FRE0113
Written evidence submitted by Dr Steven Forrest, University of Hull
This written response has been prepared by Dr Steven Forrest, Lecturer in Flood Resilience and Sustainable Transformations, Energy and Environment Institute, University of Hull. Dr Forrest is an environmental social scientist who completed his PhD on ‘The Rise of Civil Society in Governing Flood Resilience’ at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and is Programme Director of the MSc in Flood Risk Management programme at the University of Hull. He undertakes research, teaching and knowledge exchange on the topic of flood resilience in the UK and further afield. Dr Forrest is frequently consulted by media such as BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, and The Metro, for expert comment on how the UK can be better prepared for flooding in future. His work includes include unpacking flood resilience, connecting theory and practice, learning from flooding, and analysing socio-spatial inequalities and injustices within the transition to flood resilience.
The following written response will provide evidence relevant to the following issues identifying in the Call for Evidence: Strengthening flood resilience (focusing on community engagement and empowerment and including alternative approaches of serious gaming (games with distinct aims and mechanisms to engage players in real-life issues, such as flooding) and the Flood Awareness Centre); Coordination of flood resilience (focusing on key priorities for the Flood Resilience Taskforce); Resources, funding and support for flood resilience (focusing on encourage long-term private investment and supporting property owners and neighbourhoods). The evidence below relies on experiences in flood resilience over the last decade, collaborations and discussions with stakeholders in authorities, consultancies, and civil society (including community flood groups).
Key Recommendations:
The pursuit of flood resilience globally is increasingly urgent in the midst of recent flood events and predictions of worsening flooding in the future (e.g. European Commission, 2024; PBL, 2023). It is especially pressing in the UK context with recent floods (including in Northamptonshire and Greater Manchester) and future estimates of increasing flood risk (e.g. NaFRA, 2024). There are challenges in managing flooding with a growing number of academics, practitioners and communities recognising that flood events cannot always be prevented and that there is a need for a plan B, which involves taking anticipatory (pre-flood) actions framed on ‘when’ the next flood will be as opposed to ‘if’ there will be another flood (e.g. McClymont et al., 2020). This is a recognition that flooding cannot always be prevented and that we need to ‘live with floods’ (e.g. Liao, 2012) to become flood resilient (although ‘resilience’ is a somewhat vague and ambiguous term and needs defining before use). As part of this flood resilience shift, there is an increasing acknowledgement that to ‘live with floods’ we need to include a broader and more diverse set of stakeholders and their voices in flood risk management (Forrest, 2020). These stakeholders include those who have formal expertise as well as those who have relevant experiences that have informed their perspectives on flooding. More specifically, there is a growing recognition of the value of civil society voices (e.g. formal NGOs and more locally-based community flood groups) and the need to not only send information at them (i.e. following a solely information deficit model approach) but to more meaningfully engage and develop their capacities as part of a broader goal of community empowerment (e.g. Forrest, 2020).
Community engagement and empowerment is of key importance in pursuing flood resilience. Whilst recognising that there are very good examples of place-based approaches and citizen empowerment occurring across the country, there is still an opportunity (and perhaps a need) to consider additional and alternative intervention approaches to support flood risk managers in engaging with different communities facing a range of diverse risks and barriers. This written response details two alternative intervention approaches based on recent experiences. The first focuses on using a serious board game to consider and try to reduce power inequalities between different stakeholders in exploring flood recovery gaps (2.1.1.). The second alternative intervention approach describes a recent Hull-based intervention that temporarily set-up a Flood Awareness Centre (2.1.2.) as a more accessible and in-person approach to facilitating community engagement on the topic of flooding in a city that experienced devastating floods in 2007 and 2013. These alternative intervention approaches have found relative success in Hull and East Riding, with the potential to bring benefits across other parts of the country.
‘Serious Gaming’ is increasingly being utilised as a creative approach to community engagement and empowerment in flood resilience efforts. The ‘serious’ refers to games that are more than only ‘being of entertainment value’, such as in developing tactical skills (e.g. chess) and in simulating dangerous scenarios and testing existing protocols as part of incident planning and training (e.g. CBRNE exercises). An example is the ‘Flood Recovery Game’: a physical board game developed at the Energy and Environment Institute at the University of Hull, as part of the Aviva Foundation funded project ‘Mapping Flood Recovery Gaps’ (Dr Giles Davidson, Dr Steven Forrest, Ejuma Amen-Thompson, Dr Kate Smith, Dr Cecilia De Ita, Amy Richardson). The Flood Recovery Game has been developed and deployed from 2021-present as a tool designed to bring organisations and individuals (i.e. stakeholders) with different experiences together to identify ‘gaps’ in UK-based flood recovery. Notably, the interactive game has been played at Flood and Coast 2024, the Royal Geographical Society Conference 2024, with community volunteers in Hull and community members in Govan in 2024, and with relevant flood resilience actors in Hull and East Riding in 2022. This serious gaming approach has also been utilised to engage with minoritised ethnic groups in Hull as part of a PhD project that will be publishing results in 2025 (PhD researcher: Blessing Mucherera, Supervisors: Dr Steven Forrest, Dr Lisa Jones, Dr Briony McDonagh).
The serious game approach has strengths in community engagement and empowerment. It aims to be sensitive to power disparities between different players (i.e. stakeholders) and foster a safe environment for the sharing of problems, concerns, and most importantly suggestions for improving flood risk management. The playful and collaborative nature of the game format can also support relationship building and stimulate conversations on the difficult topic of flooding and flood recovery between formal and informal actors, as well as authorities and communities. Views from stakeholders (i.e. the players) are treated respectfully and there is a phase of co-analysis wherein different stakeholders can identify solutions and next steps. There are weaknesses with this approach, including stakeholders sometimes being reluctant to engage in the game format although we have seen this reluctance reduce (and vanish) during gameplay with some of the most reluctant players later becoming the most enthusiastic. This weakness is partly due to the relative novelty of using a game-based approach as a serious method to exchange views within the flood resilience space. It is also important to carefully consider the appropriateness of using serious games within areas, and with people, that have recently been flooded as it might be seen to trivialise the issue of flooding as well as being potentially upsetting to those who have been recently flooded.
Further information can be found in this peer-reviewed academic article: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/dpm-01-2024-0035/full/html; the project page and report: https://www.hull.ac.uk/work-with-us/research/institutes/energy-and-environment-institute/our-work/mapping-flood-recovery-gaps
The Flood Awareness Centre temporarily occupied an unused shop unit in Hull’s city centre and ran from the 25th-30th November 2024. The intervention aimed to engage members of the public in thinking about flood risk and flood resilience measures as they visited the city centre. The coordination of the centre was led by both the University of Hull (Steven Forrest) and Hull City Council (Lauren Murtagh), and was supported by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Yorkshire Water as part of the Living with Water partnership. Staff at these organisations supported the running of the Flood Awareness Centre and organised workshops alongside Flood Re and the RSPCA. ‘Living with Water’ Community Ambassadors and students from the University of Hull’s MSc Flood Risk Management programme also supported engagement activities. Over the 34 hours it was open, approximately 380 people interacted with the centre and its activities with an estimated 103 visitors spending on average 15+ minutes engaging with staff at the centre. Discussions were varied and included topics such as property level protection and property flood resilience measures and their installation, flood insurance and challenges in obtaining it, the potential use of dredging, as well as visitors sharing memories of recent floods in Hull (2007 and 2013). These discussions and activities were supported by an exhibit on flood histories (led by Dr Katerina Velentza), SUDS house (a 3D physical model that shows sustainable drainage systems, property-level protection, and property flood resilience measures), and an interactive flume activity.
This Flood Awareness Centre intervention has strengths in engaging individuals who may not normally have sought information about flooding and flood resilience measures. This was helped by being in a physical space in an accessible location in the city centre that members of the public could visit as part of their routine shopping errands. Furthermore, the centre engaged a relatively large number of individuals with few costs incurred. Support was mainly in-kind from the organisations involved and volunteers, which supported partnership working but also meant relying on goodwill that may not always be present in the future. The collaboration between different stakeholders in the Living with Water partnership (Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, University of Hull, Yorkshire Water, and the Environment Agency) was further developed through the intervention. The involvement of academic partners enabled creative activities and research components to be integrated into the Flood Awareness Centre with methods to anonymously collect data that could be used to see how representative visitors were across Hull postcodes. There were also weaknesses with funding constraints limiting the engagement approach with no money for proper signage, and also limiting pre-event advertising and engagement.
Learning from previous flood events is an important part of building back better and pursuing flood resilience. Flood disasters arise when a natural hazard meets and exposes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities pre-existing within society. It is therefore imperative that we look to address these pre-existing weaknesses and vulnerabilities within society before further flooding occurs. This necessitates investigating previous flood events and their causes, as well as developing proposed actions for the future. Arising from the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, Section 19 Flood Investigation Reports (S19 reports) are written after a flood event has taken place, based on it meeting the threshold for investigation (not all flood events have been investigated, but a large number have been across England and Wales). We (Steven Forrest and Rhys Furley) undertook research into these S19 reports to understand more about the diversity in the composition of these reports, the nature of flooding recorded, and to identify potential lessons. It should be noted that a Defra-led project on ‘Section 19 Flood Investigation Guidance’, awarded to JBA Consulting, has sought to address issues with S19 reporting to make it more consistent across LLFAs (I am a member of the Project Steering Group). Their findings and work may also be relevant to this call for evidence.
Our research identified approximately 1,278 S19 reports for England (884) and Wales (394). At present, 136 of 151 Lead Local Flood Authorities (LLFAs) in England responded and provided reports for 2010-2023. The key findings are (briefly) that S19 reports varied in terms of the threshold of flooding that triggered a report being written, the contents included, the report’s public accessibility, the time taken for report publication after the flood event, and the report authors. For the latter, S19 reports were authored by LLFAs as well as external partners such as consultancies. In many cases there was limited, if any, reporting on the extent to which the identified challenges in the S19 reports had been acted upon and which organisations were responsible for action.
There is a need to ensure that lessons can be further explored and that this is properly resourced for LLFAs, especially in terms of necessary skills and staff time. At a national level, there is potential for these reports to be analysed further across the country to identify common issues and then seek to pool resources and expertise to develop broader and scalable solutions.
Learning from flood events to build back better (3.1.1.) is part of a wider strategy of continuing to build institutional capacity on flood resilience and ensuring that knowledge and skills are retained within the public sector. The reliance on organisations external to the LLFA and public sector to review flood events and identify lessons may mean that knowledge and expertise may not be retained within the LLFAs. There needs to be further efforts to support the retention of institutional capacity, especially the dedicated staff members, by providing an attractive work environment with career pathways for current flood risk managers and the next generation. The latter will be drawn from fields including engineering, but also the environmental social sciences, ecology and biology, modelling and physical sciences, arts and humanities, risk communication and psychology, digital technologies and AI, education, social welfare, and many others. This range of expertise is integral to achieving a more holistic approach to flood resilience.
There needs to be mobility between areas and departments in the public sector with career pathways that attract individuals from these above fields who may not traditionally have been interested in applying their expertise to flood resilience. Mobility can be supported through CPD courses and Master's degree programmes that enable graduates to gain additional skills relevant to flood resilience. The CIWEM-accredited MSc in Flood Risk Management at the University of Hull takes a holistic perspective with active researchers drawn from the social sciences, physical sciences, modelling, arts and humanities delivering modules to home and international students. The entry requirements are not subject-specific and extend across all disciplines with students having gone onto careers in the Environment Agency, LLFAs, consultancies and universities.
As previously discussed (3.1.1.), there is a need to acknowledge that flood disasters happen when the flood hazard meets and exposes weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the existing societal and institutional systems (i.e. people experiencing poverty/child poverty, reduced social safety nets, low/poor/unenforced building standards and inappropriate spatial planning decisions, limited/no investment in disaster resilience and preparedness pre-disaster, systemic discrimination and power inequalities, lack of institutional capacity to take pre-disaster/during disaster/post-disaster action) – the flood does not create these issues.
The flood hazard interacts with these pre-existing problems and brings them to the surface through its terrible impacts. Flood resilience cannot only be incremental add-ons to the status quo, although funding for capacity building and investment in poor assets is important. For the country to pursue a flood resilient future, it needs policymakers to identify and address these weaknesses and vulnerabilities existing in society. These exist across society and need to be addressed by bringing together a diverse range of stakeholders at the national, regional and local levels from the public sector, private sector and civil society. This includes community-based flood teams, not only during the response but also in preparing for flooding, as well as mobilising other types of community organisations to support efforts at addressing the weaknesses and vulnerabilities existing in society.
This seems like a daunting task, but it can be achieved by connecting the issue of flood resilience to wider climate resilience actions (e.g. ensuring greening measures in flood resilience also bring benefits in adapting to heat stress and drought) and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. ensuring that flood resilience actions do not increase emissions and exacerbate climate change, such as by using less carbon intensive materials and utilising renewable energy to support the development and operation of flood resilience assets and interventions).
As part of reaching flood resilience and just transitions, it is important to recognise the shift to flood resilience can create new inequalities (Forrest et al., 2020b;). To avoid this, we need to recognise the different capacities of citizens, businesses, and communities to prepare for (and respond to) worsening flood risks. Part of this is recognising the needs of different members of society, including transient populations such as tourists and students.
Insurance policies need to proactively ‘build back better’ and aim to improve the properties post-flood, to avoid the same flood hazard resulting in the repeat flooding. Doing so can support individuals, communities and businesses in overcoming the financial challenge of having to repeatedly repair and restore their property, as well as in avoiding the wellbeing challenges to the occupants and associated impacts upon wider social networks (e.g. families and friends) and the economy (e.g. employer disruption due to time taken off).
There is a continuing need to increase coverage for flood insurance. In the Flood Awareness Centre (Hull), visitors identified availability of affordable insurance as a key problem. In many cases individuals did not think to check their policies for flood risk until after flooding. On this point, there is a need to increase flood insurance awareness, affordability and availability. However, there is also a need for insurers to be more proactive in embedding ‘build back better’ in their insurance policies and opportunities for insurers to better recognise the potential benefits of such flood resilience measures that individuals and neighbourhoods have taken when providing individual insurance policies.
Engagement with members of the public has identified a challenge in that the implementation of property-level protection (PLP) and property flood resilience (PFR) measures is linked to property ownership. Members of the public living in rental properties, including students, have expressed worries about making changes to their rental property to incorporate PLP and PFR measures. The concerns focus on rental agreements where tenants need to leave the property in its original state and put back any modifications that they have made (including PLP/PFR measures). These tenants are therefore worried that they will either need to remove the PLP/PFR measures at the end of their rental agreement or that they will be penalised with the costs of removing the measures being taken from their rental deposit.
Therefore, there is potential value in the government bringing in regulations that i) positively value tenants (and landlords) choosing to install PLP and PFR measures in rental properties, and ii) prevent tenants being penalised from installing PLP and PFR measures in rental properties (and making clear guidance available to tenants and landlords on this). This could unlock private investment to enable the installation of PLP and PFR measures in rental properties and support property-scale flood resilience across the country.
January 2025