Flooding in the UK: No insurance, no housing, serious problems?

Just watching the news this morning and listening to some lady saying she'll have to move because she can't get any more insurance since she lives in a flood plane. It got me thinking: that's a TON of people in flood planes and/or has already been flooded in the last month, if a large majority decide to move because they can't insure or afford to insure themselves then there will be a serious housing crisis. As it is, there are too few houses in the UK anyway and if new ones can't be built on flood planes then you'll have even less being built. Demand >> Supply = Housing boom and a **** ton of other economic problems for us?

Basically: are we screwed?

 

I'm going to live in a tree atop a hill.

 

That'll set you back a bit J, maybe £85,000 if you're lucky. Of course, you could sublet the branches to offset the cost...

 

Given that no one is going to want to buy a (damaged) house in a flood plane... how many people (realistically) are going to have the means to abandon a house and buy another in an area that isn't going to fall victim to flooding, especially at inflated prices...? People will stay put IMO.

 

Hell, if I had the money then I'd consider buying one and drying it out, some spot repairs (with help from the goverment as a new buyer and a developer and revitalising the area and having property damaged in the flood) and then i'd sell/rent the bugger out. Especially worthwhile if its near a uni.

 

Flood planes flood unless you put measures in place to move the water somewhere else and flood people who are not on flood planes. It seems to me that what is lacking is investment in infrastructure that can move significant volumes of water away from where it is likely to do damage and out to the sea. In times of drought of course, you move the water to where it can be processed for drinking water. The UK government is too busy spending money buying the votes of public sector workers to have anything left over for other projects.

 

Couldn't they install a pumping system to these types of area's so that when a flooding is expected the water could be removed quickly to a lake or the sea?

 

That crossed my mind too (Joe)

 

In Holland we don't seem to get such massive problems, despite the fact that most of the country is well (7 metres) below sea level. The country is designed to deal with floods. It has flood plains specifically designed for the purpose, and dykes around each river. It has serious drainage works. It can be done, but only if you are not complacent about the risks.

 

The rivers that have flooded do follow out to sea! I don't think there would be anyway to route it somewhere else.



I live in gloucester and its terrible. In my whole life i have never seen it so bad, I have no water, the electricity is out in some parts and the i think the sub-station it down. The water may not come back for 14 days!

 

You want storm drains, that's what you want. Sorted.

 

Flood plains amazingly obtained their names because they wear designed by nature to FLOOD when water levels got too high.

As Nexxo said, they have awesome ways of dealing with floods, I believe the windmills are the pumps and thus make an elegant tourist attraction.

Storm drains are a good idea, but they are extremely difficult to put in retrospectively and will take a good 10 years minimum.

 

We've had worse during hurricanes

 

2nd hand information but someone today told me that an effective system in these kinds of areas would cost a billion quid a year. Not a billion to install, just to maintain.

 

Storm drains? How the hell are storm drains going to help? Perhaps you havn't actaully visited the floods and witnessed the problem first hand.

 

Because storm drains move the water away when it's stormy and stops it building up. With storm drains it's VERY difficult to flood an area unless you've got a really serious amount of rainfall (a lot more than we've ever seen in the UK).

 

"storm drains move the water away"

.... away where? You can't just make water magically dissappear. The thames is FULL.

 

It's complicated, but it jettisons it off to the moon, of all places.

 

heh

you live on an island.... expect it to flood in some areas... (i used to as well in fact)


of course, i won't say you're foolish for building a house in a flood plain, but you certainly don't find me living in a flood plain anymore

 

The media have picked up on this "flood plain" term without thinking what a real flood plain is. It's an area that floods frequently, often annually, not every century or so. It's generally very fertile land, so people live nearby to farm, and towns and villages grow along the plain edges - in the UK, over centuries. It's flat land, so that's where you build roads and railways. The river is another transport system. Look at the places currently under threat - not some brand-new housing estate allowed by a foolish council; these are towns and cities that have grown since Roman times.

If it involves spending big money people just don't plan for what might happen at 100/1 odds - unless the cost of the disaster is well over 1000x the cost of attempting to prevent it, and the odds much lower, so we build the Thames flood barrier. But if motor insurance wasn't compulsory many people wouldn't have any, and what are we spending to alleviate climate change?

Parts of the US are more organised on this so "the National Flood Insurance Program regulates development in mapped floodplains based on the 100-year flood (1% annual chance of a flood of this magnitude) ... and requires that new residential structures built in Special Flood Hazard Areas be elevated to at least the level of the 100-year flood." I don't know how UK councils work, but I'll lay money most homes affected recently would fit the "once-a-century" odds. At least now we have some accurate figures for high-water mark.

Talking of moving to the top of a hill - I live very near the top of of a hill, 40m above the river level; my cellar floor was flooded to about 2". The ground is so wet the rain can't soak away fast enough to prevent flooding even when you think you're safe.