Not building houses on flood plains would be a good start...
Tim Moss, Birmingham
Pray harder.
Rob English, Camberley, Surrey
It’s not sustainable to keep on building more and higher flood defences everywhere – the water has to go somewhere. The political bullet needs to be bitten – remove some of the defences protecting arable land and allow it to flood to take the pressure off downstream.
Mike Wright, Tamworth
We should learn from the Netherlands – they seem to survive below sea level!
Barry Durrant, Hampshire
Ban all building on flood plains or design the buildings to flood as used to happen centuries ago. And bring back itinerant workers to clear ditches.
Crawford Murray, above a working flood plain, West Sussex
If we have to build on flood plains, then the houses should be three storeys high – the ground floor made of concrete but containing no vulnerable services and used for recreation and non-vulnerable storage.
Anonymous, Chester
Invest in flood mapping allied to weather trending. Determine the best locations for floodwater diversion or capture, and the locations for protective barriers. Use variable weirs to force water into diversions, reducing the build-up in the main rivers.
Andy Hares, Worcester
Flooding seems to happen in different parts of the country at different times. An efficient use of resources would be a centralised, mobile flood defence unit to supplement local permanent flood defences. When flooding is predicted, a large quantity of equipment can be mobilised to affected areas ahead of the flood. The centralised equipment will see more active service and see a much higher return on investment.
Bruce Toase, Bristol
The water has to be arrested, and preferably absorbed, in the hills and fields from whence it came. This means paying and working with farmers and landowners. More trees and vegetation need planting to absorb and arrest the flow.
Richard Greville, Lutterworth
The decision-making has to be based on good business sense and include probabilities of various events, trend analysis, damage costs and the costs of preventative measures. Some damage scenarios will fail the business case assessment, then compensation and relocation costs should be considered. But if someone has bought a property on a known flood plain should the taxpayer really bail them out? (Sorry about the pun!)
David Tighe, Bristol
Solutions are already available. The problem is who drives the solutions through planning, local resistance, financial efficiency and the availability of money for best returns. Speed is of the essence here and everybody involved with the problem has to accept decisions that may be way of life changing.
Tom Irons, Ayrshire
Two issues: speed it takes water to reach main river courses, and restriction to that water course. Perhaps, rather than restrict the river we should further develop sacrificial flood plains and subterranean reservoirs to counter the speed at which the water is channelled to the rivers.
Leonard Stanway, Peel, Isle of Man
Most urgently, a census of infrastructure at risk from the next ‘worst in living memory’ events. Then the creation of a new agency to promote tourism in the new wetlands areas – some way to recoup the subsidies that will be paid to riparian landowners.
Timothy Chance, Aberdeenshire
Mandate local authorities and government planning inspectors to consider flooding risk in planning applications and ensure that they have the competence to understand flooding risk. Builders should provide lifetime insurance against flooding to prevent the cost of floods being transferred to innocent taxpayers and prudent house buyers.
Brian Edmonds, Surrey
Topographically model the UK. Test all areas with the new benchmark rainfall from recent events. Improve flood defences to mitigate fully the model predictions. Prevent future changes to topography that worsen the predictions. Do not decide it is too hard or costly and do something half-baked instead.
Keith Thomas, Derby
The government should act domestically and globally to phase-out fossil fuels and other major sources of carbon dioxide. This should, in the longer term, literally take the heat out of climate change.
This won’t stop the floods instantly but it is the old adage of “when in a hole, stop digging”.
Joachim Neff, Dundee
A holistic view needs to be taken to ensure that the solutions are not implemented piecemeal to protect particular areas. It has been clear for some time that the lack of investment in infrastructure by successive governments has led to many calamities over the last few years and the chickens are now coming home to roost. They cannot say they have not been warned on countless occasions by the engineering community!
Chris Lowther, Alton, Hampshire