National Flood Resilience Strategy

Our Guiding Principles

The following guiding principles will underpin our approach to dealing with flooding and help us to make the most of all available resources. They will help embed flood resilience into climate adaptation and placemaking and engage as many contributors as possible to deliver as broad a range of actions as possible.

Responses to the public consultation showed a high level of support for the proposed guiding principles with 82% of respondents supporting a focus on creating flood resilient places. Respondents recognised the need to broaden the range of delivery partners and put forward a wide range of suggestions for those who could have a role in helping Scotland to become more flood resilient.

1. The scale of the challenge means that the focus of action needs to change from ‘fixing flooding problems’ to creating flood resilient places.

We will focus on creating flood resilient places by taking all the opportunities available to reduce our flood exposure and take actions to lessen the impacts when flooding does occur.

Our current approach to managing flooding is principally geared towards trying to fix flooding problems to allow us to continue to do the same things in the same places with a reduced exposure to flooding. However, as shown by recent events such as Storm Babet’s impact in Brechin in October 2023, this is becoming increasingly difficult to do. We must consider how else we can make our places more flood resilient, and accept that we may not be able to do the same things in the same places indefinitely. Reducing the impacts of flooding in future will be as much about the design of our places as it is about the design of our flood actions.

2. Flood resilience is part of community resilience and part of adapting to climate change.

We will work with lead organisations and relevant partners to further embed flood resilience within community resilience and climate adaptation planning. We will help communities understand their current and future flood exposure and what options they have to improve their flood resilience. A community with a high level of awareness and the right support will be able to make informed adaptation choices on development, redevelopment, investment, design, location and activities to increase their flood resilience through time. Scottish Government already supports the 20 Community Climate Action Hubs to develop climate action projects and embed climate solutions into local plans. Scottish Government is funding this with up to £5.5m in 2024-25.

3. At the heart of our flood resilience activities will lie the principles of a Just Transition (to secure a fairer, greener future for all by working in partnership to deliver fairness and tackle inequality and injustice).

Organisations leading on improving our flood resilience will ensure that communities are involved in the process and that adapting to this climate challenge is achieved in a way that is fair and leaves no one behind. We will ensure that communities exposed to flooding or coastal change are supported, understand what the future holds for them and what options are available to them to improve their flood resilience. In particular those communities where floods may compound other social vulnerability factors and lead to flood disadvantage^[11].

4. Everyone benefits from flood resilient places, and we all have a contribution to make.

We can all as individuals and communities do something to improve our flood resilience. We will work to broaden the range of those that can engage with and deliver flood resilience actions. We cannot rely solely on flood teams and flood budgets to make our places more flood resilient and there are things we can all do to help. Government, local authorities and other key stakeholders will drive the big changes but communities and individuals must be supported so that they can contribute to the resilience of their places too.