How is flooding stopped?

Providing flood warnings
Effective warnings are a good way of reducing the risk to people as it allows them to take action to protect their home, get to safety and also safeguard valuable items.

This is where most money is spent on flood defence. The Environment Agency are responsible for monitoring, forecasting and providing warnings about flooding.
Find out about the Environment Agency’s other responsibilities.

Providing flood defences
New or improved flood defences can also reduce the risks of flooding.

They are generally designed to prevent flooding to a certain standard, usually expressed as the period in which a flood may be expected, for example once in 100 years.

This standard varies from area to area and the use of the land to be defended. For example a city would have a higher standard of defence than low-grade agricultural land.

Before making improvements or building new defences we and other organisations assess a wide range of approaches and consider the impact of any work.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has to be assured that the defence is technically, environmentally and economically sound and will not commit future generations to unsustainable levels of investment.

Discouraging new development in areas of risk of flooding
We support the Government policy to discourage inappropriate development in the flood plain.

Flood risk is a consideration in planning decisions and revised guidance (in the form of Planning Policy Guidance Note PPG 25) will emphasise the need to move to a risk based approach to planning and decisions which takes account of the likely impact of things such as climate change.

You can find out more about planning and climate change on our website.