In 1947 the UK suffered devastating floods – caused by a combination of heavy snowfall and deep freeze, followed by warmer weather melting the snow at the same time as torrential rains slowly moved across the country. The ensuing floods left large parts of the UK paralysed for several weeks. Two years ago an analysis was made of the likely impact if floods of a similar magnitude, however caused, were to occur today. In theory, there should have been a significantly reduced impact – as the Conservative governments of Eden and Macmillan invested heavily in flood defences following the 1947 floods and subsequent 1953 North Sea floods. However, the authors found great difficulty in assessing how different the impact of modern flooding would be compared to that of 1947. The reason for their difficulty was quite astonishing. The government does not keep a national record of where flood defences exist.
"No national database is available which contains the type, height,design level, and maintenance conditions of U.K. river flood defenses even for main rivers."
(1947 UK Floods: 60 Year perspective p8)
If there is no national database of flood defences it also follows that the government has no national record of the state of repair of those flood defences. Although given the wholly inadequate levels of funding there are certainly some issues there, particularly in rural areas.
Most significantly however, it is clear that if the government has no national record of either where flood defences exist or their state of repair – then any claim by the government that they have a credible flood defence strategy is clearly nonsense.
What we have instead is a piecemeal approach to both river and coastal flooding. This has been primarily driven by the amount of money allocated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, i.e. Gordon Brown for most of the last 12 years, rather than based on any coherent national strategy of what is actually needed to provide a reasonable level of protection.
The government is planning a new flooding bill to tidy up flooding legislation – one of the recommendations of Sir Michael Pitt's review of the 2007 floods. However, what is most urgently needed is for the government to have a strategy based on accurate local knowledge not only of which areas are likely to flood, but also of where existing flood defences are - and equally importantly where they are not - and their condition. Without this basic information the government cannot claim to have a credible national flood prevention strategy.
