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Flood control without gates: how the Dujiangyan irrigation system has worked for 2,280 years

The Dujiangyan irrigation system is a flood control and irrigation scheme on the Min River in Sichuan that has been running since the third century BC, and it does its job without a dam across the river, without stored head,…
Posted on 23rd October, 2026
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Could UK Homes Become Uninsurable? Flood Risk and the Housing Market

Uninsurable homes are a real but limited prospect in the UK: most homes will keep flood cover, and the change will come gradually rather than overnight. About 6.3 million properties in England sit in areas at risk of flooding, according…
Posted on 14th October, 2026
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Flood Action Week 2026: what it is, when it runs and whether it works

Flood Action Week 2026 runs from 12 to 18 October 2026. It is the Environment Agency's annual public awareness campaign, asking households and businesses across England to check their flood risk, sign up for warnings and make a plan before…
Posted on 12th October, 2026
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Home Flood Defences: Doors, Barriers, Airbricks and What Comes First

Flood defences for homes are the products and building changes that stop floodwater getting into a house, or limit the damage when it does: flood doors and door barriers, self-closing airbricks, non-return valves on drains, sealed walls, and a sump…
Posted on 9th October, 2026
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What Is a Flood Wall? Design, Failure and Building One Around a House

A flood wall is a permanent, vertical barrier that holds floodwater back from the land behind it. Flood walls are built in brick, masonry, reinforced concrete or steel sheet piling, usually along a riverbank or seafront where there is no…
Posted on 7th October, 2026
, in FRAP 
, in NPPF 
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Temporary and Demountable Flood Barriers: How They Work, and Why Warning Time Decides

Temporary flood barriers are free-standing units brought to a site and put up when a flood is forecast. Demountable flood barriers slot into foundations, sockets or channels that stay in the ground all year. Both are active defences, which means…
Posted on 6th October, 2026
, in Cost 
, in NPPF 
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Sea Defences: How Sea Walls, Groynes, Rock Armour and Beach Nourishment Work

Sea defences are the structures and managed natural features that stop the sea flooding or eroding the land behind them. They fall into two families: hard defences such as sea walls, rock armour, revetments, groynes and offshore breakwaters, which resist…
Posted on 5th October, 2026
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Why Mexico City is sinking: the lake it drained, and the ground that followed

Mexico City is sinking, and the cause is neither climate change nor bad luck. The ground is falling because water was taken out from underneath it, and the fine grains of an old lakebed have been repacking themselves ever since.…
Posted on 2nd October, 2026
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Types of Flood Defences: How Flood Defences Work in the UK

Flood defences are the structures and measures that keep floodwater away from people and property, or limit the damage when it gets in. The types of flood defences in use in the UK run from a tidal barrier protecting a…
Posted on 1st October, 2026
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What Is a Weir? How Weirs and Sluices Control River Levels

What is a weir? It is a low barrier built across the full width of a river, so that the water spills over its top instead of passing round it. The job of a weir is to hold the river…
Posted on 28th September, 2026
, in FRAP 
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A silt trap, a reed bed and a strip of scrub: Sri Lanka’s 2,000-year-old tank cascade system

A tank cascade system is a chain of small reservoirs built down a shallow valley in Sri Lanka's dry zone, so that the spill and seepage from each one becomes the inflow to the next. Thousands of them survive, and…
Posted on 26th September, 2026
, in SuDS 
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Managed Retreat: When Homes Are Moved Away From Flood Risk

Managed retreat is the planned removal of homes, people and infrastructure from land where the risk of flooding or erosion can no longer be managed at an acceptable cost. The buildings are bought, then demolished, and the land goes back…
Posted on 24th September, 2026
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Flood Zone 3b Explained: The Functional Floodplain in England

Flood Zone 3b is the functional floodplain: land where water from rivers or the sea has to flow or be stored in times of flood. It is the most heavily restricted flood zone in the English planning system, and the…
Posted on 23rd September, 2026
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Kasumi-tei: how Japan built levees with gaps in them on purpose, and why it stopped

An open levee is a flood embankment built in overlapping segments with deliberate gaps left between them, so floodwater can spread sideways onto farmland as the river rises and drain back out through the same gaps as it falls. Japan…
Posted on 18th September, 2026
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Medieval drainage: the moats, monks and great drains you can still go and see

Medieval drainage has a public-relations problem. The popular picture is a filthy street, a chamber pot tipped out of a window and a moat brimming with sewage. A thousand years of squalor, sitting neatly between the Romans and the Victorians.…
Posted on 8th September, 2026
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Glacier Collapse, Not a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood: What Happened in Nepal

At 08:37 on 26 August 2026, a mountainside in the Langtang Himal gave way. Seven minutes later a wall of rock, ice and liquefied sediment crossed the Nepal-China border twenty-two kilometres away, moving at close to 190 kilometres an hour.…
Posted on 2nd September, 2026
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What have the Romans ever done for us? Aside from the drainage, obviously

Ask a Roman what they ever did for us and you would probably get a shrug and a wave at, well, everything. Put the same question to a flood-risk engineer, though, and the answer turns oddly specific: a startling amount…
Posted on 11th August, 2026
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Skinningrove Flood Alleviation Scheme: £13m Defences Begin in 2026

Construction has started on the Skinningrove flood alleviation scheme, a £13 million Environment Agency project, delivered with Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, that will protect more than 100 homes in the coastal village by 2028. At its heart is a…
Posted on 10th August, 2026
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Shoreline Management Plans Explained: Hold the Line, Managed Realignment and No Active Intervention

England's coast runs to roughly 6,000km, and nearly all of it is covered by a shoreline management plan: the document that decides whether a stretch of shoreline gets defended, left alone, or allowed to move. A shoreline management plan (SMP)…
Posted on 27th July, 2026
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Erosion of trust: the government’s own words versus its coastal erosion grant

There is no coastal erosion compensation in the UK. If the sea takes your home, there is no insurance payout and no statutory compensation for the land or the building. Until 15 July 2026 there was a demolition grant that…
Posted on 24th July, 2026
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Romsey Flood Alleviation Scheme: How New Defences Are Reducing Flood Risk in 2026

The Romsey flood alleviation scheme has just been strengthened again. In May 2026 the Environment Agency finished raising Stockbridge Road near Timsbury by around 40 centimetres and rebuilt the flood defence at a nearby weed-recovery compound: the latest step in…
Posted on 6th July, 2026
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Why the Somerset Levels flood — and what £50m will (and won’t) fix

The Somerset Levels flood because they are a low-lying former wetland, much of which sits at or below the level of the rivers and tides meant to drain it. In a wet winter, water arrives faster than the catchment can…
Posted on 17th June, 2026
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Leaky Dams and Flood Risk: What They Do, Where They Work, and What They Can’t Fix

Anyone who has watched the latest series of Clarkson's Farm will have seen Jeremy Clarkson wading into a stream at Diddly Squat to build what he gleefully describes, after a bit of reading on the government's website, as "large, leaky,…
Posted on 13th June, 2026
, in LLFA 
, in NFM 
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Residual Flood Risk Explained: How It’s Assessed and Managed

Residual flood risk is the risk left over after defences, drainage and mitigation have done what they can. No scheme removes risk entirely. A defended site still floods if a barrier is overtopped, if a defence breaches, or if a…
Posted on 9th June, 2026
, in NPPF 
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Can You Build a House on Stilts in a Flood Zone? Floodable Voids Explained

Yes, you can build a house on stilts in a flood zone in England, and a floodable void is the engineering that lets you do it. A floodable void is an open space beneath a building that floodwater flows into,…
Posted on 4th June, 2026
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Property Flood Resilience and Planning: The 2025 FloodReady Action Plan, the CIRIA Code and Build Back Better

Property flood resilience (PFR) has moved from the margins of flood policy towards the centre of it. The 2025 FloodReady action plan, the maturing CIRIA Code of Practice, and insurance-side schemes like Build Back Better have made the idea of…
Posted on 14th May, 2026
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Fens 2100+ explained: what the Environment Agency’s evidence actually says

Fens 2100+ is the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk and water management programme for the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire Fens, run in partnership with Internal Drainage Boards, local authorities and water companies. In April 2026 it published a summary baseline report,…
Posted on 28th April, 2026
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£1.4bn Flood Defence Funding 2026/27 Explained

The UK government has announced £1.4 billion of flood defence funding for 2026 / 27, supporting more than 600 schemes across England, as set out in the official £1.4bn flood investment announcement. The funding is intended to reduce flood risk…
Posted on 18th March, 2026
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CIRIA C821 Explained: Community Maintenance of Flood Risk Assets

CIRIA C821 is a free three-part guidance suite, published in 2025, on how community groups can help maintain local flood risk assets and how the authorities responsible for those assets should work with them. Its value is the line it…
Posted on 6th March, 2026
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Flood Funding Reform 2026: The New FCERM Guidance Explained

Defra has published new guidance governing how flood and coastal erosion schemes in England will be funded and prioritised from 2026 onwards. This is not a minor procedural update. It reshapes how projects are classified, how funding levels are calculated,…
Posted on 3rd March, 2026
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Wales’ £85m Flood Investment Explained

The Welsh Government has announced £85 million of funding for flood and coastal erosion risk management in Wales for 2026 – 27, describing it as the highest annual allocation ever delivered. The headline figure is significant. It builds on more…
Posted on 27th February, 2026
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Acqua alta: how Venice lives with flooding, and what the UK takes from it

Acqua alta is the tidal flooding that covers parts of Venice several dozen times a year, and the city stays open through almost all of it. The reason is not the barrier at the lagoon mouth. It is that the…
Posted on 23rd February, 2026
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Jubilee River Flood Relief Channel: Route, Operation and Downstream Risk

The Jubilee River is an 11.6 km flood relief channel that takes water out of the River Thames at Taplow, carries it around Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton, and hands it back to the Thames between Eton and Datchet. It opened…
Posted on 12th February, 2026
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What is the River Thames Scheme, and why is it delayed?

The River Thames Scheme is a planned flood relief project on the lower Thames between Egham and Teddington, led by the Environment Agency and Surrey County Council. It would cut two new flood channels through Runnymede and Spelthorne and upgrade…
Posted on 9th February, 2026
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Fowlea Brook flood scheme: what £12.6m has changed in Stoke-on-Trent

The Fowlea Brook flood scheme is a £12.6 million Environment Agency project, completed in February 2026, that has rebuilt the defences along a constrained urban watercourse running through the centre of Stoke-on-Trent. It reduces flood risk to 333 homes and…
Posted on 6th February, 2026
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Clydach Terrace, Ynysybwl: How 14 Flood-Prone Homes Fell Outside the Flood Defence System

Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, Rhondda Cynon Taf, is a row of terraced homes on the valley floor beside the Nant Clydach. On 2nd February 2026 the council's cabinet agreed to buy 14 of them for about £2.57 million, demolish them…
Posted on 3rd February, 2026
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Nine hours of warning: the 1953 North Sea flood and the failure that killed 307 people

The 1953 North Sea flood killed 307 people in England on the night of Saturday 31 January and the morning of Sunday 1 February. It remains the deadliest natural disaster in modern British history. Sea defences failed in 1,200 separate…
Posted on 31st January, 2026
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Guildford Flood Alleviation Scheme: flood risk, defences and what happens next

The Guildford Flood Alleviation Scheme is a long-term project by the Environment Agency, Guildford Borough Council and Surrey County Council to reduce flood risk to Guildford town centre from the River Wey. It proposes more than two kilometres of new…
Posted on 14th January, 2026
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Below Standard Flood Defences: Protected on Paper, Vulnerable in Practice

Flood defence condition is measured against a target, not against whether a wall is still standing. On 1 April 2026 the Environment Agency reported that 93% of its flood risk assets in high consequence systems were in the required condition,…
Posted on 24th December, 2025
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Flood Resilience in England: A Wake-Up Call

Flooding in England is no longer a localised hazard — it is a national systems challenge. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s latest report, Flood Resilience in England (HC 550, October 2025), delivers a blunt assessment: the country remains…
Posted on 29th October, 2025
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How to Drive Through Flood Water

Knowing how to drive through flood water safely comes down to one rule above all others: if you can avoid it, don't drive through it at all. The Environment Agency advises drivers not to enter water that is moving or…
Posted on 28th October, 2025
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Defra Confirms £10.5bn Flood Defence Funding Overhaul

In April, Defra’s consultation proposing a major overhaul of England’s flood funding system was launched, aiming to simplify access to investment and accelerate protection for communities most at risk. That consultation has now concluded, and the government has confirmed that…
Posted on 14th October, 2025
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£7.9bn Flood Defence Programme: What the Money Actually Buys

The £7.9 billion flood defence programme is the ten-year capital settlement for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England. It was set at the June 2025 Spending Review, started on 1 April 2026 and runs to March 2036. Over…
Posted on 19th June, 2025
, in NPPF 
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Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme (OFAS) Approved

The Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme (OFAS) is a £176 million flood defence project, led by the Environment Agency, that will reduce flood risk to more than 1,600 homes and businesses across Oxford and the surrounding villages. At its heart is…
Posted on 16th May, 2025
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Thames Barrier: Closures, Cost and Its Future

The Thames Barrier has closed 221 times for flood defence since it became operational in 1982, a figure the Environment Agency states as correct at 17 November 2025. Of those Thames Barrier closures, 119 held back a tidal surge from…
Posted on 14th February, 2025
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The Great Flood of 1968: what two floods taught UK flood risk practice

The Great Flood of 1968 is really two floods. In July, a single night of rain over the Mendips tore bridges out of the Chew Valley and killed seven people. Ten weeks later, in the middle of September, much of…
Posted on 14th September, 2023
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What to Do After a Flood: A UK Recovery Guide

Knowing what to do after a flood comes down to sequence. Make the building safe, record the damage for your insurer, get the water and silt out inside 24 to 48 hours, strip out and disinfect over the following weeks,…
Posted on 23rd August, 2019
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Does Glastonbury flood? Why Worthy Farm turns to mud

Does Glastonbury flood? Yes, though almost never because a river burst its banks. Worthy Farm sits in a shallow valley on clay with a watercourse through the middle, and what turns the site to mud is rain arriving faster than…
Posted on 22nd June, 2017
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Amphibious houses in the UK: can you get one approved?

An amphibious house sits on ordinary foundations for most of its life. When floodwater arrives it rises inside a purpose-built dock and floats, held straight by vertical guide posts, then settles back as the water drops. Nobody moves out. Britain…
Posted on 1st March, 2017
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How to protect your home from flooding: a UK homeowner’s guide

You cannot stop a river rising or a storm drain backing up. What you can decide is how much of that water reaches your rooms, and how much it costs you when it does. Knowing how to protect your home…
Posted on 25th September, 2015
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