Floods: blame someone else

10.23.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 22nd Jul 2007

Coverage of the floods is implying that 'people' (ie the press) are looking for someone to blame. "Flood failures: Ministers 'mishandled crisis'" - from the Torygraph.

Keep hunting. Decisions are now made by a huge body of civil servants, Council officers (often at multiple tiers) private companies (such as water companies) quangos, and and management in our emergency services and armed forces. Somewhere in there, of course, we have the 'accountable' politicians.

Responsibilities have been delegated, outsourced, and split up over the last thirty years, and all the time the country has been changing and evolving. All these entities that are left are doing what they've been delegated, but no-one is in charge.

Much is said about our Victorian drains; well, assuming that 'as designed' they could cope with this sort of deluge the failures must therefore be caused by subsequent changes, or lack of change.

• Building on flood plains.

• Expansion of the reach of urban drainage systems. (how much is just 'grafted on' without considering the capacity of the existing network?)

• Privatisation of water companies.

• Split responsibility between water companies and Councils for urban drainage.

• Money saving by Councils on gulley cleaning (clearing leaves out of our drains)

• More roads, more impermeable surfaces in our towns.

And finally, there's the whole question of climate change. It seems to be a consensus that the phenomenon of rain falling in dirty great lumps is here to stay; whether its man made or not, we've got to live with it.

To make wholesale changes to existing infrastructure, and wholesale change to the way our infrastructure is changed and evolves is going to be expensive, time consuming, and complex. All the changes made above need to be understood and fixed in a co-ordinated fashion, and it'd require an immense amount of legislation to 'reel in' all the other entities.

Local Councils should be made responsible for their areas, with regional assemblies co-ordinating them. Regional government is co-ordinating strategic town planning, it should have to sort out the whole picture.

So, while we spend ten years sorting out the mess, we've got a hike in home and contents insurance to look forward to, and I wonder where else will go on the list?

• Boscastle (Aug 2004)

• Carlisle (Jan 2005)

• Sheffield (Jul 2007)

• Hull (Jul 2007)

• Gloucester (Jul 2007)

Related Links:

Boscastle [BBC]

Carlisle [BBC]

Mains water system in Gloucester downed by unprecedented floods

Scale of this week's deluge [Telegraph]

As ministers dithered, the deluge descended [Telegraph]

The UK east coast floods of 1953 [METOFFICE]

Structure / position of the Environment Agency