before.  Flooding can hit anywhere now – not just near the major rivers.

The devastating nationwide floods in 2007 created the biggest peacetime civil emergency since the Second World War. According to the Pitt Review, 55,000 properties were flooded, with 7,000 people needing to be rescued from flood waters and 13 people died. Recently, the annual cost of flood damage has been £1.1 billion and is set to rise.

At the National Flood Forum, we work with communities at risk of flooding to offer advice and support them when preparing for flooding and starting the recovery process if the worst has happened. We see first-hand how communities can be devastated by flood water and how challenging the recovery can be. We hope in the future that this country will be more resilient and protected against floods, so that fewer of our communities experience this first hand.

Paul Cobbing is Chief Executive of the National Flood Forum.