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UK lacks extreme weather resilience strategy

Public spending watchdog highlights shortfalls in climate change planning
By Rob Hakimian

Public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) has highlighted the country’s lack of preparation for extreme weather. It has criticised government failure to develop a strategic approach to the issue.

The NAO’s Government resilience: extreme weather report assesses the country’s readiness to withstand four extreme weather risks: drought, surface water flooding, storms and high temperatures.

The report suggests that the government has yet to set out how resilient it wants the country to be to cumulative risks and specific risks.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for assigning responsibility for acute national risks. But it has no “effective” strategy for building resilience, according to the NAO, making it difficult to coordinate and oversee the risks. The lack of strategy means the government is unable to make informed spending decisions.

The NAO recommends that government departments with responsibility for managing risks should set out clearly defined targets for “what good looks like” in terms of resilience. This would reassure public and private sector stakeholders that they are working towards a clear common goal – something the report suggests is not yet happening.

The NAO report says there is little evidence that risk assessments are used to determine how funding is allocated to resilience projects. It says the government fails to track or evaluate its spending on extreme weather preparations.

It says that ministers will be unable to demonstrate whether value for money is being achieved until a clear approach to resilience spending has been developed.

The report urges the government to accelerate the development of a coordinated approach to resilience investment by 2025 with implementation by 2028. This is two years ahead of the government’s current 2030 target.

The report also says ministers have done less to encourage private sector investment in resilience that in other long-term challenges like net zero. It says private sector investment in this area is “critical” and government departments should have targets for how much private sector funding they are looking to raise for resilience projects.

There are regulations and standards to support the development of extreme weather resilience, but the government’s use of them is limited, says the NAO. It believes that regulators such as Ofgem and Ofcom should have statutory climate resilience remits to help improve this.

Communication about extreme weather risks is another issue. The NAO report says that 3.4M homes are at risk of surface water flooding, but surveys found that public awareness of this is low. The watchdog said that the government can do more to ensure that alerts reach those at risk from extreme weather in good time.

The report builds on the Climate Change Committee’s recent report, which says that climate impacts could cost up to £1bn a year by 2050.

It also says there is little evidence that the government is driving adaptation at the pace and scale needed to fully prepare for the climate risks the country is facing. In November, the NAO reported that the Environment Agency had removed 500 flood protection schemes from its spending plans.

NAO comptroller and auditor general Gareth Davies said: “The UK’s experience during the pandemic demonstrated the vital importance of building resilience and that lesson also applies to extreme weather. The government needs to place sufficient emphasis on prevention and preparedness – clearly articulating the level of risk it will tolerate – and making informed decisions about prioritisation to ensure efficient and effective investment for the long term.”

National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) commissioner and ICE vice president Jim Hall said: “Extreme weather events present an acute threat and this report rightly highlights the need for urgent action to ensure our resilience to their impacts.

“The NAO’s call for clear standards for how national infrastructure should perform echoes a recommendation in our [the NIC’s] recent National Infrastructure Assessment: if everyone is clear about what effective resilience looks like, targeting funding, securing private sector investment and joined-up responses across multiple responsible organisations become that much easier to achieve.”