From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
We’re all going to drown!
The Environment Agency has today (Tuesday 17 December) published new data showing 6.3 million properties across England are based in areas at risk of flooding from one or a combination of rivers, the sea and surface water.
Using the best available data from both the Environment Agency and local authorities, the new National Assessment of Flood Risk (NaFRA), provides a single and updated picture of the current and future flood risk from rivers, the sea and surface water for England. The last update to NaFRA was in 2018.
Alongside this, the Environment Agency has also updated the National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM) for the first time since 2017. This provides the most up to date national picture of the current and future coastal erosion risk for England using the best available evidence from the National Network of Regional Coastal Monitoring Programmes.
The Environment Agency has used cutting-edge methods to create new, bespoke software to integrate detailed local flood risk models – both its own and those of local authorities – into a national picture. For the first time, both NaFRA and NCERM account for the latest UK climate projections from the Met Office.
These updated assessments provide a clearer understanding of flood risk around the country and the data will be used by the government, Environment Agency and local communities to plan for and improve flood resilience in areas at risk.
The data shows that a total of 6.3 million properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from one or a combination of rivers, the sea and surface water.
Around 4.6 million of those properties are in areas at risk of flooding from surface water, where there is so much rainwater that drainage systems are overwhelmed, causing surface water runoff, also known as flash flooding. This is a 43% increase on the Environment Agency’s previous assessment. These changes are almost entirely due to significant improvements in the Environment Agency’s data, modelling and use of technology providing a more accurate assessment of surface water flood risk.
Around 2.4 million properties are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea. While the total number of properties at risk is not increasing, there is an 88% increase in the number of properties at the highest levels of risk, where an area has a greater than one in 30 chance of flooding in any given year. There are a variety of reasons for this change in risk, the most notable being improved data and modelling methods for assessing the likely frequency of flooding.
With climate change, the total number of properties in areas at risk from rivers and the sea or surface water could increase to around 8 million by the middle of the century – or around one in four properties.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/environment-agency-publishes-major-update-to-national-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-assessment
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Naturally the media has gone into full alarmist mode. Sky News, for instance, tried to link all of this to climate change, with emotive language like “sudden rain, crashing seas and burst river banks”.
In reality, as the EA make clear, most of the increase in risk identified is simply due to “improvements in data and modelling”.
Either way, the EA guesstimate of 6.3 million properties, one-in-five, are at risk is utterly absurd.
Their own database shows that only about 5000 homes were flooded in the y/e March 2024, a fairly average year for floods. Even in 2007, the worst year since they started keeping records, the figure was just 55,000.
And to put these numbers into perspective, the worst flooding so far this winter came from Storm Bert, which flooded 1375 properties:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-latest-updates-on-storm-bert
Their previous assessment put the figure at risk 5.8 million:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flood-and-coastal-risk-management-national-report/flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-management-report-1-april-2023-to-31-march-2024
But most of these were Low or Very Low Risk.
Interestingly, they have a website where you can check your own area:
https://check-long-term-flood-risk.service.gov.uk/postcode
Our house is classified as “Low Risk”, despite the fact we live on the side of a hill and have never had any remote risk of flooding, even during the Sheffield floods in 2007.
The town we live in has a population of 20,000+, and the only homes I have ever seen affected by surface water flooding are a handful at the bottom of the valley. These incidents are always caused by blocked drains and are merely inconvenient, with an inch or two of water lapping at the front door.
I suspect it is the case that our whole town is listed as “Low Risk”, on the basis that a dozen or so homes are at risk. This is because the EA work on “areas” rather than “individual properties”.
In short, the 6.3 million properties supposedly at risk is probably more in the region of 60,000.
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