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Sunday, June 21, 2009

One in six UK homes at risk of flood...


£20bn needs to be invested in flood defences to protect properties from
rising sea levels and severe rainstorms, Environment Agency warns.

One in six homes in England is at risk of flooding, the Environment Agency warned today.

And with climate change likely to raise the risk of flooding through rising
sea levels and more rainstorms, £20bn needs to be invested in flood
defences to protect properties in the next 25 years, the agency said.

As many as 5.2m properties are already at risk of flooding, with 2.4m
threatened by rivers and the sea, and a further 2.8 million at risk
from surface water flooding from overflowing drains.

Thousands of health centres and doctors' surgeries, schools and miles of railways
and roads are also at risk, according to the agency's Flooding In England report.

Almost half a million homes, offices, factories and warehouses are at a
significant risk of flooding from rivers or sea, with a greater than
one in 75 chance of being flooded in any year.

The highest number of properties at significant risk are in the south-east of England,
where 111,356 are threatened with flooding.

Boston, Lincolnshire, has the greatest number of properties at high risk – 23,700 – of any local authority.

According to the latest analysis of the impacts of climate change on the UK released this week, the risk of flooding is set to increase due to rising sea levels, more rapid coastal erosion and increasingly severe and frequent rainstorms.

Without an increase in investment in flood defences, an extra 350,000
properties, including 280,000 more homes, will face a significant risk
of flooding by 2035, bringing the total to 840,000 under threat, the EA
said.

Approximately £150m each year will be needed just to address the risk of surface water flooding, which caused some of the problems in the devastating 2007 floods, the agency said.

In the floods two years ago, which hit parts of Yorkshire, the Midlands and the south-west ofEngland, 13 adults died as well as two premature twins, while 55,000 properties were flooded and thousands had to be rescued from the flood waters.

The Environment Agency said more than 430,000 people in flood risk areas had signed up to its free warning service, which provides alerts by text message, telephone or email, and urged those who have not subscribed to join.

In April, the Environment Agency and Met Office opened a new £10m Flood Forecasting Centre to provide earlier and more accurate flood warnings.

English regions ranked in order of the number of properties at significant risk of flooding:

South-east England: 111,356

South-west: 86,178

East Midlands: 81,096

Yorkshire and Humber: 65,380

Greater London: 40,412

East of England: 33,050

North-west: 28,941

West Midlands: 19,173

North-east: 19,167

Total: 484,753

Top 10 local authorities with the highest number of properties in areas with a significant chance of flooding:

Boston district: 23,700

North Somerset: 20,415

East Lindsey district: 14,949

Windsor and Maidenhead: 11,477

Kingston upon Hull: 9,825

Shepway district: 9,065

Sedgemoor district: 8,092

East Riding of Yorkshire: 7,513

Runnymede district: 7,007

Warrington: 6,533

via Environment news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk by on 19/06/09

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