Then the poor EA, bless them, has to try and protect those houses but doesnt really have enough money. They also probably make a few mistakes, maybe on bad advice. And then possibly don’t help themselves making more mistakes all by themselves.

Mistakes is a bit harsh. There’s only so much you can do with the finite resources you have. Biggest problem is that people who have houses near water don’t want things in the way of the water cos it’s all pretty, or want building work going on even though it protects them “cos it’s never flooded before”. You have to consider so many variables along the channel, upstream and downstream, it’s crazy. And of course you have to prioritise schemes which protect more people, because it’s protecting life which is the priority. Not fields in most cases.

Anyone remember the fuss about gritters last year?
Wonder if any money that could have been spent on flood prevention is now tied up in council deopts full of shiny new gritters?
Next year we’ll be snowed and iced under and councils will have nothing but dredgers…. Then Pickles will appear and tell off the councils for not doing what he said along and getting a load of gritters.

Millions will be spent on dredging and we will have light rain for years to come 🙂

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25030-dredging-would-not-have-stopped-massive-uk-floods.html

“The solution for residents and communities is to adapt to living with it,” Cloke says. “They shouldn’t expect the government or the Environment Agency to protect them from a flood that’s impossible to protect against.”

Horatio, there are things called return periods: how often a certain phenomenon is likely to reoccur. A 1 in 50 year event is pretty bloody common, a one in 100 year event is still pretty common.

Would you buy a house with a 1% chance that it would be flooded 3 feet deep this year?

If you were insuring millions of houses against flood across the UK, would you make an effort to avoid being on for £100m of losses? Would you make an attempt to avoid some of the high risk areas, and make sure you were getting a decent amount of premium from the medium risk areas (100 – 500 year return period)? If you go cheap on flood premium, you’re going to find yourself a haven for flood prone risks, and when (not if) the storms come, you’re going to be left holding a greater proportion of the £500 million cost than you might have liked. Some of the claims will be recouped through your own insurance (reinsurance), but next year, your reinsurers aren’t going to be so keen, they’ll want to increase your premium, reduce your cover, know what you’re doing to reduce your exposure.

In other words, nothing’s for free. If you ignore risks thinking “that’s what insurance is for”, you’ll end up paying in the long run.

Millions will be spent on dredging and we will have light rain for years to come

And people will declare that the dredging worked.

A return period in a flood context is a measure of magnitude..its not a measure of frequency or how often a flood is expected to occir…and its massively misleading for the average person
..I wish the ea would stop using it.

Iirc insurance co have a gentleman’s agreement with govt to continue offering insurance to those in high risk flood areas..the existence of that agreement is what allows development in unsuitable areas to continue.

We need to get smarter about flood management though:

http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/learn/threats-to-our-woodland/human-impact/how-tree-planting-could-help-reduce-flood-risk-in-wales/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes

As these stories point out, there are solutions in unlikely places – e.g. EU farming subsidies being dependent on all land being used for production are preventing adoption of very effective floodwater management.

how is a “1 in 100 year” event not a measure of frequency?

Obviously events with bigger magnitude will happen less often, the two are inextricably linked.

Because 1 in 100 year events don’t happen once every hundred years.

The problem with return periods is that we’re incredibly short-sighted, “The worst floods since 1968” OMG!! that’s like ofrever!!! How can we be expected to factor that in to our decisions!?!?!?

mole valley floods, 1968, flood this year, bit less than 50 years after. Never going to be regular, but twice in a lifetime? Not infrequent enough to discount form the biggest investment you’ll ever make.

But it is, we’re very bad at learning, and being honest with our mistakes. “Looks like a stock market bubble, but the last one was aaaaages ago, like what? 5 years ago? and before that? We have to go back another 5 or ten years!!” and again, and again, and again with shocking regularity

The flood risk should be included in the premium you pay. The premium you pay is based on actuarial calculations on the chances you will make a claim, and what that cost will be. (Unless we are talking about gender rating for car and life insurance, courtesy of the EU)

I doubt insurers will try and weasel out of claims for flooding. I doubt they will blame people for living on flood plains. They may review their premiums/excesses/exposure in these areas)

But if you live near a river or on a flood plain, the chances are that at some point in your life there will be an exceptional weather event and you will get flooded. It’s not about blame, it’s about probability and risk.

No government has tried to control the weather/nature since Canute’s early attempts…….

He didn’t, to be fair. He was demonstrating his humanity to people whole thought were asking too much of him, showing that he could no more control the tide than anyone else.

IIRC a 100 year flood means it has a 1% chance of happening in any given year, not that occur every 100 years. A measure of probability rather than frequency. I might be wrong though, so feel free to correct me.

bang on wnb.

Realise that I was missing “likely” from my earlier posts. Sorry gwealod if that was misleading, and that the expression of statistical likelihood of occurrence is the part you think is missing from the EA’s stuff.

but I wonder if anyone thinks like that. Hope they don’t

“1 in 50 year event, being flooded here. Last flooded in 1992, I should be fine to buy as long as I move out before 2042!”

He didn’t, to be fair. He was demonstrating his humanity to people whole thought were asking too much of him, showing that he could no more control the tide than anyone else.

Close, Cnute was demonstrating that, although King, with powers of life and death over his people, God’s power was transcendent over everything.
He could no more command the tide than he could command Almighty God.
One thing that stunned me tonight on telly, was that a lot of flooding now is due to the sheer volume of water that is below ground, and which is now being forced to the surface all over the place. Groundwater levels are higher than many can ever remember, and it’s just not being given chance to soak deeper into the aquifers. There are capped boreholes all over the place, and one was shown with the cap off, with water just pouring out of it because of the pressure; the cap was around a meter off the ground!
This isn’t a once in 50 year, or once in 100 years event, this is the worst period of prolonged wet weather for around 250 years, which is why there are floods in places that have never been known to flood, even on what some are referring to as a ‘flood plain’, the elevated parts that haven’t flooded for several centuries, and then due to one massive storm and huge tidal surges, such as the one in 1607, which drove the sea as far inland as Glastonbury Tor, swamped thirty villages and drowned 300 people. In 1703 it happened again, and hundreds more were drowned. These were floods caused by the sea being forced inland, a completely different set of circumstances to the current crisis, where the water can’t be pumped off of the Levels quickly enough because of the deliberate cessation of dredging to turn large areas of the Levels into wetlands to make it more appealing to wading birds.
Baroness Young, Lord Smith’s predecessor at the EA was previously head of the RSPB, and famously said that she’d happily see every pump on the Levels dynamited!

deviant – Member

This weather is awesome. The other half had a problem with her car that was going to be expensive to fix or more likely terminal…. either way she doesn’t have the funds to replace or repair.

So we got her mechanically minded father to put water in the engine and various pipes/hoses, started the vehicle, properly shafted it and are now going through the insurance instead as ‘water ingress’ into the engine from all this terrible weather and the puddles we must have driven through!

She loses her NCD but gets the car written off and enough of a pay out to get a decent vehicle back on the road again….every cloud and all that.

Very clever, eh, hope she has 3rd party fire and theft, so not covered,

Also a lot of insurance companies dont cover vehicles driven into water because of the potential for fraud, also, how and where did the vehicle get flooded, how was it returned to where it is now, will the neighbours or freinds blow her in for fraud.

Mistakes is a bit harsh. There’s only so much you can do with the finite resources you have. Biggest problem is that people who have houses near water don’t want things in the way of the water cos it’s all pretty, or want building work going on even though it protects them “cos it’s never flooded before”. You have to consider so many variables along the channel, upstream and downstream, it’s crazy. And of course you have to prioritise schemes which protect more people, because it’s protecting life which is the priority. Not fields in most cases.

Not really harsh. they have made mistakes.

My tone might have sounded sarcastic but I wasnt being so, they are undoubtedly underfunded and limited. That is why mistakes have happened.

We can but hope for a massive cash boost and subsequent employment drive by them. Not only to fix problems but go after people causing them.

The flat I live in is subject to excessive contents insurance quotes, which did go up massively following a previous flood. Now, I live on the second floor so unlikely to make a claim. I would also like to point out that I did choose to live here, but it was pretty much a choice of buying here or not buying at all, since the place I live was the cheapest available.

Being surrounded by floodwater is a ball ache. Not so much for me, but it means that, for example, my MIL cannot get out for her daily walk. She feels this to be crucial to her wellbeing, as she has had cancer and related ops and the exercise improves things. Wading through the water last time ended with her getting sick, so she’s remaining housebound until the waters recede. I understand that it’s important for lots of people to feel better about their lives by belittling other people. You can **** do one.

Good news – looks like Cameron has warned off the insurance companies.

So hopefully we won’t be seeing the blame the victim card being played this time.

My cynical mind wonders if this is anything to do with this being the Tory heartland. 🙂

And a general election on the horizon…

Surely gay couples should pay for the flood damage since they are clearly to blame?

What exactly is Singletrack’s legal position with deviant admitting a criminal act on here?

Just seen the news & It looks like a lot of people were ready for flooding anyway. Most people had boats at the bottom of their (flooded) gardens! Very handy & forward thinking if you ask me.

(iv’e got a Canadian open canoe, just in case)

In the past I have found STW Towers to be quite fair MCTD 😉

Maybe being a claims manager in a previous life just makes me a little more sensitive to that kind of thing.

Still, it’s a victimless crime, eh? 🙄

epicyclo – Member

Didn’t actually give a number of how many claims were fraudulent, just an assertion that some were. How do they know?
Fraud figures in note 5

45,000 in 2011 – and that’s just the ones caught.

I doubt STW would be responsible for reporting an admission of perceived fraud, but I’d imagine the police could request identifying details of the poster if they were investigating.

MoreCashThanDash – Member
What exactly is Singletrack’s legal position with deviant admitting a criminal act on here?

I also broke the speed limit driving to work this morning and took class-A drugs at college….quick, hang me!

It’s not all quite as simple as some make out is it. I had a to cut shourt a business trip to Brussels yesterday at £200 cost to myselg because my road was flooded and we were about 1″ away from being underwater. Our are has not flooded previously, didn’t come up in any searches and is not on a floodplain area etc.

However a couple of issues further downstream and an issue with some building work taken on by a fella down the road, means that on this occasion our home is very much at risk of flooding.

As for “what are we doing”… well not a great deal in all honesty… Water is kind of hard to stop as King Kanute once found out. It goes where it goes and there’s very little you can do about it, we’ve got sandbags going on and we’re doing our best… but we can’t ‘divert the water as it comes up through the drains by the houses.

Only thing worse than a criminal is a smug criminal.

Wonder if crimestoppers would share that view? 😉

Surely there’s some risk that ANY house could flood. How’s the average person supposed to assess this risk? Its beyond their abilities

Living in one of the highest homes in the Bristol area I hope not for the sake of everyone else!

Only risk we have is water ingress from crappy building work but that is down to the landlord and her builder and the longer it takes them to agree to doing anything about it the more damp and is appearing on the walls and ceilings and the more of my stuff is getting soaked…but that is another matter!

My sister struggled to get contents insurance for her rented flat, because it was right next to the Tyne, so it was inside the flood risk area on the EA maps, even when she pointed out that it was a second floor flat…

We pay a fortune for our building insurance, because our postcode is within 400m of a water course. When the river floods, the bottom of our garden can be under around 6 feet of water. But, the garden’s 300 feet long, and the house is a good ten feet higher up and 200 feet away than the highest the river has ever reached, so I think we’ll be ok.

Weirdly, the river has broken its banks far less this year than in previous years.

Fortunately David Cameron has now declared that ‘Money is No Object’

when it comes to the cleanup and repairing flood defences
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/11/uk-floods-david-cameron-unlimited-public-funds
and
“we are a wealthy country and we have taken good care of our public finances”

shall we all celebrate the end of the age of austerity then?

The thought of Tory voters in Berkshire being driven back to the dark ages hasn’t crossed David Camerons mind.

With all the best will in the world of money being no object there’s 2 problems from my own perspective.

Yesterday morning the water was about 12″ deep and lapping around the front doorstep. Mrs Weeksy was told by the council “we’ve sent some sandbags, you’re on your own, there’s only a few houses so we’ve got more important things to work on”

Along with part 2, which is that no-one can just make the water go away, it has to go ‘somewhere’ but there’s more of it than the stream can take, more than the drains can take and more than any other things in place can take…so where/how do you make it go away.

I’m sitting here and it may seem i’m in control of my thoughts and emotions, but in all honesty i’m struggling to keep control of it all.. it’s just i hate being in a situaion i can’t influence, affect or resolve.. we’ve checked and tried to unblock all the culverts, we’ve re-directed water to the best of our ability, but still, it’s not the best. If we re-direct the water incorrectly, we’re facing the real possibility of flooding someone elses home instead through our actions.. which would be as much as a disaster to me as flooding our own.

It’s easy making light of the situation of “it’s only a bit of water”

but you know what… it’s not, it’s really really not.

shall we all celebrate the end of the age of austerity then?

The age of austerity never applied to the south east in the first place. It only ever applied to the frightful plebs in their provincial hellholes

And central London, did you see that bit, binners?

Phoned an insurance company, one that makes a saga out of a crisis, for a contents and building quote, seems because i have a roof that is flat 4 floors above me, i am not able to be insured, and one question i got asked was was i within 150 metres of any water and had i been flooded within the last 5 years, or any flooding nearby,living on a hil didnt count.

So expect some equally stupid questions from insurance companies as they try to refuse insurance to people renewing with a new company.