Flooding will become more commonplace as we move further into the 21st century. Climate change has impacted on our weather. Warmer air holds more water; therefore the potential for more severe rainfall events has increased.
Combined with flood risk from sea storm surges, around a million properties are at risk of surface and ground water flooding, and a further 2.4 million at risk from rivers and sea water flooding.
This increasing risk coincides with a time when our public services, including those that deal with the impact and consequences of flooding, are more stretched than ever.
Attacks on flood defence budget
In the light of government spending cuts for 2010-11, the Environment Agency reviewed its flood prevention schemes in 2010, which resulted in many being cancelled and hundreds of thousands of homes and livelihoods being left unprotected.
The flood defence budget has been cut from an average of £664m in 2009 to an average of £546m up to 2015. The biggest project to lose funding was the £160m defence scheme along 12 miles of the river Aire, stretching right into the centre of Leeds.
These cuts in spending should be seen in the context of the Foresight Future Flooding report published in 2004. This identified the need for year-on-year increases in funding of between £10m-£30m for England and Wales every year until the 2080s, simply to respond to climate change.
While climate change modelling has significantly improved in the last decade, the impact still remains uncertain.
The EA's long-term investment strategy identified the need for steady increase of investment to around £1,040m per year, excluding inflation, to maintain existing flood management assets and build new ones. This figure excludes the cost of managing the risk of surface water and ground water flooding, so further resources are required for homes impacted upon.
Environment Agency job losses
The challenges laid out above are set against a backdrop of proposals to cut the number of employees at the agency from 11,250 to 9,700 by October 2014. Further redundancies are expected in the future as a result of further cuts in government revenue funding.
Chancellor George Osborne's autumn statement in December of last year was on the same day that Environment Agency engineers were out in force defending the east coast from the largest tidal surge in 60 years.
Osborne's statement confirmed that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs must save £19m in 2014-15 and £18m in 2015-16, much of which is expected to be taken from the EA. The agency's revenue funding for operations and maintenance is falling to £230m next year, down around £10m on this year and around £50m since 2010-11.
Unions’ warning
Both Prospect and Unison have expressed their concerns, warning that the severity of the cuts will impact on the ability of the agency to deliver, especially in situations of emergency.
It is predicted the cuts will have a negative impact on the agency's ability to manage incidents, given that it will be front line staff affected.
However, it is not just reckless in terms of affecting the agency's ability to maintain the nation's flood defences and warning systems. It is also short sighted in its impact on the country's economy.
Every £1 invested in flood defences has been shown to benefit the economy by £8. To cut the Environment Agency's flood defence funding is to directly attack economic growth and recovery.