Chris Blackhurst: Business must join the battle against flooding

As someone who grew up in Cumbria, I got used to the wind and rain.

Indeed, it wasn’t until I came south that I realised it did not regularly blow a gale, people were not permanently hunched up against the elements, and an orange cagoule was not as ubiquitous as a pair of socks.

We knew which rivers would quickly rise. After a bout of particularly heavy rain, we would often stop to marvel at the Derwent, Eden and Kent and how, thanks to the water pouring off the fells, they had turned from placid, shallow affairs to raging, deep torrents.

But there is a sense up there of change, and not for the better.

We had floods but they weren’t like the ones of 2005, 2009 and now 2015. These are worse, far bigger in scale and devastation. The climate is altering — the regularity of those dates says so.

So far, measures to combat the shift have proved ineffective — even the £50 million fund just announced by George Osborne.

Yes, it can be claimed the new flood defences stopped the current disaster from being worse — but it’s still a disaster.

Sadly, all of this was predicted, but in the time-honoured practice of governments being unwilling to commit to preventing things that could happen as opposed to reacting to an event that has already occurred, not enough was done.

In 2012, the Coalition government, which included senior members of the present administration, published a study into the threats the country faces. The official spin machine even hailed the Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) as “groundbreaking” because it would make us “amongst the best prepared nations for the implications of climate change”.

Among the findings was this: “The risks of flooding are projected to increase significantly across the UK. New analysis for England and Wales shows that if no further plans were made to adapt to changing flood risks, by the 2080s due [to] the effects of climate change and population growth, annual damages to buildings and property could reach between £2.1 billion and £12 billion, compared with current costs of £1.2 billion.”

In presenting the report, Professor Sir Bob Watson, the then chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, said: “The CCRA is groundbreaking research which puts the UK at the forefront of understanding what the projected changes to our climate will really mean for us.

“For the first time, it means we can compare a wide range of risks based on their financial, social and environmental implications. This will be invaluable for Government in prioritising the areas for future policies and investment, and it will help businesses assess what they need to do to ensure they are resilient to the changing climate.”

Set against the CCRA, the earmarking of £2.3 billion for extra flood barriers over the next six years looks hopelessly inadequate. Similarly, though, the business community seems ill-prepared.