Thursday, September 8, 2016

Businesses called on to beef up resilience as government insists 'lessons learnt' from winter floods

National Flood Resilience Review proposes new stress tests and secures commitments from utilities to better protect key infrastructure

The government has today published its long-awaited National Flood Resilience Review, promising that lessons have been learned from last winter's devastating floods.

The new review includes a raft of new proposals, including a call for utilities and infrastructure providers to invest in increased flood resilience measures to ensure power, telecom and water networks are better protected.

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"Last winter we saw just how devastating flooding can be," said Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom. "This review sets out clear actions so we are better prepared to respond quickly in the event of future flooding and can strengthen the nation's flood defences. Work is already underway towards £12.5m of new temporary defences stationed around England, better protection for our infrastructure and new flood modelling that makes better use of data and technology."

The government has faced criticism in recent years for curbing spending on flood defences and failing to adequately account for increased risks from climate change.

Leadsom said the government was "absolutely committed" to reducing the risk of flooding and would invest £2.5bn up to 2021 to "help protect families, homes and businesses".

The Review also included a new "stress test" for assessing the risk of flooding from rivers and the sea in England, which for the first time brings together Met Office climate forecasts and Environment Agency flood risk modelling. "It is important that policy on flood risk is underpinned by credible and objective scientific evidence and analysis," said Sir Mark Walport, the government Chief Scientific Adviser. "This review used new modelling techniques to challenge our ideas around the frequency and location of extreme flooding."

He explained the new techniques used were able to model levels of rainfall that would be worse than anything previously experienced but are still regarded as possible for our climate. "This information enabled us to look again at how bad coastal and river flooding could be under such extreme conditions to ensure we are better prepared," he said.

The review comes just weeks after a major report from insurance giant Zurich argued the term once in a 100 year floods should be shelved as it gives a false sense of the scale of flood related risks.

Ben Gummer, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, said that following the review the government expected businesses to strengthen their flood resilience plans.

"The government has made clear that we expect water and telecoms companies to work ever closer together to improve their preparation and response to flooding, making sure lifelines such as mobile phone masts and water treatment works continue to function even when the Great British weather is throwing its very worst at us," he said.

The report reveals that all of the sectors that the review identified with key infrastructure at risk have agreed to "develop or expand existing medium term plans to increase the resilience to an extreme flood of service supply to significant populations, either through adequately defended assets or via some other meanssuch as interconnections or back-up supplies".

Specifically, the report said that between 2015 and 2021 the electricity industry is expected to invest £250m in increasing flooding while all electricity sites serving more than 10,000 people which are not protected against an extreme flood have been surveyed and have a plan in place to deploy temporary barriers if required and feasible.

Meanwhile, the water and telecommunications industries have agreed to complete a detailed assessment of key local infrastructure sites which are not yet deemed resilient to an extreme flood event. "These assessments will provide a more detailed understanding of the flood risk to those assets and will identify any measures (e.g. temporary defences) which could improve the resilience of the site in the short term," the report said, adding that the industries have committed to deliver temporary improvements to resilience before Christmas 2016 where ever appropriate.


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