John Harris correctly identifies that the UK is hopelessly unprepared for flooding, but is wrong to suggest that the public is not told about the threat (Flooded and forgotten: the UK’s waters are rising and we’re being kept in the dark, 16 November). In fact, the UK has some of the most detailed and accurate flood-risk information in the world. The Environment Agency publishes comprehensive flood-risk maps and impact information that is searchable by address, and regularly undertakes public-information campaigns.

The north-east of England has also pioneered community flood-resilience officers, whose sole purpose is to engage with at-risk communities and to encourage the development of “community resilience”, a model increasingly being mirrored in other regions.

What is puzzling is that these efforts, alongside extensive coverage of flooding in the media, have had little or no impact on enhancing the metrics of community awareness or preparedness. A 2016 poll by the Environment Agency indicated that only 45% of people living in at-risk areas appreciate their risk and only 7% identify any risk to their own property.

Exactly why the UK public fails to appreciate the scale of the flood-risk challenge is a complex issue, but the extensive centralisation and technocratic dominance of engineers and infrastructure-based solutions in flood management (and in environmental management more broadly) plays a strong role.

In a context where the public is largely excluded from any role in environmental management or decision-making, simply expecting people to protect themselves is naive. Why would they when there is an expectation that someone else will do it for them?

Root-and-branch reform of how flooding is managed is needed to reconnect people to their watery environments and improve public understanding and engagement with flooding as a societal challenge. Critically, this must include the devolution of flood-management powers to local and regional levels, not through the Environment Agency but via effectively funded and revitalised local authorities.

Our priority must be building trusted and effective relationships between risk-management authorities and communities, helping to develop unified understandings of risk, and working with them to manage risk and build resilience by combining infrastructure, nature-based solutions and community activity.
Dr Ed Rollason
Kelloe, County Durham

The illustration by Nathalie Lees accompanying John Harris’s article would have been an apt front cover for Ian McEwan’s new book What We Can Know, in which he lays out, in supposedly fictional terms, the result of flood waters rising. Essential reading for planning committees perhaps.
Moira Robinson
Kidlington, Oxfordshire