Is the UK ready for floods?

Heavy downpours and thunderstorms threaten to cause significant flooding across parts of England and Wales, with "more than a month's worth of rain" set to fall in the next 24 hours in some areas. The Environment Agency has issued 13 flood warnings and 71 alerts for possible flooding, mainly in central and southern England.

An amber weather warning has been issued for the south Midlands, southern and southwest England, "indicating an increased likelihood of travel delays, road and rail closures, power cuts and risks to property in those regions", said The Times. A yellow weather warning is in place for much of the rest of England, and southeast Wales.

What did the commentators say?

"Thousands of flood defences" across the country "are in a state of disrepair", said The Observer, after official figures were "leaked" to the newspaper ahead of an expected wetter than usual autumn. According to internal data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency, only 92.6% of England's flood defences are deemed fit for purpose, down from 97.9% in 2018-19 and well below the 98% target.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Environment Agency has reported that approximately 5.7 million properties in England are at risk of flooding, "a figure that increased by about 500,000 between 2021-22 and 2022-23 alone", said The Observer. And every 1% drop in flood defence quality across the country "puts an additional 10,000 properties at risk".

Another major issue is concerns over mismanagement of England and Wales' 112 Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs), which are "supposed to drain agricultural land and control floods", said George Monbiot in The Guardian. "As most IDBs are dominated by rural landowners, they are pretty good at the first task," said Monbiot. "But the result of this drainage is often to speed water down the catchment towards towns and cities."

In 2017, the National Audit Office investigated and found a "spate of problems" with the IDBs, but "astonishingly" there is "no statutory governance standard for IDBs", meaning that government ministers effectively "have no power over them". These boards "tend to be dominated by self-serving patricians who may be inclined to defend their own land and that of their friends while failing to uphold the wider public interest", said Monbiot. They are "beyond reform" and "urgently need to be replaced with accountable, democratic bodies".

What next?

Earlier this month, Labour launched a new floods resilience task force, led by Environment Secretary Steve Reed, which aims to bolster flood defences and coordination between government bodies and emergency services. Reed criticised the Conservative government's 14-year track record, branding the previous government as "too chaotic and distracted to learn the lessons of the past".

Yet despite many of England's flood defences being in a state of disrepair, the government has "not said whether it will increase the flood resilience budget", said The Guardian.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has deployed teams to respond to ongoing floods, with flood duty manager Sarah Cook warning of "significant surface water flooding" across parts of England.

The Met Office has said that tomorrow may bring a "temporary reprieve" to the wet weather, but more wet weather will return midweek, with deputy chief meteorologist David Oliver stating that "unsettled weather is set to return" by Wednesday.