Ministers have been told they will be “punished” by voters after analysis revealed the decline of vital flood defences across England.
The proportion of critical assets in disrepair has almost trebled in the West Midlands and the east of England since 2018, leaving thousands of homes and businesses more vulnerable to storms.
Critical assets are defined as those where there is a high risk to life and property if they fail.
This is from Greenpeace.
Who are, of course, the people who say we should stop pumping out the Somerset Levels, stop straightening and dredging rivers. Because not allowing the land to flood is bad, d’ye see?
But also, not building flood defences is bad.
Bastards
Tim, I’ve noticed that due to this terrible shortage of new build houses (I see new residential developments being built all over the place, but allegedly we’re short of new builds), they keep building new homes in places that are prone to flooding.
As in, they’ll plop up 10 or 20 new houses in the worst part of/near the village to build new houses on, because the best parts already have houses.
I’m not sure why insurance or planning rules don’t stop this, but here we are.
Yes, but from their point of view it makes perfect sense.
It’s another tool to beat the Tories with.
If the driver doesn’t flood, they can shout about bio diversity or something like the catastrophic declined in lesser spotted woodlouse populations in a three Square metre area.
If it does flood they can shout about funding for flood defences.
I despair that where planning consent is given for new builds, that it doesn’t automatically go to 80 feet like it did in the 1930s. If it did then fewer planning consents would be needed and even if built in the worst possible places for it the people on the 2nd floor upwards wouldn’t be overly worried about flooding.
L**ds City Council are having to pay for flood defences in Bradford on the River Aire.
All because the bright sparks in L**ds didn’t think through building a massive new housing estate 3 or 4 miles downstream from where the river bottlenecks at Apperley Bridge.
For once the useless Council of Bradistan got something right by making them cough up AND not building on the flood plain…
It’s been a while since I lived in Bradford.
But when I lived there one thing the council got right was that there were only two bins. One for rubbish and the other for all recycling, just mixed. Saved all the faff with sorting.
May have changed by now though, was over a decade ago.