| Environment
Left: Flooding of the River Aire in West Yorkshire, England. Concern has been expressed following the Environment Agency’s announcement that a quarter of planned new flood defence projects will be shelved
(including heatwaves), to determine how well- prepared the country is for the projected increasing frequency and intensity of such events. Currently the Cabinet Office does not have clearly defined targets or an effective strategy in place to make the UK resilient to extreme weather. The NAO recommends that departments with
responsibility for managing risks should set out clearly defined targets for ‘what good looks like’, so that stakeholders across the public and private sectors are working toward a clear common goal. While the absence of an effective strategy and targets makes it difficult for government to make informed decisions on investment, and the NAO found limited evidence of risk assessments feeding into how funding was allocated. It was also recommended that the government accelerate plans to develop a coordinated approach to investment in resilience. Specifically, it should develop its approach by 2025 and implement it by 2028, instead of the current 2030 target. However, as the government does not track or evaluate its spending on extreme weather, it cannot currently demonstrate whether value for money is being achieved. Overall the NAO finds that the government has more
to do as, for example, although 3.4 million properties are at risk of surface water flooding, surveys show that awareness among the public of the impacts of these events remains low. While the NAO also recommends the Cabinet Office should strengthen the leadership, accountability, and assurance arrangements of extreme weather risks across government, including considering the merits of a Chief Risk Adviser. “The UK’s experience during the pandemic demonstrated the vital importance of building resilience, and that lesson also applies to extreme weather events,” said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO. “Government needs to place sufficient emphasis on prevention and preparedness - clearly articulating the level of risk it will tolerate - and making informed decisions about prioritisation to ensure efficient and effective investment for the long-term.” Although the National Infrastructure Commission admits that central government has in place a range of existing protocols for managing the impacts of
extreme weather events, such as the drought the UK experienced in 2022 and the flooding and disruption caused by Storm Arwen in 2021 and Storm Ciaràn in 2023, more action is needed to improve coordination of decision making and ensure funding and investment is targeted effectively to limit the impact of such weather events. In response to the NAO’s findings, Professor Jim Hall of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) said: “Extreme weather events present an acute threat and this report rightly highlights the need for urgent action to ensure our resilience to their impacts. The NAO’s call for clear standards for how national infrastructure should perform echoes a recommendation in our recent National Infrastructure Assessment: if everyone is clear about what effective resilience looks like, targeting funding, securing private sector investment and joined-up responses across multiple responsible organisations become that much easier to achieve.” The commission’s Second National Infrastructure Assessment in October 2023 made ten recommendations to government on improving the resilience of the UK’s water, energy, transport and digital infrastructure systems. This included a call for government to set out by 2025 outcome-based resilience standards for the sectors, and take action to ensure regulators took account of these standards in their settlements with infrastructure operators to ensure investment is appropriately targeted towards resilience improvements. The assessment also included specific recommendations on improving access to climate data for infrastructure operators, plus upgrading engineering standards to better reflect future climate impacts.
Concerning cuts
With the above in mind, the bleak news that the Environment Agency (EA) expects to deliver fewer flood protection measures has been described as concerning. In another report called Resilience to Flooding, NAO said that the EA plans to slash the number of additional properties that will be better protected from flooding by 40%, and is in stark contrast to when the government launched a flood safety
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