Social inequality and flood risk

Flooding is a growing environmental threat across the UK, but not all communities experience its impacts equally.

1 Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, United Kingdom

The Environment Agency commissioned research between 2006 and 2022 that explored the social distribution of environmental risks across England. The research found a link between social deprivation and flood vulnerability. The Environment Agency has used these findings to update its evidence base on the social distribution of flood risk and decision-making rules for investment.

Taken together, the research on social inequality and flood risk has influenced academic and policy understandings of not only inequalities in the distribution of flood risk, but also clear differentials in the vulnerabilities of households when flooding is experienced.

The first report Addressing environmental inequalities: flood risk led by Gordon Walker was published in 2006. This analysis demonstrated a clear inequality in that people living in deprived communities – as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation – were more likely to be at risk of flooding. The pattern of risk from coastal flooding was particularly skewed towards deprived communities, with river flooding more evenly distributed (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Total households at different levels of risk from river and sea flooding by deprivation decile within coastal areas. Credit: Environment Agency.

These findings shaped flood policies. In 2010 the Environment Agency’s corporate indicators for flooding included an outcome measure for flood schemes of homes better protected in deprived areas (Environment Agency, 2015). Then in 2011, the Government introduced a partnership funding policy for flooding. This policy included an incentive that gave a higher rate of funding for schemes protecting homes in deprived areas from flooding (Defra, 2011).