Flooding and Austerity

The government is now reversing course on its cuts to flood defences here.  I pointed out the likely consequences some years ago, as (in considerably more detail) did Simon Wren-Lewis. The new funding announced is therefore just the government admitting that it has been making a disastrous (literally) policy for almost a decade, and simply undoing some of the damage that the government has already done.  As well as the financial cost, the cuts have also led to a delay in building the defences.  Had the government continued the trend it inherited from Labour back in 2010, many of the flooded properties of this year might never have been flooded.