Deteriorating flood defences blamed on Environment Agency budget shortfalls

MPs find agency has reduced number of properties it aims to protect in England despite more new homes being built on floodplains

Deteriorating flood defences mean more than 200,000 homes in England are at risk of flooding, with MPs blaming Environment Agency budget shortfalls.

A report by MPs on the public accounts committee said the EA had failed to meet a target of maintaining 98% of “high consequence” flood defences. The agency has had to downgrade the number of properties it aims to protect by 2027 from 336,000 to 200,000.

New houses were being built on floodplains without checks being carried out to make sure suitable flood defences had been put in place, the MPs said. They described the failure as “unforgivable”.

Some 5.7 million properties were at risk of flooding in England in 2022 and 2023 and this number is expected to increase as climate breakdown brings more intense downpours more often.

Flooding across the UK earlier this month damaged nearly 2,000 properties.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chair of the Commons committee, said robust flood resilience must become a priority.

“The depredations caused by such disasters are a matter of life and death for communities up and down the country,” he said. “This inquiry has uncovered the alarming truth that in a number of ways, the approach to keeping our citizens safe in this area is contradictory and self-defeating, not least in the continuing development of new housing in areas of high flood risk without appropriate mitigations.”

The committee said the government should set a measure of how many properties were protected from flooding that took into account the number with poor defences, as well as new constructions.

It should also ensure that smaller projects found it easier to get approval so that rural villages had the same right to protection as others, they said.

Clifton-Brown said: “The number of properties at risk of flooding from deteriorating defences eclipsing those benefiting from new ones is another case in point. This is emblematic both of the government’s failure to strike the right balance between maintenance and construction, and of not considering the net number of properties at risk.

“One of the first steps in delivering any successful policy is clearly defining what success looks like. We hope the recommendations in our report help the government to do so.”

Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats’ housing, communities and local government spokesperson, said: “Areas like mine in Shropshire have had to face year after year of inundation with virtually no support, and what there is is only set to dwindle, ruining more lives.

“Under this Conservative government, flood protection plans have been shamefully neglected – and ordinary people’s homes and businesses are being turned upside down as a result.

“Enough is enough. The Conservatives must get a grip and give communities like mine the support we deserve.”

The government has said its aim was to create “a nation more resilient to future flood and coastal erosion risk”, but the report found there was no numerical target in place, meaning it could not quantify how much progress was being made on this.

Cover photo: Flood water surrounds homes in Wraysbury, near Windsor. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images