Flood resilience strategy: consultation

2. The case for change

This section sets out why we need to change, both to manage our flood exposure, and to reduce the impacts of flooding when it does occur.

Our climate is changing

Through climate change by 2100:

• Sea levels around the coast of Scotland will continue to rise, at a faster rate and are predicted to be at least 80 cm higher and up to 1.90m higher
• Peak rainfall intensities are expected to increase by up to 50%
• Peak river flows are expected to increase by up to 60%

Our flood exposure is increasing

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) report that there are currently an estimated 284,000 properties across Scotland exposed to flooding, and by the 2080s this number is expected to increase by 110,000 through climate change.

Improving our flood resilience is also vital for protecting our essential services, including water, utilities, and transport. The 11 named storms of 2023/2024 have highlighted the significant and costly damage that flooding and storm surges can have on our infrastructure. We know that these impacts will become more severe, so we need to take action now to ensure that we can continue to rely on our essential services as the climate changes.

The pace of response needs to match our increasing exposure

2,000 more properties per year are being exposed to flooding through climate change. Over the last 15 years formal flood protection has been delivered at a rate of approximately 600 properties per year. This reinforces the need for this strategy and an increased rate in delivering improved flood resilience.

The financial impact of flooding is increasing

The Flood Risk Management Plans published by SEPA in 2022 report that the expected cost of flooding impacts in Scotland is now around £260 million per year.

This figure will continue to increase with inflation and as more properties and infrastructure become exposed to flooding through climate change.

River and coastal flood protection schemes are essential in some areas to ensure a level of flood resilience. However they take a long time to plan and build and come at significant cost, which often escalates between initial planning and completed construction.

We are in the early stages of understanding the risks and challenges of coastal erosion and coastal flooding, but we do know that there is a significant challenge in delivering improved resilience for coastal communities.

To provide the best level of flood resilience for all our communities we need to carefully consider approaches to delivery and consider all sources of available funding.

There has been a focus on a limited range of flood management actions

Most of the central flooding budget has traditionally been spent on delivering large river and coastal flood protection schemes for towns and cities. This means that less has been available for other measures such as surface water management, property level flood protection, flood protection for smaller communities or natural flood management.

Flood actions are delivered through a limited range of contributors

Currently, almost all flood management actions are carried out by flooding teams in Local Authorities, Scottish Water and SEPA supported by specialist engineering and technical consultants. This limits what we can deliver to reduce our flood exposure and increase resilience. To ensure our communities are more flood resilient in future, all those involved with the design and development of our towns and cities need to increase flood resilience and reduce flood impacts by all available means.

Flood Management Actions

Through the flood risk management planning process, the Scottish Government currently spends £42 million per year on actions to increase flood resilience. The majority of this money is spent on flood protection schemes, such as the recently opened schemes in Stonehaven and Arbroath.

However, a portion of this money could be spent on a wider range of actions, including blue-green infrastructure, natural flood management, and community flood resilience, all of which would have multiple benefits.

Natural flood management consists of nature-based approaches that involve looking at all the natural and land management opportunities there may be in river catchments and at our coast, to reduce the impact of flooding. This includes things like tree planting, restoring peatlands to soak up water, using natural landforms and land use practices to slow run-off and capture water, making the most of natural floodplains to store water and sand dune restoration and seagrass restoration at our coast. Natural flood management is often used in combination with other flood resilience actions.

Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) is used to manage water and reduce flooding in our towns and cities. It refers to incorporating landscape and water design into, often, urban spaces. It is about making the most of urban green spaces and natural water bodies to capture rainwater where it falls and to reduce run-off and reduce water flowing into our drainage systems. It refers to incorporating blue elements, like rivers, ponds, water treatment facilities and green elements, such as trees, parks and land-use planning.

Community Resilience is when communities and individuals are supported so that they can help themselves prepare for, respond to and recover from floods. This can include the funding of community flood groups to start up, train, and purchase equipment. For example, the Edzell Flood Group, formed in 2013, secured funding from Scottish and Southern Energy Networks Resilient Communities Fund for deployable barriers, and through regular training and exercising have prevented their village from flooding again since they were established. Flood warnings allow communities to prepare and respond and are a key part of community resilience.

Everyone can contribute to flood resilience

Everyone can play a part in increasing our flood resilience. For example:

Planners can ensure that our places are designed to be able to cope with increased rainfall and flooding. For example, by preventing development on the floodplain and considering how their decisions can improve the town’s flood resilience.

Landscape architects and place designers can ensure that good practice for water management and the design of green space is used at all levels of the design process from Masterplanning through to individual developments.

Scottish Government ensures that relevant policies contribute to our flood resilience. For example, planning policy strengthens our resilience to flooding by promoting avoidance of development in areas that flood and providing information on coastal erosion through Dynamic Coast. Government can also help different groups to join up and collaborate, creating connections that make improving our flood resilience easier. For example, by encouraging climate adaptation planning and ensuring that this includes actions to improve our flood resilience wherever possible. The Government can also direct funding towards a wider range of measures to improve our flood resilience.

Public sector organisations make information on potential flooding readily accessible to help people and partners make informed choices to help themselves. This includes Scotland’s flood maps and our flood forecasting and flood warning services provided by SEPA.

Local authorities can support their communities to get involved in decisions about their places, giving them the information and support they need to make their voices heard. Many are taking forward climate adaptation plans to ensure they are ready for their climate challenges and can continue to thrive in our future climate. This includes thinking about how flooding will impact on their communities and what they will need to do to be flood resilient.

A good example of this is Edinburgh's Water Vision where the local authority is planning for the future by considering how public realm, open space, infrastructure and streets are designed, agreed, constructed and maintained.

Communities can get involved in decisions about their places. They have lots of local knowledge and lived experience that help us make better decisions about what can make them more flood resilient. With the right support, communities and individuals can also help themselves prepare for, respond to and recover from floods.

Land managers, farmers and crofters can contribute to flood resilience through good practice and by helping us deliver natural flood management measures. How we manage and work our land in Scotland influences how water moves through it, so farmers and land managers have a key role in helping us manage river catchments and our coastline to offset our increasing flood exposure.

Transport and utility organisations can contribute through the design and delivery of their networks and services.

Individuals can help too, for example by joining their local flood action group, by using SEPA’s flood maps to understand their flood exposure, by investing in flood resilience measures for their properties and by being ready to act when floods happen.

Making small changes at a local level can help reduce flooding impacts too such as ensuring driveways and gardens are made of permeable material to soak up water and that streets and parks have green areas that can allow water to safely drain away without causing flooding. Even installing water butts to capture some rainfall from downpipes can help reduce the impact of heavy rain locally.

The flooding challenge is increasing for future generations

The current approach to flooding, principally focused on flood protection, needs to be re-examined and expanded to ensure that it delivers for future generations. As floods get bigger and happen more frequently it will become more and more difficult to continue to provide protection for those who live in flood prone areas. For those communities most vulnerable to flooding, long-term changes must be considered to make them flood resilient and support them through that process. This will include a slow transition away from those areas most exposed to flooding from rivers and the sea where flood protection could not be sustained in the long term.

We know that our climate is rapidly changing. In 2023, the global average temperature reached 1.5 ^oC above the pre-industrial baseline for the first time, which is much faster than scientists expected. We therefore urgently need to develop a long-term approach so that we can integrate flood resilience into decisions made about our places as part of our adaptation to climate change.

A key part of this shift to flood resilience is to ensure that everyone understands that we are moving from ‘fixing’ flooding problems to creating flood resilient places.