A concerning development on flooding

Nationwide, over 6 million people could be in accommodation which could be subject to the perils of flooding over the next few years, this as forecast by the Environment Agency which is within DEFRA, the old stomping ground of one Mr Prescott. Central government has had the choice of simply abandoning these people or getting their act together and finding adequate resource to do something about the danger. Clearly in these 'deficit' times there is little chance that funding will be made available and what appears to be happening is that the responsibility will fall largely on local Authorities to do what they can either by penalising development or calling for vast sums of money from the Council Tax payer. This is bad enough but there is a catch 22 for coastal conurbations like Christchurch because planning policy 25 limits development in flood zones which if you scroll down many months ago, I was blogging on how this was blighting certain parts of our town. PP25 is based on a model which includes fluvial and sea change and is projected forward to predict water levels likely in 2050 and beyond. The problem is that SCOPAC, that organisation which has been monitoring sea change since 1990 has indicated that there has not been a level change since they started monitoring. To my engineering eye this must mean that the formula for the prediction is flawed. The problem is that no one at DEFRA will hold their hands up and acknowledge that the policy has to be changed to allow development in Christchurch which may be able to contribute someway to the cost of flood defences. Meanwhile, when you pass by empty untidy plots and wonder why developers are not building spare a thought to the £zillions wasted in persuading us that a watery grave awaits anyone who deems to live in such wonderful coastal areas like Christchurch.