Here in Crawley in recent weeks, we haven’t been as badly affected with flooding as many other parts of the country but the risk remains with very saturated ground. Much of the UK had their wettest December for 100 years although Crawley’s rainfall was nearer to the average. However, this January we have managed to already exceed our average January rainfall for Crawley by the 9th of January.
There have been attempts in some quarters to politicise the floods in the UK over the last few weeks. It seems to be a more modern phenomenon to want to apportion blame when acts of nature have bad consequences for us. For flooding, the perceived blame tends to be levied at any combination of the Government (of the day), the Environment Agency, the Council, landowners and farmers. There is also plenty of misinformation from those with political agendas.
Flooding and its prevention is a complex subject and while improvements are being made, it does become harder to eliminate all potential risk against a backdrop of extreme weather events that are occurring more frequently. One inaccurate claim that gets peddled is that the Conservative Government are cutting spending on flood prevention and cancelling flood prevention schemes. This is complete nonsense and is put out there by those with ulterior political motives. The reality is that such spending continues to increase. The Labour Government of 2005 to 2010 spent £1.5 billion, the Coalition Government of 2010 to 2015 spent £1.7 billion and the current Conservative Government is spending over £2 billion from 2015 to 2020.
Here in Crawley, we have seen a huge amount of work on flood defences in the last 15 years which my colleagues and I have been pleased to champion and support. The last exceptional rainfall event of December 2013 caused problems and saw properties flooded but the impact would have been far worse but for the flood prevention work done. There is still more to do and the flood prevention work on-going upstream at Clays Lake in Worth Forest will give further protection for Crawley and downstream in Horley.