Think tank the Green Alliance has warned that the government’s current approach to flood defence is skewed towards reactive measures that come after flooding, rather than preventing more devastating flooding from happening in the first place.

Experts agree that flood risk for much of England is set to increase as the effects of climate change are felt more acutely. Flooding in December 2015 and January this year, which struck most northern English counties, is estimated to have cost more than £5 billion, and in December alone 16,000 properties in England were flooded.

Although the Conservative government has claimed that it marshalled flood response and financial aid in record time, in the immediate aftermath of the floods, Labour criticised the government’s approach to the floods as a “Sticking plaster response”.

The Green Alliance report blames a lack of a joined-up approach for exacerbating flood risk in some areas; it highlights a failure to account for certain land management practices’ effects on flood risk, and warns this is resulting in millions of pounds in agricultural subsidy being spent in ways that may actually increase vulnerability to flooding. The report claims that “Nearly four times [£1.5bn] as much money is spent on land management that ignores or increases flood risk than on land management that helps to prevent flooding” and twice as much is spent on responding to floods than goes to hard flood defences.

The report also highlights the lack of support for natural flood management methods (NFM), which have been proven to reduce flood risk when used alongside traditional flood defences, and have nevertheless been picked up by local groups and some land managers. For example, in the North Yorkshire town of Pickering, methods like creating woody debris barriers in rivers have reduced peak river flows by as much as 7.5%, which helped the town escape flooding in 2012.

The green Alliance has three main recommendations for the government:

1. Use the replacement of the Common Agricultural Policy to reward land management that helps to prevent flooding.
2. Establish a dedicated fund for natural flood management (with evidence gathered at catchment scale to show where measures would be most useful)
3. Set up regional Catchment Management Boards.

Upon the report’s release on Monday, Angela Francis, senior economist at Green Alliance, commented, “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.”

Responding, a Defra spokesperson said, “We’re committed to better protecting the country from flooding and natural flood management plays an important role in our strategy - that is why last week we announced a further £15m funding for these schemes.



“We’re spending a record £2.5bn on flood defences to better protect 300,000 more homes by 2021 and many of these projects are also already using natural flood management measures.”

The Defra spokesperson said the government is determined to “Get the best deal on leaving the EU for the British people,” and is committed to “Supporting our farmers and protecting the environment [which] will form an important part of our exit from the European Union.”

However, 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.”

Begg continued, “Public money is needed to support farmers in delivering these public benefits [but] 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.”