Spending watchdog warns of government underprepared for flood and drought

The government is underprepared for droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

In a new report, Government resilience: extreme weather, the NAO has made a series of recommendations in light of the projected increasing frequency and intensity of weather events. These included:

• responsible departments should set out clearly defined targets for "what good looks like because "the Cabinet Office does not have clearly defined targets or an effective strategy in place to make the UK resilient to extreme weather” – this makes it difficult for government to make informed decisions on investment;

• government should accelerate, from 2030 to 2028, its plans to develop a coordinated approach to investment in resilience;

• public awareness of the potential impacts of extreme weather should be built; and

• the Cabinet Office should strengthen the leadership, accountability and assurance arrangements of extreme weather risks across government, including considering the merits of a chief risk advisor.

The NAO did note some positives, including dedicated response arrangements to incidents; close working with forecasters such as the Met Office to inform planning and risk assessments; regular reviews and testing of plans; and mitigation action via the third national adaptation programme.

The National Infrastructure Commission's Professor Jim Hall commented: “Extreme weather events present an acute threat and this report rightly highlights the need for urgent action to ensure our resilience to their impacts. The NAO’s call for clear standards for how national infrastructure should perform echoes a recommendation in our recent National Infrastructure Assessment: if everyone is clear about what effective resilience looks like, targeting funding, securing private sector investment and joined-up responses across multiple responsible organisations become that much easier to achieve.”