The Government has rejected the National Infrastructure Commission's call to set a national flood resilience standard.

The Commission published its recommendations on addressing the impacts of flooding and improving flood resilience – including a new national standard for flood resilience – in the National Infrastructure Assessment in 2018, and more recently in its report published in May 2020 Anticipate, React, Recover: Resilient infrastructure systems.

The Commission has recommended that government should set out a strategy to deliver a nationwide standard of resilience to flooding with an annual likelihood of 0.5 per cent by 2050 where this is feasible. A higher standard of 0.1 per cent should be provided for densely populated areas where the costs per household are lower.

In a letter to Sir John Armitt, Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, Rt Hon George Eustice MP Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said:

“Whilst we welcome NIC’s work on resilience, we do not consider that standards of resilience to flooding are the right approach. The responses to our call for evidence on resilience in flood and coast contexts, and our research exploring different approaches to resilience, have demonstrated that there is no agreed understanding of resilience and no established method for assessing and quantifying flood resilience.”

According to the Minister, developing a method, and then any resilience standards based on it, would be a “complicated and resource intensive process” and “would not be effective for engaging the people and communities who are facing flood risks.”

Explaining that there are significant variations between local areas in the risks faced, potential for action and vulnerability of communities, George Eustice said that a standard which was achievable across the whole country would, inevitably, be a “lowest common denominator”.

“Whilst your report proposed that cities should have a higher standard than rural areas, we believe this approach may heighten differences between the different parts of the country rather than address them.

“Setting standards based on population density may also create artificial distinctions between places, overlooking the reliance of large cities on their surrounding catchments.”

In response, Sir John Armitt said that the Commission remained of the view that government should adopt a national flood resilience standard to give households and businesses confidence in the face of increasing flood risk, and to ensure no communities are left behind.