THE extraordinary pictures of flooding in Cumbria remind us all just how vulnerable we are to flooding. Bewdley, susceptible to flooding, received an investment of £11 million over a decade ago. It is now resilient to the worse floods that nature has thrown at it.

In Wribbenhall, the eastern side, the town is defended by temporary flood barriers erected along the main roads resulting in traffic being prevented from crossing the bridge – inconvenient if the floods never materialise. The environment agency is concerned that these temporary barriers are not 100% safe and that they do not provide any sort of long term solution. However, the prospect of any significant permanent solution is distant simply because of the colossal cost involved of piling the east bank to secure any barriers. The proposed solution is known as property level defence and involves, in very simple terms, water proofing all the susceptible properties. This is not a solution that lies easily with the owners of the properties and I am still pushing for a more permanent solution based on the temporary nature of the existing defences.

The situation in Cumbria illustrates the problem. We are told that this is an unprecedented event in terms of rainfall. The last time they flooded, they were told it was a once in a century event. This shows just what the Environment Agency are faced with. When they built the defences recently, they did so based on existing data, on floods they knew could happen again because they had happened in the past. What they could not have foreseen is the hypothetical. After all, they could build new defences to take into account this year’s events only to be trumped again in a few years’ time.

I shall certainly continue to press for better than simply property level protection in Wribbenhall, but we may find that a huge investment may prove to be inadequate in a few years’ time because of a similar outcome to that of Cumbria. The Environment Agency cannot see every eventuality and an ‘all outcomes’ level of defence would be unacceptably ugly and unacceptably costly, and possibly never used.

Bewdley’s west bank is safe, but it does mean we shall never again see the lighter side of disaster. During one of the deluges the flooded riverside fish and chip shop had a sign outside: ‘All fish caught on the premises.”