Building Homes on Flood Plains

[SparklySarah]

I've been listening to the local and national radio stations, and have been hearing reports that the government are giving the go ahead for homes to be built on flood plains. this is a news report on the situation:

Flood plain homes expected to go ahead - Yahoo! News UK

Is it just me, or is that really asking for trouble?! People go through all this; homes being swept away, loss of water and electricity, having to abandon homes, and still they build on the flood plains! I really don't know what they're thinking of, but its asking for it.

Sarah

[Kayleigh]

Surely if the search done on a house states that it is liable to flood (ie built on flood plains) no one will bye it. I wouldn't. They will never get insurance for the properties.

But we have to house all the immigrants(Its their human right) the government lets into this country even when there is no where to put them. There are people living in rented accommodation up to 14 living in one house and yet more come every day. What's the solution build more houses. Where on flood plains.

[Kymba]

One answer is STOP letting people buy their Council Houses, They were built to house people who cant afford to buy a house.. Also stop letting places get so run down that they have to be Knocked down.. when many large buildings, eg... Hospitals, care homes, Offices close down for what ever reason why not turn them into flats for those who are on waiting lists for a home, They already have Plumbing, electric,heating, and Toilets etc... it has to be cheaper to adapt them rather then knocking them down and re building Luxury apartments for those well off... Then maybe we wouldn;t need to build on Flood plains and green spaces..

I made My partner laugh yesterday when we were watching the news of all the flooding as i looked up and said quite seriously,, why has no one mentioned how many animals and wildlife has been killed in these floods!

[agrumpycow]

It is scary how many houses are built on flood plains, many you don't expect. And not just houses built in the last 25 years either. You can look towns on the environmental agency flood map to see just how much land can be effected.
Environment Agency - Flood Map - how to use it
Definitely worth a look if you're looking to buy a house

[Gill Catton]

well I survey an awful lot of old buildings that were hospitals or offices etc with a view to turn them into flats, so it is happening it just takes time.

Plus its very easy to blame immigrants for the problem but
a) There's just so many people who want houses its pushing the prices up and up and up we need more houses to almost provide a sufficency which would then reduce the demand and hopefully the prices will plateau at a point where people can actually afford them.
b) as there are very few that are direct and pure decendants from the original British Tribes we are mostly immigrants of some kind or another in this country so in that respect yes its definately the fault of immigrants to Britain
(although not a converstation I want to get into on here! religion / politics etc.....)

[Rich_]

You are probably correct Kayleigh, as it says much of the funding will be to councils & housing associations, we can guess who'll be living in many of them.

I read a quote several years ago on this subject of housing, which went something like.... "one day we could all be residents in the city of England".

A bit extreme? Maybe, but a lot of villages, have become part of the town or city they were once separate from in the last 30 years or so. When driving through some towns and cities in the more densely populated midlands & South, it is only the sign posts which tell you you have left one town & entered another, if you are not familiar with the place. Within the last 15 years a hamlet close to where I live was a mile walk from the nearest houses in the town. Now it sits on the edge of a large housing estate & is effectively joined to the town. According to the people who know, when you put more Tarmac down you add even more to the flood problem as it is.

[rlchew]

Oh dear, not the environment v. housing debate again. I dread this every time because ....

(a) I have been concerned for the future of our biodiversity and the environment since I was old enough to understand what we are doing to our planet .... and that reaches far beyond the flood plains of our rivers.

(b) I have worked in local government housing services since 1981 and believe me there is a desperate need for affordable housing for rent and for sale (and not just to house immigrants).

The recent floods have coincided with the new PM's drive for more affordable housing so the debate opens up again.

Solution? .... I have said for some time that we need to build more housing and we should do that by regenerating "brown field" sites rather than developing yet more green countryside.

That sounds like an OK idea .... in my part of the world there is plenty of "brown field" land suitable for development on either side of the River Thames stretching east out of London (the Thames Gateway) .... ooops, sorry, that is in the flood plain.

Back to square one .... what is the answer? .... I wish I knew.

Surely part of the longer term answer must be for everyone to finally recognise the real impact of climate change (not just rising temperatures but unusual and extreme weather conditions such as heavy rainfall and consequent flooding) and to make an individual commitment and contribution to making a difference.

Richard

[Kayleigh]

What I was saying was, if we control who comes into the country we would have more house to go round. In stead there seems to be an open door at the moment. Not only putting a strain on councils but on local schools and doctors surgery's and maternity and hospitals. There is an influx at the moment all the services are at breaking point.

The field where I walk my dog were green field 10 years ago now they are brow filed how does that work?

We do need council houses but the council around Northants are selling all of them to off to housing associations who charge £100 rent a week.

[Hornbeam]

This is a small island and much of it is low lying. Many towns and villages are in river valleys and many cities are close to sea level in estuaries - Liverpool and London for example. Since when did the facts ever get in the way of profit making or political dogma?

Politicians allow more newcomers (immigrants) than the country can possibly absorb. I read somewhere that 200 new homes per week for the next 20 years are going to be required for immigrants alone. No - I am not a racist, but a realist. We already have too many people living on too little available land

Developers build wherever they can get away with it. Councils have to give planning permission to meet government targets. Builders and developers make a lot of money

First time buyers cannot afford to buy. So others do and rent them out at high rates. So house prices still continue to rise. Second home owners price lower paid workers out of the market. So too many houses stand empty for much of the year.

Result - ever more demand for cheaper housing and so they will continue to build on flood plains, but insurance companies won't insure them. Maybe they will design flood prone houses on concrete stilts. But you can't build roads, railways and infrastructure on stilts

The real losers will be the people at the bottom end of the market who will have to take whatever they can get, wherever it is is.

Biggest losers will be the wildlife because set aside will be set aside and all dry land not growing food or bio-energy fuels (the new goldrush!) will be too valuable to leave for wildlife.

Oh brave new over populated world!

Yet this is just one summer and last year we had record high temperatures and drought. So what about global warming and all that? The prospect of lovely mediterranean sunshine coming to Britain is a myth. The reality is not global warming but climate change bringing extreme weather - as we are now beginning to see. The jet stream has shifted, the gulf stream will too and then we shall be in trouble with a British climate not unlike that of Newfoundland - wet, foggy and cold

[Dark_One]

England has a population density of 383 per square km (2003) figures
National Statistics Online

This is one of the highest in Europe, and shows no sign of abating.

Given the coming energy crisis, global warming, increased food production costs, loss of arable land to bio-fuels, loss of arable land to housing, I would suggest people have a quick look at this website Optimum Population Trust and see if that strikes a chord.

In the meantime, Mr. Brown will continue to concrete over the SouthEast of England ......

[Abercych]

What worries me about the BBC’s 24/7 coverage of the floods is that they’re not coming up with any insight into what’s going on other than to say rainfall has been unprecedented.
I’ve even heard people from the farming world saying what’s needed is a return to “good, old-fashioned” land drainage. The bloke I was listening to reckoned that fields are flooded because ditches aren’t cleared and rivers aren’t dredged.
But isn’t the problem that for years we’ve been creating a countryside that sheds water rather than holding it? Moving water downhill as quickly as possible has helped make Gloucester and Oxford how they are this week.
What’s needed is a countryside that can behave like a sponge and hold water. That would reduce floods during wet periods and keep rivers flowing when there’s a drought.

[Chiltern Chris]

I’m finding most of the debate about this on the TV and radio a bit simplistic, as although the flood plain is a real place, it’s actual size is variable.

There is a lot of confusion about ‘the flood plain’ as some parts will flood regularly e.g. 3 times a year, others once every few years and others once a century or less. This is called the return period. i.e. a 1:100 year flood or 1% flood is likely to occur once a century (however, this is based on risk which means you may get three 1:00 year floods in 3 consecutive years and then not have one for 200 years). That’s why you constantly hear people saying ‘flooding is definitely getting worse, it’s not flooded this badly before and I’ve been here 50 years’. A single person’s experience is not a good indicator of flood risk increasing or decreasing as they are not likely to have experienced all the different flood / drought level expected to occur in the area.

The debate about building on the flood plain is all about risk. Before we start saying that there should be no development on the flood plain we should say what we mean by the flood plain i.e. do you mean the land covered by a water in a 1:1 year event (annual flood) which is very little land, 1:5 (one flood every 5 years) which is a lot more land, 1:20, 1:50, 1:100? You get the idea, what risk do you want to take? We defend certain structures e.g. the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to a 1:1000 year event.

This isn’t necessarily my point of view but it may be sensible to have all infrastructure out of the 1:200 year floodplain, allow housing on the land which floods between a 1:100 and 1:50 year event (making them flood resilient e.g. no accommodation on the ground floor) and no development except sports fields etc in the less than 1:50 year flood plain. This is further complicated by the topography, in some places a 1:5 flood and 1:100 flood will cover virtually the same land and so lots of land would be sterilised from development, while in others e.g. steep valleys the opposite applies i.e. only land right next to the river would be sterilised.

As for the ‘clear out the ditches brigade’ – Vegetation removal only affects the lower order floods i.e. normally only 1:5 year event or less, where you definitely shouldn’t be building anyway, but it has no effect on large order events like the ones we’ve just seen. Seeing the aerial views of the flooding, does any thinking person really believe that removing watercrowfoot, common reed or some river gravel would make the slightest bit of difference? Butchering the river’s biodiversity to reduce the flood risk very marginally cannot be justified except where human life is threatened.

What causes the problem is not the ecology, it’s the field drains, lack of buffer zones, straightened channels which are shorter and higher gradient than natural channels, the silt from the fields blocking the channels, the constrictions such as bridges and the concrete banks in urban areas i.e. we’ve short circuited this part of the water cycle and then tried to constrain it in small steep and frictionless channels – we’ve made most of the problem and then build in the high risk areas – seems a bit of a no brainer to me. In the end it's a choice of if we want to carry on building in high risk areas then we need to accept the economic and human cost as there's no way we will ever keep that much water in a single or multiple channel system unless the channels are so big they destroy the buidings you're trying to protect - not to mention the catastrophic environmental destruction it would cause. Lets only build stuff in the floodplain we're prepared to get flooded based on the risk we're prepared to take, stop trying to put in larger defences which make the problem worse and use whats left of the functional flood plain.

If anyone is interested in the government’s present guidance to planning authorities on building in the flood plain, it’s contained in Planning Policy Statement 25 (PPS25) which came out in December last year. Planning Policy Statement 25: Development and Flood Risk - Communities and Local Government

Cheers, Chris

[naturelover]

Originally Posted by Kymba

One answer is STOP letting people buy their Council Houses, They were built to house people who cant afford to buy a house.. Also stop letting places get so run down that they have to be Knocked down.. when many large buildings, eg... Hospitals, care homes, Offices close down for what ever reason why not turn them into flats for those who are on waiting lists for a home, They already have Plumbing, electric,heating, and Toilets etc... it has to be cheaper to adapt them rather then knocking them down and re building Luxury apartments for those well off... Then maybe we wouldn;t need to build on Flood plains and green spaces..

I made My partner laugh yesterday when we were watching the news of all the flooding as i looked up and said quite seriously,, why has no one mentioned how many animals and wildlife has been killed in these floods!

hi funny you should mention the wild life in the flood reports,i have been thinking the same thing,there must be hundreds of animals drown in all this water,i hate to even think how many,if for instance the fields are flooded what about the cattle they are fenced in and cant escape,thats the trouble when you are an animal lover you worry about the animals,the wild life i think would have been ok all but babies,bacause they would have moved with it they are not stupid they have special instinks that we dont have unfortuneatly,its very sad about the baby birds that have died in their nests the birds that nest on the ground they didnt have a chance to servive,i am afraid this is one thing man canot controle nature.

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by Chiltern Chris

....... stop trying to put in larger defences which make the problem worse......

Stop building flood defences, period.

[Chiltern Chris]

Hi Tormentil,

We can’t just stop all flood defence work or many of our urban areas would flood. If you think the floods are bad now, you should try and imagine what it would have been like without flood defences. Rivers are dynamic systems and we’ve altered the system so much that the rivers are not in a stable state, so just like most habitats in the country, the rivers must be managed. Nearly every river you see will be managed in some way with altered flow regimes, structures and artificial gradients. What we’re really bad at is working with nature rather than against it i.e. we don’t use the rural flood plains in a sustainable way to save the towns and reduce river maintenance to increase small floods to keep wetlands wet. We can’t stop undertaking flood defence, but we can do it a lot better and increase biodiversity as we go rather than reduce it as we did very successfully in the latter part of the last century.

Chris

[Tormentil]

But don' flood defences just cause problems further up stream? Did n't the yanks find this out when the Mississippi flooded several years ago.

[Chiltern Chris]

They can cause problems upstream, but only if they cause what’s called a ‘head loss’ i.e. it makes it harder for the water to get through and you get a back up of water in high flows and deposition of silt in low flows (which then makes the flooding worse next time there’s a flood). The problems with most flood defences are down stream with higher water levels (as the water gets down stream faster), more erosion as there’s more energy kept in the river rather than it dissipating over the flood plain and faster water speeds as flood defence channels and structures have less friction (concrete and sheet piles are smoother than vegetation) and are shorter and steeper than natural channels.

There are other problems with many flood defences as the channel size is artificial. All rivers have a natural width and depth depending on the flow and gradient and the river is always trying to get back to that natural width. In general flood defence works make rivers too wide and the river’s energy is dissipated so much that silt drops out, which them smothers all the wildlife. That why many channels in the UK have silty beds with little life. They were dug too wide, so silt drops out, then people complain that the river isn’t being cleaned out because it’s all silty, so they are dug out again and so you start again. The answer is to stop clearing the rivers (except in urban areas) so they can recover and accept that they will then flood agricultural land.

Chris

[Kayleigh]

The rivers used to be a lot larger than they are today due to extraction to supply houses. They have become little less than a trickle in places.

Also the councils used to clean the drains from debris on a regular basis. Which they do not do now.

[Goosegogs]

I know it is slightly off-topic, but I was thinking of volcanoes for some reason. People live near some volcanoes - the soils are fertile. How often does a volcano erupt?

There wouldn't be enough land if people didn't live on floodplains.

On a fictional note - I've started to read John Wyndham's book The Kraken Wakes. I heard the serialisation on BBC7 a while back. Gripping!

[Loopy2]

Originally Posted by Goosegogs

I know it is slightly off-topic, but I was thinking of volcanoes for some reason. People live near some volcanoes - the soils are fertile. How often does a volcano erupt?

There wouldn't be enough land if people didn't live on floodplains.

Good point Goosegogs. Just look at the vineyards that ire evidence on the slopes of Vesuvius where the surrounding area is densly populated.

[Ipso Facto]

Why aren't houses that are built on flood plains designed to cope with flooding events?

For example, and this may seem crazy, why not have the houses on "stilts" with car ports below and the living quarters well off the ground above the potential high water level?

No matter how good the flood defenses are the rivers will always break out somewhere.

[Goosegogs]

Again slightly off topic - earthquakes - Japan is a country hit by earthquakes. Yet, they cope better than the UK does with floods.

[john4760]

Originally Posted by Kymba

One answer is STOP letting people buy their Council Houses, They were built to house people who cant afford to buy a house.. Also stop letting places get so run down that they have to be Knocked down.. when many large buildings, eg... Hospitals, care homes, Offices close down for what ever reason why not turn them into flats for those who are on waiting lists for a home, They already have Plumbing, electric,heating, and Toilets etc... it has to be cheaper to adapt them rather then knocking them down and re building Luxury apartments for those well off... Then maybe we wouldn;t need to build on Flood plains and green spaces..

I made My partner laugh yesterday when we were watching the news of all the flooding as i looked up and said quite seriously,, why has no one mentioned how many animals and wildlife has been killed in these floods!

You cant stop people buying their council houses for some its the only way to get on the property ladder.
Regards
John