United Kingdom: National flood resilience review

This review assesses how United Kingdom can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events. It focuses on four key areas: 1) updating the country's climate modelling and stress-testing its resilience to flood risk; 2) assessing the resilience of important infrastructure like electricity substations; 3) temporary defences; and 4) future investment strategy.

The document presents the following measures, among others:

• Utility companies' commitment to increasing flood protection of their key local infrastructure such as phone networks and water treatment works, so they are resilient to extreme flooding.
• £12.5 million for new temporary defences, such as barriers and high volume pumps, at seven strategic locations around the country. By the 2016 winter, the Environment Agency (EA) will have four times more temporary barriers than last year.
• A new stress test of the risk of flooding from rivers and the sea in England. For the first time, the Meteorological Office forecasts of extreme rainfall scenarios will be linked with Environment Agency modelling to provide a new assessment of flood risk.