More than 1,000 homes have been flooded in England this week after the UK was hit by its third major storm this winter.
More than 300 flood warnings remain in place, with the Environment Agency warning that some rivers were at their highest level in 24 years.
It comes after parts of the UK were hit by serious flooding towards the end of last year during Storm Babet and Storm Ciarán.
Why does Britain flood so often?
According to Professor Hannah Cloke, a flooding expert at the University of Reading, flooding is an expected part of life in Britain due to our climate.
While we don’t experience extreme weather like hurricanes or tropical cyclones, we do have “huge low lying deltas”, which will flood during periods of heavy rain, she said.
Professor Cloke said parts of the country have flooded so badly this week as the UK is currently a “wet sponge” following a very rainy autumn and winter.
“There is nowhere for any extra rain to go… all that extra water is running straight off the landscape and our rivers are swelling up like the beautiful monsters they can be,” she said.
Building on flood plains
While some flooding is to be expected in Britain, Professor Cloke said the impact of flooding has gotten worse over decades as “there’s more people in the way of floods”.
“The biggest problem is that we build on floodplains,” she said. “When we get lots and lots of big floods coming through, perhaps 100 or 200 years ago there wouldn’t have been houses in the way.”
She added: “The other thing of course is we have paved over the landscape so that means not only is the water not soaking in and going slowly through rocks and things like that, but the water is rushing straight off into the river.”
According to the Environment Agency, around 5.2 million homes in England alone are currently at risk from flooding, a number that is expected to grow as climate change brings more storms to the UK.
Despite the heightened threat of flooding, councils are continuing to allow homes to be built in flood risk areas.
Research carried out by the think-tank Localis found that planning permission for over 5,200 homes was granted in 2021 for construction on floodplain land by the highest-risk local authorities in the country.
The Environment Agency has predicted that the number of homes at risk of flooding in England by 2050 will almost double if current planning outcomes continue.
Professor Chris Spray, a flooding expert at the University of Dundee, said planning committees now have a better understanding of the risk of climate change and will reject properties if the flood risk is deemed to be too great.
But he said there is “huge pressure” to find places to build new homes. He said: “You fill in the last green bit and think ‘oh that’s OK we can fit something in here’, but there’s probably a reason why something wasn’t there in the first place.”
How climate change is making things worse
Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the risk of flooding in the UK.
This is because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, which is then released via rainfall. Rising sea levels also pose a flood risk to coastal communities.
Professor Spray said climate change is having a particular impact on “how the water arrives” in the UK.
“Even if you have the same amount of rainfall falling on a catchment, what we’re seeing very markedly already is a huge increase in high intensity localised flood rain storms,” he said.
“These high intensity events are what tends to drive flooding,” he added. “If you have a whole series of them – and what’s happening at the minute is we’ve just had rain, followed by rain, followed by rain – it’s falling on an absolutely saturated catchment.”
Many experts agree that the solution to reducing the impact of flooding in the UK is the creation of more natural flood solutions, such as wetlands and peat bogs, combined with making our homes more resilient to flooding.
Professor Cloke said it is important we “can accept that sometimes water would come into our homes and just be ready for that and have them designed so that we can quickly get it out again and clean up”.
