UK floods lead to strategy rethink

The Government is close to ditching key elements of its flood defence strategy in the face of furious public anger at the recent floods in Yorkshire, Hull, Gloucester and Oxfordshire.As a consequence, the Environment agency's so called holistic approach to flood management, a cornerstone of the country's flood defences is likely to be modified.

The Environment agency's strategy (under Defra) for dealing with floods was developed in 2004, in the policy document "Making Space for Water".

This essentially postulated the argument that traditional flood defences such as the regular dredging of rivers and sea defence walls were proving ever more costly and that a policy of letting water onto the land in a series of managed agricultural schemes was environmentally preferable and cheaper.

However, this was criticised at the time as putting flora and fauna before people.

Indeed, a scoping report by the engineers Babtie in 2003 looked at the dangers of the Severn flooding around Gloucester and concluded that such holistic measures were unlikely to be effective in such areas. At the same time the report noted that there was considerable local unease that dredging - reasonably effective but environmentally costly to wildlife - had been stopped.

Defra, after consultation, decided to continue with its holistic programme despite public unease and, astonishingly, set itself a timescale to overcoming what it termed "cultural barriers" to this approach. That is people wanting flood defences rather than land management.

It decided that despite the public it was going to tough it out. One paper noted: "The Environment Agency is considering how to adopt a more rigorous approach to abandonment of sea walls where costs exceed benefit."

This month with large swaths of England under water and after a barrage of negative press, Defra has quietly issued an update to its flood defence strategy. This not only seeks to look urgently at the effectiveness of land management programmes that are already underway, but acknowledges the public relations disaster that has unfolded.

The update concludes: "It will be necessary to make a clear transition away from defending current decisions to more participation by the public in the overall decision making process."

There is now likely to be a considerable increase in expenditure on traditional flood defences.