Once again we have properties being flooded. Once again we have hand wringing, and calls for something to be done, including bailing out those who knowingly bought properties in flood risk areas. What should the government do?
First of all, the government should ban development in flood plains, and alongside rivers and other locations with any significant risk of flooding. Secondly, it should hold local authorities accountable for having given planning permission for developments in flood plains, and others areas of significant risk of flooding. People who buy properties in flood plains and other such high risk areas, really should take responsibility for their own actions, and not expect others to bail them out, when their failure to consider risks comes back to bite them. Someone who buys a house with a nice, pleasant, riverside location enjoys the private benefit of that, on a pleasant Summer day, when they look out on their surroundings, and that private benefit is not shared with the rest of us, such as the resident of a Council tower block in a grimy inner city location. Yet, when that riverside property gets flooded, the occupant expects that the losses, instead of being privatised, as with the benefit, should instead be socialised, so that the tenant of the tower block must subsidise them via their taxes!
This is rather like all of the people who bought shares in banks and other companies prior to 2008, and were happy to pocket the private benefits of the dividends and capital growth of those shares, but who, when those companies went bust, expected the rest of us to bail them out for their reckless speculation. Its called moral hazard. But, the state and the local state cannot totally escape their responsibility in that regard. Someone who goes into a restaurant where hygiene standards are visibly below what they ought to be, should not be surprised if they get food poisoning, but we also expect the state to protect us against food producers poisoning us with the food they sell us, and we should likewise expect the state to impose minimum standards in relation to housing provision too. All too often, local authorities grant planning permission for developments that are sub-standard, both because they are in flood risk areas, because they are on unsuitable land, liable to subsidence, let alone that they allow houses to be built that are too small, and crowded on to insufficient land areas. They do so in order to benefit from the money they get from developers in Section 106 Agreements and so on.
Thirdly, the government should stop wasting money on flood defences. Billions of pounds is spent on flood defences that make the problem of flooding overall worse. At best, they protect some properties, but only at the expense of transferring the problem to other properties up and downstream that otherwise would not have been affected. Often the flood defences do not even really protect the properties they are designed to protect. They limit the extent to which rivers may break their banks, but they then result in water going into the subsoil, which finds its way into aquifers, as well as into drainage channels, which then can erupt as ground water, or come up inside properties via their own drainage and sewers. It acts to create underground streams that erode the subsoil and structure, so that a longer term problem with subsidence is created.
But, more immediately, flood protection simply acts like a big game of Whack-a-Mole, pushing water from one place to another. It prevents water from being dissipated into natural flood plains, which then acts as further encouragement for builders to build on them. The more construction takes place on these flood plains so that they become concreted over, the more even rainfall in to these areas, instead of being slowed down, by trees and vegetation, and being absorbed into the water table, is instead fed out, rapidly, into drainage channels that, in turn, feed quickly into other water courses and rivers, so that water is quickly dumped into a small number of locations that then overcome the river banks, causing further flooding. By changing the natural absorption of the water into flood plains, the natural build up of silt is also disturbed, which again results in flooding, as channels become clogged.
Instead of wasting billions on flood prevention schemes that do not work, the government should instead use the money to build large numbers of council houses, in areas where no such risk exists. Then, again, instead of bailing out property owners, whose properties are bound to be flooded again and again, it should offer them alternative accommodation in a council house. It would be up to the property owner whether or not to accept that offer, but, if they refuse, they should not expect that the rest of us should bail them out for their own private choices. The consequence would then be reflected in the market prices of properties in those locations, and in insurance premiums.
Over time, the property prices in these high risk areas should fall to very low levels reflecting the risk they present. In that way, it becomes possible for such properties to be bought up by the government, and the land returned to being a flood plain, which is the best flood protection there can be for everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment