Submission to Environmental Audit Committee Inquiry on flood resilience in England

Current UK flood resilience measures remain overly focused on mitigating large-scale flooding, such measures often fail to address the increasing prevalence of high-frequency, low-magnitude flooding events. These “everyday floods” disproportionately affect schools, recreation spaces, and children's daily lives – disrupting education, grassroots sports, play opportunities and engagement with nature. Sustainable urban drainage systems, whilst beneficial, often divert floodwaters into green spaces without addressing their long-term usability for community activities. Highlighting a need for tailored, context-specific solutions.

International, community-led approaches such as the Netherlands' Room for the River project, demonstrates the value of natural flood management strategies that simultaneously enhance ecological and community resilience.

Recommendation: Flood resilience interventions must be inclusive and participatory. My Flood Stories and INSECURE projects clearly demonstrates that methods such as intergenerational dialogue enhance community ownership, cultural relevance and the long-term effectiveness of resilience strategies.

Current metrics remain narrowly focused on physical infrastructure and economic damages, neglecting critical social and educational impacts. The consequences of flooding on school closures, disrupted recreational activities and access to play for children and indeed the long-term child mental health metrics are invisible within existing evaluation frameworks. These omissions undermine our understanding of the full societal cost of floods.

Recommendation: Flood resilience metrics must adopt a Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework. Incorporating long-term societal indicators, such as, educational outcomes, mental health burdens, and access to recreation. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding of resilience effectiveness and better-informed investment strategies.

The Flood Resilience Taskforce must prioritize innovative, community-centred approaches that integrate diverse voices, particularly children and young people to advance flood resilience strategies.

My Flood Stories project highlights the transformative power of empathy-driven, participatory methods for engaging diverse groups, including children and marginalized communities, in flood risk management. The Flood Stories project demonstrated the value of immersive storytelling and co-created resources in fostering empathy and agency among participants. These methods actively motivated communities to engage in flood preparedness and foster collective ownership of flood resilience initiatives. Resources developed included action learning sets and 360-degree videos, which were effective in bridging knowledge gaps and inspiring local action.

Recommendation 1: The Taskforce must champion participatory methodologies, ensuring children and young people are integral to decision making. Engaging youth as active contributors, not passive observers, strengthens ownership and aligns solutions with real community needs.

Recommendation 2: The Taskforce should advance a nationwide “Flood Education for All” initiative. Unlike fire safety, Flood preparedness remains critically underdeveloped in UK establishments. As demonstrated in children's manifestos co-produced in previous work, embedding flood education into policy and curricula will empower communities to respond effectively to flood events and promote intergenerational resilience.

Effective coordination also requires fostering cross-sector collaboration between national agencies, local authorities, educators and community organizations. Findings from Flood Stories revealed the importance of partnerships, such as those within educational institutions, to disseminate flood preparedness tools effectively. The Taskforce should facilitate platforms for shared learning, data exchange and the co-design of interventions that align top down and grassroots resilience efforts, avoiding confusion and misinformation.

Recommendation 3: Integration of nature-based solutions within broader educational initiatives is vital. Embedding climate and biodiversity education in schools can simultaneously address flood risks, advance ecological resilience and inspire long term societal action. Flood Stories resources, which aligned with curriculum objectives, demonstrated how embedding climate education in schools can scale awareness, so that people can make informed choices and take action. This dual approach ensures that resilience strategies benefit ecosystems and enhance public understanding of flood risks.

Most critically, the Taskforce must ensure that the needs of vulnerable populations are met. Flood Stories highlighted how children’s perspectives and lived experiences can inform more inclusive flood policies. Actively seeking input from underrepresented voices will help ensure equitable resource distribution and tailored support for high-risk areas.