Flood vulnerable property - what happens next?

Unfortunately for your in-laws and many many others I fear they will be in for a difficult time. Given the lack of progress on fixing anything I suspect a combination of insurance and mortgage companies will make these properties almost impossible to sell. I appreciate its a harsh and unpleasant reply but I just don’t see an alternative. You only have to look at the number of developers still happily building on what can, at best, be called dubious sites to see that there is no government level interest in protecting home home owners.

There does seem to be a lot of blame shifting.. Government, Local Authorities, Environment Agency etc and the situation is only going to get worse.  I think that the problem is now too big and too costly to solve.  Have your in-laws been offered Build Back Better by their insurers?  This is not a solution to the problem but it could at least help reduce the impacts? 

Can i refer you to the xmas "how to deal with your in-laws" thread....

We live on a hill, back yard has an unplanned stream going through it at the moment...

Why on earth???

For surface water lots of businesses in Matlock have installed those door flood barriers and they seem to work.

Needs to be a good properly installed one, not some random tat off ebay.

It's basically down to them to flood-proof the house as much as possible though. Move sockets up the wall, change the flooring to tiled - I'm no expert but there are bound to be ways that mean they can be up and running again in weeks, not months or years.

I take it they were cash buyers? Even a house flooding 10 years ago would send red-flags up with mortgage companies. And insurance companies - I'd be amazed if they get insurance at all.

The pub in the village where I used to live - used to flood every 10 years or so, but now seems to flood every time there is a 'flood-event'. It flooded in October and now looks like it will never re-open...

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spekkie
Free Member
Why on earth???

Posted 6 minutes ago

People sometimes make decisions with their heart rather than their head when buying property, or circumstances change.

What happens now? Do we end up with properties, whole streets or areas which we need to walk away from and leave to the floods?

It's an interesting conundrum - Historically rivers in particular, and either the power or transport links they provide - are the reasons why town / houses exist where they do. The river is what paid the bills so even if it came and wrecked everything once in while on balance that was sort of fine.

I did a bit of work in Selkirk a few years back that was part of the reinstatement of the flood defences that had been ripped away by... err floods. Much of the town was configured and designed around harnessing the river, but that pretty much put a lot of the town in harms way - a charming but largely economically inactive chunk of the town that no longer uses the power from the river - now it seems to be devoting most of its effort into defending itself from it instead. The river isnt really going to listen to reason - seems smarter to just move the town. The thing is though - it's hard to say whether the town even needs to be there at all now. If the town didn't exist would there be reason to build one there?

The problem is theres so much sunk costs that have now gone into abatement and defence and repair that it makes it seem like all those previous efforts are being squandered if you then just pull the plug. Selkirk is nice and everything.... but it's not Venice.

I have to ask op, they must have had a plan for when this event was bound to happen?

Has the plan been scuppered by a factor out of their control, other than the actual flood?

Anyway, in general I think many buildings will end up being abandoned and pulled down or just left to decay. Basically a similar date to the houses falling off eroding cliffs in Suffolk and many other places.

I'm afraid they are ****ed, that's the simple answer. They may manage to cope for the rest of their lives, and then leave not much in the way of inheritance (at least as far as property goes).

The site may be rebuildable with stilts or something like that? My BiL building a new house in the Netherlands has his house designed with a concrete garage downstairs and the entire living area a floor up.

FiL has his house on the outside of a river bend with significant subsidence/erosion issues and we're expecting to inherit a building site rather than a house. Shrug. Rather than doing any structural underpinning, he guessed a few decades ago it would outlast him but perhaps wasn't envisaging living to 93 (and counting).

Not going to help, but get it on the market and move elsewhere - ideally on a hill...never a good thing to hear about property being flooded.

I appreciate its a harsh and unpleasant reply but I just don’t see an alternative.

It's not harsh, it's reality. I am of the view that our family members made a £500k bad decision.

The day they moved in I mentioned it to mrs_oab as not somewhere I would buy due to the obvious risk.

I'm just seeing that there's a growing issue here. Streets, whole areas of towns, for which food defence just isn't cost effective or achievable. There's places which haven't flooded before but will now find themselves being flooded.

There's going to be a lot of people like my in-laws who are going to have nearly worthless property.

My parent's old house narrowly missed flooding in Braiunton a few years ago.
It was inconceivable that the tiny ankle high stream could flood somewhere over half a mile away.
My brother lives on the coast at Eastbourne. Realistically the sea isn't a problem but the vast flatlands and river behind are where the trouble will come from.

What happens next? Probably it continues to flood at more regular frequency as the climate shifts and eventually is abandoned or sold for £1 or something. There's not much more to it, unless they have some extraordinary capital to invest in flood defences or something.

Or, it floods less in the future because life is all about luck.

Either way it's just a building at the end of the day, who really cares if it ends up worthless, money is just made up anyway, or something.

About 20 years ago, after two very near misses and many sleepless nights following nearby new build and motorway developments that drained into the system directly adjacent our childhood home, my parents quickly and decisively opted to up sticks. The whole village has since flooded. I remember this being a very stressful couple of years, and it ultimately came down to the risk of an uninsurable and ultimately unsellable property being too great. I'm not sure this is much help other than perhaps validation for your worries and some consolation in that there are many many others experiencing this total shitshow.

presumably the property was priced according to the flood risk, so they shouldn't loose too much if they choose to sell?

for new builds at flood risk there are in-property defenses that are required for planning permission - they include stopping water getting into the property as well as coping with water being inside the property (lower floor isn't allowed soft furnishings, all surfaces wipe-down, etc). might be worth looking at which of these can be retrofitted? most floods are below windowsill level so it may be relatively achievable to make the bottom 3' of the building (and the entrance doors) watertight, or build\enhance the perimeter wall so it can hold back water?

Seen it through my life, lived in Perth when the 'great flood' hit, and seen flood defences basically just push the problem further downstream, literally. Sadly a lot of housing was built on areas that were potential flood plains, add in further building, flood defences, etc and now those places are the weak link in the chain when flooding occurs, i've known a few folk who were flooded in the 90s, then again later and insurance wouldn't touch them, they just basically wait for the inevitable to destroy their finances.

@the-muffin-man bloody hell, is that the Hurt Arms at Ambergate? I lived round that way for the best part of 25 years (late 80s onwards) and I don't remember it ever flooding*, never mind being underwater every few months.

*Edit: well, huge puddles in the field behind, sure.

Interesting programme on R4 recently about this very issue.

As I Understand It (bearing in mind I'm not an insurer or lender,....)

There was a point where regular recent flooding was making the cost of insuring a flood risk property extremely expensive and the danger was of course that no one could buy them or afford to insure them. Mortgage companies wouldn't lend against them. In the middle of a housing shortage this meant something had to be done.

So we had the phenomenon of Flood Re.

This govt/insurer collaboration meant that insurance companies could re-insure the virtually inevitable cost of flood damage claims and repeat claims, via a central re-insurance fund. The cost was spread across the entire insurance market, so despite living on a 1200 foot hill I pay a small contribution to the fund so that folk who find themselves otherwise "uninsurable"  can continue to insure their properties, and of course they aren't lumbered with a property no one will lend against which means they have the option to sell up.

I raised a mental eyebrow of course, but one person benefiting from the scheme pointed out that the excesses of such a policy are so exorbitant, it makes sense to take precautions in terms of furnishings and flood defences to minimise the inevitable damage for the next time it floods.

Flood Re is a limited lifetime thing, so it's to be hoped they get their shit together by the time the scheme ends. But in the meantime it answers the question as to how anyone in a flood risk property can get themselves insured.

further reading:

https://www.floodre.co.uk/

make the bottom 3′ of the building (and the entrance doors) watertight

You also need to stop the drains backing up and water coming up from the floor, so fully tanked to 3' and non-return valves in the drain pipes. The walls then need to be able to resist 3' of water outside and none inside which a new build can be designed to do but an old house won't have been designed to do. It might cope but I'd want a proper engineer's report to be sure.

The barriers that the EA deploy are really clever, they use the weight of the floodwater to hold them down - see below from Ironbridge. Something like that may be possible if there's enough land.

Do they have approx 2mtr of ground around the property?
If they do then they can probably flood proof it with a semi permanent barrier.
I can recall seeing a design with an large inflatable sausage attached to a thick DPM type membrane.

People in flood prone areas will be left with the problem to deal with, for thise who have been there for years thats pretty harsh, for people like the OPs family members I have no sympathy. Savy people will flood proof their properties to some extent, most will expect someone else to sort their problem, and will suffer repeat flooding.

In the immediate term, refer to SEPA and the local authority. Ask to see the local flood risk management plan (LFRMP) to see what if any defences or alleviation has been considered and the cost/benefit conclusions. Ask about property-level flood resilience measures (PRF), ask SEPA. the LA and their insurance if there are any schemes they can get assistance from including 'Build Back Better'. Or get guidance on PRF at their own cost.

Look at central York, some places do flood resilience well.

Like everything, long-term some places may be abandoned, but while we have a housing crisis then the need for housing trumps the risk of flood and disruption. I imagine it's still sellable, just for less and less value as time goes on. This is especially true for sea level rise which is 'baked-in'. Those coastal properties in Cornwall worth £1 million now will eventually become Crown Estate below high water.

Insurance will cost more each year (for everyone, not just those at flood risk). But the Governments do have schemes to ensure properties at flood risk can get insurance, so at least that's something for now - see FloodRE.co.uk

Sorry OP but yes it's an expensive lesson about due diligence, land ownership and your responsibilities. If they have a pump in their garden are they adjacent to the watercourse? If so are they aware of their riparian responsibilities?

The area that I grew up in, and my parents still live is generally below, at, or maybe 1-5m above mean sea level.  The highest points are the river banks, and bridges over the river or motorways. At high tide, the large tidal river is often above most of the town, villages and surrounding farmland.

The whole area was marshland that was drained by some clever Dutch men in the 1800s, and is kept from flooding by ditches, dykes, raised riverbanks and pumps. Similar to much of the Netherlands, but as this type of landscape is much more rare in the UK, I can't imagine that there are is as much knowledge on how to maintain/operate it as over there.

There have been no large scale flood events in my lifetime, but when it happens it will take out a huge area, complete towns and villages. Yet there is still life in the area, huge new housing estates being built, along with distribution centers, factories etc.

I just don't understand it. Why my parents are happy to stay there, why people are still moving there, when the area is ultimately doomed without ongoing active human involvement in maintaining and operating the drainage and pumping systems. 

most will expect someone else to sort their problem

Never, in present day Britain? 🙄

@finbar

Yep - Hurt Arms. This October was at least the 3rd major flood in 10 years. And many near misses.

This was 2019…

I lived half way up Newbridge Road for 28 years and moved last year.

I’ve recently been more closely involved in some of this than I would like due to the collapse of a wall near my property that provides protection from the sea.

Scotland in particular has a flawed system as SEPA does not fulfil the same role as the environment agency in England. There can be studies and recommendations from SEPA that never get implemented as the decision (and funding) is driven by the local authority.

A quick google finds the Stirling council Forth Local Flood Risk Management Plan - Link

They are basically saying for Bridge of Allan, yes we need to improve defences but we don’t want to pay for it.

I lost my bloody long epic reply.

Tldr.

You cannot defend against flooding. Only against a level of flooding. currently we are designing flood defences to a 1in200 year event plus a 40% climate change to account for how much the shit is going to hit the fan in the next 100years. This also means an flood that can be expected once ever 100years now will be occurn at something like on average once in every 7years (forgot he exact figures).

As part of a flood defence scheme we would look at an economic appraisal. Comparing value of losses to cost of defending. It's really complicated because you have to apply factors to make it fair. Compare you families house to the number of homes to the same value affected by the brechins flood we can't just go on property value alone.

Typically from an insurance point of view the absolute minimum level of protection is currently about 1in70year event protection. If that can be achieved through new defences current property may be insurable but a one in 70 in fifty years is going to to be an absolute shitstorm of an event so it's a depreciating protection.

So that leaves... Property level protection. The 3'mentioned above is a red herring, normally we assume a 700mm level of protection to an existing property can be achieved by the means of gates and barriers and covers to all openings. That's because current buildings are typically structurally strong enough to retain that level of water pressing against them. Bear in mind that 700mm is normally from ground level so actual protection depths on the carpeted floor may be significantly lower. Newer houses can go higher of the are designed accordingly. There are two flavours or plp manual and automatic. Manual are only as good as the means of placing them... Even councils forget to do some of their action plans... See Perth a few months ago. Automatic ones are potentially better but then you have maintenance and reliability to consider.

That's the defence options. Now you get into the resilience measures... No carpets, wiring from above dragon boarding rather than gypsum. Let it flood and get back to normality as quickly as possible. Garages underneath are good from a safety but financial losses of cars tools and whatever can still be significant and that wouldn't be insurable... Wouldn't lose you home though so obviously a significant improvement.

All that costs money ofcourse. But it should be noted you could do some of column a and some of column b to get an improvement especially with a defence scheme aswell.

The you have abandonment... That's a fun chat to have with people. It's more likely to occur from social housing where they have to look at the whole life costs... Moving an estate compared to repairing all the properties on an x number of years basis. For private home owners it's a nightmare I wouldn't want, if you can't get the value out the current property you are up shit creek.

It's a huge bit of a mess of a problem that I promise we try and work really hard to come up with solutions.

That really was the tldr length aswell 😀

Realistically the sea isn’t a problem but the vast flatlands and river behind are where the trouble will come from.

The worst flooding we have had in living memory was probably the 1953 North Sea flood. Thousands of people died in the UK and the Netherlands. Add a m onto that as predicted and living by the coast looks pretty grim in he foreseeable.

We won't get a metre of sea level rise any time soon. Building practices and water management (rivers, runoff etc) are by far the greater part of the problem.

Sea level rise doesn't help of course.

@peekay

Ultimately sadly I think a lot of the fens will be returned to being brackish and underwater for reasonable periods of town. Unless governments decide to upgrade the defences, the fens by Francis prior has a good section on this topic.
I would be sad to see it go as a number of friends houses and also family graves etc will be underwater

I was brought up on the edge of the Fens, 50 yards from a river, in a house that had last flooded in 1953 - my parents found the flood marks when they stripped out the cottages. Work after 1953 - new flood relief channels and dredging etc - meant it was fine all the time we were there, my parents sold it in 2000 as they didn't want to risk being flooded out when they were properly too old to cope with it.

Several times in the last 2-3 years that house has been in a flood warning area, which hadn't happened in the 40 years I could remember.

There is the FloodRE insurance scheme to help people who can't get regular flood insurance, that may need to be expanded. There's a fair bit householders can do to flood proof their house or minimise the damage. But this isn't new - the elderly neighbour MrsMC grew up next to told tales of her grandparents moving upstairs every autumn as the house was in a town in Kent where 2-3 rivers met and the ground floor flooded every year.

There's a lot to be done in terms of "using" floodplains for what they are meant to be used for - both housing and farming practices have focused on drainage and pushing water downstream quickly, which makes the problem worse for those downstream. As a kid, the Fens around us flooded 6-12 inches deep for miles around (and when they froze, were used for speed skating). That flooding doesn't happen as much in those fields now, and when it does, it's a disaster rather than a part of the annual cycle.

Similarly, replanting upstream to slow the flow of water down off the hills to reduce the surges that cause flooding also needs to be looked at - can't rely on a few reintroduced beavers to do it for us. The government should be using it's money to support landowners to introduce these changes as a benefit to society in 10-20 years time, rather than having to use it's money to rehome people when it's too late.

In the meantime, home owners caught in the middle right now are kind of stuck - some houses will become less valuable/unsellable. Anyone who has recently bought one, given what we know, gets my empathy rather than sympathy.

And don't forget those communities at risk from coastal erosion and rising sea levels as well.

High six @peekay !

There are certainly vast, upland areas of Scotland that could be better utilised to minimise run-off and the subsequent downstream flooding. Unfortunately we don't (and are unlikely to) have a government willing to take the appropriate actions to "persuade" landowners to sort it out. 

I think OP's relative's best hope is that things get bad enough in marginal electoral seats for the politicians to start offering buy-back schemes or subsidized insurance more generally.

It might be cheaper in the long run to take a massive hit immediately and get the hell out while there still might be some buyers unaware of the implications.

Must have been quite the party for the seller when his relatives' offer popped in.

I listened to that R4 programme myself. Interesting but I couldn't help thinking there was a bit of financial book cooking going on with that floodre insurance.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001tgyd?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

About two years ago madam and I found our dream house, pretty much perfect in every way. Long story short, we put an offer in  and it was accepted. And then the doubts crept in - yes it was close to the sea.

I had spent my whole life close to the sea in one form or another so had a sense of what was  ok and what was not. I had a rudimentary understanding of sea level rise. Very quickly I established the house was under 5m above sea level - and therefore considered at risk. Then I dug deeper into sea level rise - I was under the impression that as the south of england was sinking,  Scotland was rebounding. That is still the case but sea level rise is now outstripping the speed of rebound, and currently stands at 8mm a year in scotland iirc. I found that until recently, sea level rise had not considered thermal expansion of the newly melted ice caps. I then did some local archive research and found that the neighbouring village was inundated in the mid 90's on the basis of a small tidal surge. And then again in 2012 in a storm. I found local news of a 5m surge in Grimsby in the last few years. All the time, the sea level is getting higher and the rivers feeding in to it are getting flooded more and more often.

It's easy to do the maths and hang your hopes on the 'best case scenario', thinking you'll be long gone before the sea is in, and you might be right. But then there's the tipping point where your desirable  property becomes an unsaleable loss, and frankly that might be a lot lot closer than you think. I opened this thread expecting to be one of the few red flag wavers but i'm surprised i'm in the majority. It feels like the tipping point has actually been reached, and the OP's relatives are already too late.

TLDR, we withdrew our offer.

Since that day I have not seen any evidence that there is any real attempt to slow climate change and sea level rise in particular. There are an awful lot of heads firmly stuck in the sand - a colleague recently sold his at risk property and moved to higher ground for the sole reason his house would be worthless soon - he even pointed out to the buyers what the problem was, and they weren't concerned.

Sell it now, it's only going down in value

@MoreCashThanDash @grahamt1980

I was talking about the area of Humberside around Thorne, Goole, Crowle and Gilberdyke. Very similar to The Fens; equally as bleak, miserable and doomed.

I started the thread as I reflected that my relatives cannot be the only ones in this position.

I just think there's a growing issue for thousands of homes and businesses.

One that will reshape our communities physically. And cost a lot.

Climate and environmental changes really coming home to bite.

We won’t get a metre of sea level rise any time soon. Building practices and water management (rivers, runoff etc) are by far the greater part of the problem.

Sea level rise doesn’t help of course.

We won't. But the water levels are are only one factor.

Our coastal defences are getting pummelled by larger more frequent storms. In areas Our beaches are dropping and our established dunes systems and cliffs and bluffs are taking the brunt of the impact as there is no energy dissipation.

Combine bigger waves and surges with a high tide which can reach further in and it's not a pretty picture. I didn't claim it was the biggest problem but we have to consider everything and gauge the worst outcomes for an area.

All while ensuring you don't just kick the problem up or down stream (or coast) or into the future.

I think you can also see this a different way... there are more and more properties that are going to be at risk from flooding, so the relative risk / cost difference in the choice of housing you have is diminished. e.g. in the flat areas, if you need to work in Goole you just accept there is a flood risk that the Government has to make strategic decisions about. Surface water risk is going to increase significantly in the coming years, partly from a better representation in our models, and the urbanisation that has already happened, partly climate change, so again everyone is going to pay for that increased risk / potential loss.

^ indeed.

And my in-laws house is the meeting point of all this.

Oldest house in the place - but also at the lowest point of the whole town, with old surface run-off scheme using the path and car park next to them struggling, increased speed and volume of runoff from the town in three directions, almost at the tidal limit and a river which will flood from the other direction which they are below flood level of protected by one small, low wall... The water literally comes up through the ground at them as well as flowing in. They are completely reliant on a sump and pump paid for by Stirling council and operated by Scottish Water which is apparently 8 years beyond discussions to replace it due to budgets.

You also have to think about building designs in terms of resilience to climate change. Historic buildings in particular do not have gutters and roans of a sufficient size to cope with the intense levels of rainfall that we now experience. Soakaways dug 100/50 years ago probably aren't big enough either. There is a knock on effect, it's not just about being above the floodline.

There is also the added issue that we expect far more ‘compound flood events’, which is where something like coastal flooding combines with river flooding. This is particularly a risk where low pressure systems, that bring heavy rain, also cause storm surges, which when combined with higher sea levels, means the flood risk and impacts become complex and much greater.

The communities of places like Fairbourne and Pacific Island nations show that this is very complex social issue; not just environmental. There is a very strong sense of place in people’s identities. Simply uprooting people isn’t possible (different for the OPs in laws where they made the choice to move the property). Furthermore short term political cycles don’t help much decision making/national will.

I'm assuming you've looked at the sepa flood maps Matt?

I know of the area I think they stay and I have colleagues who work that way (on the railway)

It's not a predicament I'd like to find myself in. Looking at the run off from my street onto the perpendicular ones, I could see minor flooding being a bad enough issue, never mind meters of water.

Historic buildings in particular do not have gutters and roans of a sufficient size to cope with the intense levels of rainfall that we now experience. Soakaways dug 100/50 years ago probably aren’t big enough either.

This has been the problem in recent years at my old house, neighbours old soakaway that couldn't cope or became blocked over years, we've luckily been able to route the water away into other drains.

I’m assuming you’ve looked at the sepa flood maps Matt?

Yep.
And they are slap bang in 'bad bits'. The surface flooding 'worst bit' is literally a trace of thier boundary...

 Have fun:

https://flood.firetree.net/embed.php?w=1200&h=700&ll=46.227638,2.213749000000007&zoom=5&m=13

What is the significance of a +13 metres scenario?

+13m is just the default plot on that website. However it’s not the most sophisticated modelling; I’d suggest checking out the various maps from Climate Central that use one of the most up to date digital elevation models and the latest climate science

https://coastal.climatecentral.org

There was a new housing estate built in Chippenham back in the 60’s, called Monkton Park, it sat between the old Calne railway spur and the River Avon. Around the same time, because the river through the centre of town was so shallow, (at times it was almost possible to wade across it), a decision was made to remove the old bridge and replace it with a single concrete span and dredge the river, put in an automatic weir downstream to keep a constant depth of around 15’ through the centre of town, and straighten part of the river downstream of the weir. The town centre used to flood when I was a kid, I can remember a tractor and trailer being used to ferry people across the bridge!
The other thing that showed remarkable foresight was the fact that a bund was built right around Monkton Park estate, and it’s never come close to flooding since.

The park right next to the river close to the town centre has flooded a bit, but it has a dip in it so it tends to fill up with water while the footpath/cycle path doesn’t. Here’s the satellite view of the estate, and you can see how the bund almost exactly follows the river, with the cycle path and footpath running just around the edge.

Who’d a thunk a council would actually think sixty years ahead, and it still being effective!

Here’s the original town bridge, you can see how shallow the upstream river is:

Here’s what the river looks like now looking upstream from the actual bridge now, it’s roughly 15-20’ deep in the middle and the sides slope down about 45°.

Government subsidy - www.floodre.co.uk

The site I linked uses NASA elevation data which is good. It doesn't need a model just an algorithm. There isn't much debate over what goes under at what sea level, the debate is about the rate of sea level rise. My personal view is that climate scientists are being far too cautious in their predictions. They are taking measured rates of change over previous decades and extrapolating those with very modest increases with time. I think they should be taking the highest measured rates now and adding exponentially increasing muliplication factors to account for:

Increases in glacier speed as sea ice melts and no longer holds glacier ice back

The melting of the sea ice will reduce the surface area of ice and reduce its cooling impact on both the sea and atmosphere - sea and atmospheric temperatures will rise faster around Greenland and Antarctica and the rate of ice loss will increase

The rate of increase in CO2 levels is increasing as production increases and sinks decline, the rate of temperature rise will increase - see Hawaii CO2 graph

All of the above will result in much faster ocean warming and thus water expansion as time goes on. It's currently reckoned to account for about a third of the observed rise - that will increase.

The atmopheric temperature at altitude is rising much faster than at sea level. Much of the world's ice is at altitude and will melt faster than predictions based on predicted sea level temperatures.

I think the oft quoted 30cm - 2m by the end of the century is too low and if somebody bothers to put together a model that integrates the factors I've quoted rather than just extrapolating current rates of change the sea level rise predicted will be much higher and more realistic.

Book mark this thread and we'll talk about it again ten years from now.

Edit: I had to edit to include some stupid low predictions that don't even reflect recorded sea level increases over the last couple of decades.

rather than just extrapolating current rates of change

This is not how sea level science is done - the underlying physics you mention is built into the models, and dependant on the future emissions. There are also what we call high-end low-probability (or H++) scenarios which are the highest physically plausible levels (e.g. 15 m by 2300 due to very rapid collapse of Antarctica), which the likes of the nuclear industry take into account.

For the current UK specific predictions see

METOFFICE.GOV.UK "https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/research/ukcp/ukcp18-fact-sheet-sea-level-rise-and-storm-surge.pdf"

which will be soon updated inline with the IPCC AR6 projections (note the UK H++ value has not been updated since 2009, this is work in progress), the background to which are given in section 9.6.3 here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/

NASA produced a nice visual tool to look at the regional projections from AR6, around the globe, under the different climate scenarios: https://sealevel.nasa.gov/ipcc-ar6-sea-level-projection-tool and a similar tool for the different warning levels can be found at that Climate Central link I posted above.

Yep – Hurt Arms. This October was at least the 3rd major flood in 10 years. And many near misses.

Used to have our club meetings in there ~25 years ago!!

And my old man did the old "build back better" thing, or a similar plan when his last place got flooded (if you search for "yorkshire floods" his house is featured on several news sites!)

All the electrics are fed in from ceiling down, main supply and fuse boxes are ~1.5m from the floor, all the drainage from the house is gated, so it can be closed off. The whole ground floor of the house has been plastered with some special plaster and painted with some semi permeable stuff. Then tiled to 1m, ish. Exterior walls have been repointed with some heavy duty mortar (the original stuff got washed away in one of the floods), they had the properties boundary walls rebuilt, they look the same (quaint piles of rough brick) but have a deep foundation and have a concrete core, there's a manual flood gate where the gate for the drive is (less than a minute to put it into place and lock it). The wall to the river (what causes the flooding obviously) is now a metre higher than it used to be. There's also a large sump and pump under the stairs to prevent ground water flooding.

Anyway, they got flooded 3 times in the first year, they didn't actually get to move back in until they'd been in a rental for over 18 months! Then all the works above were started.
The last flood they had, that actually meant that the neighbour on the other side of the river had to demolish and rebuild... took them about 2 days to clean up after. Basically mopping and washing the walls and floors. Cost them about 1200 quid in bits and pieces that got wet. They could probably even have stayed in the house.

They moved about 3-4 years ago to the top of the biggest hill they could find.
So even with all those works, they couldn't be bothered anymore.

Its an issue which needs holistic solutions. Reduction in environmental harm, assistance for vulnerable areas and a transition to sustainable practices. A fine line to tread!

Thanks for the lols Edukator. That’s hopefully an ironic username.

That Met Office report contains exactly the same predictions as I'm critical of, Tasha. The hard blue lines are just a straight line continuation of the 2000-2023 data. The 2002-2023 data are not a straight line, I see the start of an exponential curve.

Check out predictions for the disappearance of the Alpine glaciers over the years. When I first took an interest La Mer de Glace was losing about a meter a year. In 2015 the loss of 3m in a year made a mockery of predictions up to that point and the record losses of 2022 (16m IIRC) and 2023 point to the glacier disappearing much sooner than even quite recent predictions.

I spend quite a lot of time up hills so I get a very real feel for the changes. The inertia of the oceans means that on the coast temperature are rising moderately but measurably. However up the hill the average temperature has risen by 2°C and the temperature on clear nights doesn't go down as it used to. The snow blowers in the local resort haven't seen any use this year. It's 31/12 and we haven't had any cold clear nights. Last Monday it was 1°C on the plain and 8°C at 1400m - the sort of temperature inversion that is increasingly common

There's an acceleration that the Met Office among others is ignoring.

They are model predictions that take into account the physics of the Earth, climate and ice sheets, not extrapolations. And on this one thing I do feel qualified: I am a Professor of sea level change.

I am very pleased that your concerns about the changing climate are as significant as mine.

We looked at a potential holiday home in Wales. It had been on the market for ages mostly due to its historic flooding. Beautiful location, right on the river bank 🙂 From asking around we found out the basement flooded all the time, downstairs every few years and upstairs never. Similar to mert above I wondered if we could make it flood resilient. It needed major refurbishment anyway. Stone floors, High mounted electrics, move the kitchen upstairs (location would've made an upside down house nice anyway, fantastic views up the estuary). It was very cheap. In the end something else came up. Often drive past it. Its still unrenovated.

Edukator I too am glad you are as concerned as the scientists are. I'll reiterate ahsat's point... the projections in the Met Office reports and otherwise are physics based... each element of sea level rise is projected by models taking into account the physical equations and limits of the system. It's not one person in a room drawing a straight line through a graph. Although observations of the past and current do teach us about the physical limits of the system, the sources of sea level variability, interactions between different elements and so on. It's thousands of experts in different fields of Earth / ocean / atmospheric / ice science building and running models and finding both consensus and discrepancy, and looking to understand that.

While the loss of glaciers is tragic, the majority of sea level rise we'll see in the next century is a combination of thermal expansion and Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet and they are slow processes - already baked-in to some extent - but slow. The acceleration you 'see' needs to be understood in the physics of the system. As ahsat says there is also huge uncertainty in what future emissions might be, so a number of scenarios are run. (a former sea level scientist, now working for the EA in flood risk.)

What were they thinking ??

Are they hoping that the saving on the property would pay for the insurance costs and all the inevitable losses?

Trouble is money can’t buy you good health. The stress of living in a home that is worthless and could flood all the time just seams ridiculous

Thanks @konagirl. I was only wondering what you were doing now - exciting move to the EA 🙂

And on this one thing I do feel qualified: I am a Professor of sea level change.

And

(a former sea level scientist, now working for the EA in flood risk.)

I've absolutely nothing useful to add to the discussion but I do love it on here when you get proper experts in a subject explaining the how and the why rather than just some random opinions. Thanks to you both!

One slightly unrelated question for @ahsat and @konagirl, how on earth do you not end up going home from work every day thinking that we're all doomed and the planet is truly screwed?

And on this one thing I do feel qualified: I am a Professor of sea level change.

And

(a former sea level scientist, now working for the EA in flood risk.)

Oh thank god two someones more qualified than me. I am more involved in the engineering side of things but I do sit with the people who were involved in the SEPA flood mapping. I imagine ashat has worked with some of my colleagues 🙂

And I manage the  (spoiler - not easy) process of turning their ^ expert knowledge into an economically viable, physically possible and socially acceptable process of delivering engineered flood risk management solutions to communities.

Never has IANAE been so relevant, I love it when the experts wade in.
I grew up near Bewdley before they fitted flood defences. The houses on the river flooded every year I seem to remember. One chap had wood panelling on the ground floor hinged along the top edge when the floods came he would pivot it out put legs underneath and put the furniture on top.
I’d either try and sell during a nice hot summer or look at building a garage and nice outdoor living space on the ground floor and living above. Not much use I know and your in laws have my sympathy.

Did the sellers answer any relevant questions truthfully regarding past flooding events?  Or did the buyers only find out from neighbours/locals after moving in?

Yep it is depressing but so is war and politics more generally! There is some nice Carbon Literacy training, just keep doing the little things you can and don't feel guilty on an individual level. Ignore the whatabouttery. Make conscious decisions and each of us making small changes can combine to large change - especially when it comes to political change. My personality / skills / strengths are best suited to the science not the political persuasion side of things, so that's what I try and do my best at.

It's an interesting philosophical question about housing, land and asset. and acquired wealth. I mean if the OP's family bought the house as a home with the intention of living in it until they die, then the asset shouldn't really matter, invest now in PRF and expert advice if they can do anything differently with the sump/pump etc and they may enjoy a lovely home most of the time.

One chap had wood panelling on the ground floor hinged along the top edge when the floods came he would pivot it out put legs underneath and put the furniture on top.

As part of post flood studies we often dig up lots of old photos of previous floods. If you back to pre WWII everyone is smiling quite cheerfully from their windows/standing waist deep. I think it was just more normal and less "stuff" to be destroyed.

Did the sellers answer any relevant questions truthfully regarding past flooding events? Or did the buyers only find out from neighbours/locals after moving in?

My in-laws are somewhat 'complex' at times and won't answer that question. I do know the flooding risk was clear on the homebuyers, was highlighted in an email from solicitor, and the physical location of the property doesn't take a genius to have a concern.

"stuff" definitely. We didn't used to have sofas and 50 inch TVs that you can't carry upstairs! What is really sad is when people haven't get any knowledge they might be at risk and had things like family photos stored downstairs. Or lose computers / laptops without a back up of photos. Memory boxes and that kind of thing. In the US or Australia even though they are more 'personal responsibility' type societies, you'll find people have a bushfire plan and a 'grab and go' bag by the door in case they have to leave immediately. I do wonder if we should do better at that side of things, educating and preparedness.

The one advantage of directly working on the field is that you feel you can at least make a small positive contribution. Whereas when it comes to war, homelessness etc, I feel much more helpless. Yes it is depressing, but very much like konagirl says, and much of the public engagement work I have done recently, we try and focus on how individual small actions can all add up to positive change. Yes, it’s not going to solve the major problems, but most of us are not in a position to influence the decision making at COP, for example. Several of my close colleagues are, however, and I know they work very hard doing so (against very difficult global/political backdrops), whilst I focus on delivering the best fundamental science I can.

Those like joshvegas and pictonroad (nice to meet both your professional sides 🙂 ) have much more challenging roles of trying to deliver climate solutions against limited budgets and balancing very complex social-economic-environmental challenges. 

I started the thread as I reflected that my relatives cannot be the only ones in this position.

they won’t be the only ones, but there can’t be many cash buyers of £0.5M properties who ignore the advice of their solicitor and buy a property that is so vulnerable can there?  I have sympathy for someone who has been in a house for 20 years and then finds themselves in a previously unexpected flood risk, I find it much harder to think that responsibility for solving the problem should rest with society when someone has been clearly warned and therefore either got the property cheap because the whole market knew if was basically part time deep sea world, or they thought they were well enough off not to care.

presumably someone who ended up as a 0.5M cash buyer did so having got lucky on previous property transactions, in which case my sympathy is further diminished, there does seem to be a feeling by a generation that only ever noticed property prices go up that they are entitled to “growth”.

They are not cash buyers.

Did the sellers answer any relevant questions truthfully regarding past flooding events? Or did the buyers only find out from neighbours/locals after moving in?

The past is the past and has no relevance.

The solicitors searches will include current flood maps based on current data. To ignore it is foolish.

The house we bought last year in on the edge of a flood plain, and the ‘low risk’ bit ends not 50yds from our front door. Those 50yds are important though as the road rises 4m. If it gets to us the whole of the Amber Valley is gone!

Loads of people ignore the advice of experts because they think that they know better. Especially when it’s something as emotionally charged as global heating and climate change.

A close friend of mine is a junior doctor and has ended up having to take a one year rental for her current placements, on a flood plain, albeit somewhere that has had a lot of investment in the past 15 years (as that was all that was available nearish a rural GP practice). It has already been a very stressful winter for her, and she can’t wait to get out. I feel for those whom have little choice or been somewhere a long time.

I too think they're f*****d, it won't be mortgageable again, and nobody in their right mind would buy it.

Personally, I'd never buy a house anywhere even remotely likely to flood as the problem is only going to get worse. Rivers won't get dredged due to environmental concerns, upland/wetland restoration will take decades/centuries, and there simply isn't the money or joined up thinking to solve the issue on a regional basis, let alone national.