The UK government was warned by its official climate change advisers in October that it needed to take action on the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding but rejected the advice.



The decision not to develop a strategy to address increase flooding risk came just a few weeks before Storm Desmond brought about severe flooding in Cumbria, Lancashire and other parts of the north west causing an estimated £500m of damage.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) also told the Guardian that, despite David Cameron’s promise to do so, the government had failed to learn lessons from the widespread flooding in the winter of 2013-14. Those floods led to emergency financial bailouts to flood defence funds which had previously been cut under the coalition government.

The revelation came as George Osborne announced a £50m repair and renew scheme for Cumbria and Lancashire in the wake of the floods, promising that businesses and homeowners will quickly receive the help that they need.

Osborne said the scheme would be administered by local authorities, acknowledging that a centrally administered fund following the floods in 2014 had been slow to get funds to families in need.



The region had to deal with more heavy rain on Wednesday, causing more disruption, although flooding on the scale of last weekend is not expected. Cumbria police said that more than a thousand homes are still without power.



In June, the CCC’s statutory report on the UK’s progress on climate change highlighted dealing with floods from extreme weather as the government’s most serious failing in preparing for the impacts of global warming. It stated: “Plans and policies, or progress in addressing vulnerabilities, are lacking”.

The CCC said “residual” flood risk – the flooding resulting from extreme weather events that cannot be prevented by normal flood defences – was increasing. On Monday, environment secretary Liz Truss said the Storm Desmond floods had resulted from “extreme weather conditions” and “unprecedented amount of rainfall.”

The CCC recommended that the government should “develop a strategy to address the increasing number of homes in areas of high flood risk”. But in October the government replied: “We believe that a strategy to address future residual risk would not be appropriate at this time.”

“The CCC made a very clear recommendation in its statutory advice, but the government rejected it,” said Daniel Johns, the CCC’s head of adaptation.

“The government approach is to build and protect, but this only provides a certain level of protection,” Johns told the Guardian. “Defences can’t be considered to remove the risk of flooding entirely.”



He said that even in the best case scenario, with full flood defence funding, no building on flood plains and moderate climate change, the number of people in the high risk category for flooding will still increase by 45,000 by 2050 as global warming causes more extreme weather.

“But the government has no strategy to address this residual risk,” Johns said. Such a strategy would focus on reducing the impact of extreme floods by, for example, increasing protection on properties themselves and managing river catchments so rain runs off hills more slowly.

Johns also said the government had failed to learn lessons from the 2013-14 floods. “After 2013-14, the wettest year in instrumental records, it is notable that there was no systematic review of lessons learned in the same way as there was after 2007”, when severe flooding lead to the extensive Pitt Review.

In February 2014, prime minister Cameron visited the submerged Somerset Levels and said: “There are always lessons to be learned and I will make sure they are learned.”

“David Cameron promised a full review of the future capability of UK’s flood defences back in 2014, but has never delivered on this,” said Guy Shrubsole, at Friends of the Earth.

“With the government’s inadequate climate change preparations leaving thousands more homes at high flood risk by 2050, ministers clearly need to do far more,” Shrubsole said. “The prime minister must get tough on flooding and tough on the causes of flooding – and that means tackling carbon emissions as well as investing more in flood defences.”

A government spokeswoman said: “This government has been clear on its commitment to climate change action and we are pushing for an ambitious global deal in Paris as well as driving innovation to build a low-carbon economy. We are also investing £2.3bn over the next six years to better protect 300,000 homes. The Environment Agency’s figures take account of climate change and show that this investment will reduce flood risk.”