Flood Defences
In the 40 years before Devolution in 1999, only 60 flood defence schemes were approved in Scotland. Since Devolution, local authorities have been actively encouraged to introduce flood management schemes. In 2001, there were more than 60 new schemes approved and in the pipeline in Scotland , costing some £29.5m in central grants alone.

The amount spent on flood defences in Scotland has been substantially increased, and by 2001, was running at almost three times the 1999 levels. Since Devolution, grant aid for flood defences has never been refused on the grounds of lack of money. The grant aid budget is simply topped up as required. This needs to be borne in mind when comparing Scotland and England : in Scotland , spending is effectively unlimited, provided the cost of the project is less than the cost of a flood (calculated in insurance claims terms) and provided the project gives adequate protection. The amount of protection required can vary on a case by case basis, but increasingly the 200 year standard of service seems to be becoming the minimum. Projects in Scotland must also take climate change into account.

Annual capital spending by the Scottish Executive was more than doubled in 2002 to £8.5m, and further major increases are planned for each year at least until 2004, by which time annual capital spending should reach £10m.

This is effectively doubled, because normally the Scottish Executive pay a 50% grant and give the local authority consent to borrow the remaining 50% so the local council does not need to use its capital budget. In addition, the local authority can spend money directly from its own capital budget and this is usually on smaller schemes, which are not eligible for a central grant. In oil rich Shetland Islands , the Council has funded many flood protection schemes, and will even provide grants to individuals for coastal flood protection. (It is interesting to note that the UK Crown does not own the foreshore in Orkney and Shetland, which operates a 'udal' legal system rather than the 'feudal' system. This means that in most cases the foreshore is privately owned down to the lowest astronomical tide.)

Local authority spending on flood defences varies enormously from one area to another, and it is fairer to just look at central grant aid, in making comparisons between Scotland and England .

£29.5m for 60 projects may seem low compared with DEFRA's capital budget, but if one were to multiply Scotland's spend 12 times to allow for the different number of people at risk, the comparable budget figure for England would be £354m. That is nearly the capital amount spent in England in the two years since the Autumn 2000 floods and more than three times the planned central grant aid from DEFRA for 2002-2003. Similarly, England would have 720 schemes in the pipeline if it was doing as well as Scotland ; instead it has approved only 274 in the two years since the floods in 2000, and many of these were for the reinstatement of defences damaged in these floods.

Another factor to consider is relative sea level rise and climate change. Due to natural factors, most of the land in Scotland is rising, while the south east of England is sinking, as the following table shows:

Table 6: Vertical Land Change and Sea Level Change. Source: UKCIP, 2002 Scenarios Report

This means that coastal defences in Scotland are not as badly threatened by sea level rise as in England and Wales .

Similarly with precipitation scenarios, Scotland will not be as badly affected in the future by climate change as England (see figure 8.)

Scotland has a different system for the cost benefit appraisal of new flood and coastal defence projects. The main criteria are that the design standard is high enough and that benefits exceed costs. Benefits in this case are of course mainly the savings in costs of damage caused by floods. There are three main differences between the different systems:

•  In Scotland , insurance claims data can be used to calculate benefits, using the National Flood Insurance Claims Database, (the "Dundee Tables") produced by the University of Dundee. These show financial benefits figures based on an analysis of thousands of actual insurance claims. In England and Wales , benefits are based on the economic costs of floods modelled by Middlesex University Flood Hazard Research Centre to the government's specification. This does not mean that the Middlesex figures are wrong, simply that they are calculated on a different basis, as laid down by the government.

•  Another aspect arising from the economic losses basis is that unlike insurance data the costs of a flood are not calculated on a new for old basis. For example in England and Wales it is assumed that if your five-year-old carpet is damaged by flood, you will replace it with another five-year-old carpet instead of a new one. In Scotland , the actual costs on a "new for old" basis can be used for appraisals. It also means that, for example, in the English system if a town has two supermarkets, and only one is at risk of flood, only the direct damage to the supermarket can be included in the benefits, not the business losses, because people can always go to the other supermarket. The effect of these two aspects is to give figures that are considerably lower than the actual financial costs (see figures 9 and 10).

Figure 9: Domestic buildings property damage loss curves.

Figure 10: Domestic contents property damage loss curves

•  In addition to the above, in Scotland , benefits simply have to exceed the costs of construction of the flood defence scheme, whereas in England and Wales , the benefits of a flood protection scheme must be three to five times greater than costs.

The Scottish system can actually mean that a number of sites might qualify for grant aid for a flood defence or management scheme, so a further refinement has been developed in Scotland to prioritise each competing site, so that the most deserving is dealt with first. Such a system is used in Stirling , for example, where consultants have developed a "prioritisation formula". This formula is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced here, but the author has independently created a different set of criteria for assessing priorities.

The panel contains the author's own version of a prioritisation scheme.

In England and Wales , they do not have the luxury of the Scottish system, and have to ration projects using a complex set of decision rules (see "The Priority Problem" earlier). Even where this rationing allows a defence to be funded, it is often at a reduced standard of protection. For example, the recent Windsor/Maidenhead relief river scheme which was opened in Summer 2002, and named the ' Jubilee River '. This scheme is designed to a surprisingly low 1 in 60-year event standard, despite the catastrophic floods there in 1947, or the fact that since 1947, there are now twice as many houses in the flood hazard area. As the ABI Statement only guarantees flood insurance if the hazard is less than the 75-year return period, these houses could be uninsurable despite the multi million pound new relief river scheme. The new Defra priorities will make such situations more common (see "The Priority Problem" section earlier).

In Scotland new defences are now typically designed for much higher standards of service. These will vary on a case to case basis, but to obtain grant the scheme must have a minimum of a 100 year standard of service, plus freeboard, plus an allowance for climate change. In practice the usual standard of service is often much higher, usually around 200 years. Standards do tend to be increasing, as local authorities take on board the recommendations of a Scottish Executive research report on the need for design standards for defences to take into account climate change . (There is no comparable research for England and Wales .)

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), unlike the EA, is not charged with the bureaucratic burden of seeking funds for defences, but simply provides statutory advice on flood risk within the planning process. The Scottish Executive actively encourages local authorities to promote flood management schemes. This is a good incentive for local authorities to prevent development in areas at risk of flood, because they know that they themselves will have to incur the cost and effort of building a flood defence.

One aspect of flood defence spending is that it is very vulnerable to other demands on the public purse. This is perhaps more of a problem in England , where the Treasury has additional calls on its budgets, such as defence, which do not arise in Scotland . Thus if the Ministry of Defence needed additional funds, for example for a campaign in Iraq, the flood defence budget in England might suffer, while the Scottish Executive budget might be less vulnerable.

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