Storm Bert reinforces need to prioritise UK’s flood defences

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Four years after the UK government approved a flood defence scheme at Tenbury Wells, the West Midlands town remained at the mercy of Storm Bert as it swept across England.

The town, which is built on the banks of the River Teme in Worcestershire, has regularly flooded over the past two decades. On Sunday it was again inundated when an old wall adjoining a brook collapsed, sending torrents of muddy water down the high street.

Storm Bert has wreaked havoc in parts of Wales, Scotland and England since Sunday, with at least four fatalities and hundreds of homes under water, roads and schools closed and transport disrupted. Flood warnings were still in place in parts of the country on Monday.

The scenes of devastation in places such as Tenbury Wells have reignited calls for the government to take swifter action to prepare the UK for climate change and protect those communities most at risk from flooding.

Dame Harriett Baldwin, the MP for West Worcestershire, who has campaigned for the defences at Tenbury since being elected to parliament in 2007, said the town was in the news again “for all the wrong reasons”.

“I really hope that the scenes will encourage the senior leadership at the Environment Agency and the government to lift the permanent scheme up their priority list and make sure cash is available to get . . . spades in the ground,” she said.

A £4.9mn flood defence scheme for the market town of 5,500 people was approved by the Conservative government in 2020 after Storm Dennis had deluged large parts of England. By 2022 the estimated costs of the project had risen above £10mn and are now estimated to be closer to £17mn as a result of inflation, according to Baldwin’s office.

About £2.3mn of the approved spending had already been swallowed up by consultancy and design fees for the flood defence project, according to Baldwin, before it has even been submitted for planning permission.

While other flood defences have been completed in her constituency, the complexity of the Tenbury project has proved a stumbling block. Twenty flood gates are planned, which would be erected at speed by local volunteers once warnings are issued, given that the River Teme rises so quickly.

Marc Lidderth, the West Midlands director for the Environment Agency, said the costs of the project had risen because of the “historic nature” of the town. He said the funding gap needed to be filled “to make the scheme viable”.

Carola Koenig, from Brunel University London’s Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience, said that because flood defence schemes were expensive, hard decisions had to be made on where to invest in them.

But she added: “It is becoming increasingly obvious that we not only need flood defences to be well maintained, but there is also an increasing need for defence schemes, where they are being built, to be able to be adapted as the climate changes.”

The latest floods to hit the UK come after the Public Accounts Committee criticised the government in January for failing to maintain old defences adequately or build enough new ones.

In 2020, the Conservative government announced a doubling of flood defence spending to £5.2bn over six years to 2027. In the Autumn Budget the Labour government pledged a further £2.4bn over 2024-25 and 2025-26 for flood defences.

Britain’s insurance sector on Monday urged the government to boost spending on flood defences as its members braced for a jump in claims from homeowners and businesses whose properties have been damaged by Storm Bert.

“More money is required,” said Louise Clark, policy adviser with the Association of British Insurers.

“There’s still a lot to do in terms of securing that investment. It’s investment in flood defences and also not building in areas at risk of flooding. Or if a decision is taken to build, you put in flood defence measures,” she said.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been contacted for comment.

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