Stephen Taylor, associate director at Turner & Townsend, explores how Scotland can deliver a fresh approach to delivering flood protection schemes
THE impact of climate change on weather patterns is bringing flood risk to the top of the national agenda in Scotland. Heavy and sustained rainfall is taking a serious toll on the country’s infrastructure and people’s homes, most recently during Storm Gerrit which closed the A9 and left 16,000 properties without power.
With such storms becoming more frequent, Scotland needs a renewed focus on how it prepares for and manages these risks – and that means revisiting flood defence and funding.
The good news is that the country has already laid strong foundations for flood defence. The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 established a comprehensive framework for rolling-out a programme of schemes across a series of delivery cycles.
14 local flood management plans and 42 flood protection projects have been pursued through Cycle 1, addressing vulnerable areas highlighted within the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency’s (SEPA) national flood risk assessments.
These projects in Cycle 1 have been prioritised to protect those areas at most risk and to secure the greatest possible benefit afforded by public finance.
This programme has delivered notable success stories, such as the investment at Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire where new defences protected the town during Storm Babet in October, helping avoid a repeat of previous floods.
It’s right to celebrate these achievements, but there is also a need to revisit the approach to future funding and delivery if they are to be sustained in the face of an uncertain climate. This comes down to three priorities: recognising greater complexity; revisiting risk allocation; and adopting a holistic approach to the challenge.
Getting flood delivery cycles back on track
The most important lesson from Cycle 1 has been to not underestimate the complexity of delivering flood defence schemes. To date, only 14 of the 42 projects under Cycle 1 have been completed, despite target Cycle 2 projects being agreed in 2022.
A critical factor in these hold-ups has been an underappreciation of the scale of the solutions required and difficulty in coordinating resources.
As the need for defence becomes greater, we need to see an even more forensic attitude to planning through a rigorous programmatic approach. This includes exploring a wider range of potential solutions when it comes to design, alongside close scrutiny of supply chain capability and capacity as well as material availability.
In this, data and experience from previous schemes can play an important role, helping to ensure that future cycles can build confidently on the lessons from their predecessors.
Revisiting risk and responsibility
Greater ambition and the emerging understanding of the scale of delivery can only be successful when informed by an open and innovative conversation around funding.
Cycle 1 was backed with a major financial package from the Scottish Government, covering 80% of all costs. While this has helped galvanise schemes, securing the final 20% – from local authorities – has still been a major challenge in the context of shrinking budgets, rising inflation and the pressures of a cost-of-living crisis.
Addressing the funding gap is crucial to unlocking investment at the greater scale and pace required. The starting point may be to look not only at those who are responsible for flood defence, but the contribution that can be sought from those who benefit from it. Most notably, this includes developers, where greater security against flooding can unlock investment in homes and construction. Insurers, too, stand to benefit from defences that mitigate risk and thereby lower premiums.
There is an opportunity to bring these parties and others to the table in a way that helps share risk and responsibility more evenly when shaping business cases – moving from thinking about flood defence as a purely sunk cost, to a value-creating venture. This can then in turn help shift mindsets in programme planning, avoiding the temptation to over value engineer schemes, or to underestimate schedules.
Benefiting from a holistic view
Fostering a more positive culture around shared risk and responsibility will also encourage better communication. Increased collaboration and stronger dialogue between all stakeholders will help to bring forward a clearer vision to tackle these issues, as well as creating a platform where lessons can be learnt to improve delivery.
This more holistic approach to flood resilience will ensure that we are not viewing projects individually, but as part of one larger, whole programme to support a water-resilient Scotland. This will provide a clearer overview of the pipeline, allow clients to balance funding for competing projects, and to drive innovation – including in the development of new design solutions.
Overall, the aim should be to bring public and private sector partners together around the shared goal of protecting communities and businesses so that they can thrive – celebrating the achievements in reducing flood risk in Scotland to-date, while recognising the need to maintain momentum in the face of climate change.
