Govt 'gives go ahead to flood plain housing'
The government is expected later today to give its blessing to plans to build homes on flood plains.Ahead of the publication of its green paper on the housing shortage affecting the country, housing minister Yvette Cooper said that houses would only be built in areas prone to flooding if the proper defences were in place.Her comments come after torrential rain and freak storms left large parts of southern and central England flooded, several weeks after similar scenes were witnessed in the north of the country.But Ms Cooper insisted there would be a "real clampdown" on housing development on land that the Environment Agency classifies as high risk for flooding."Our policy is around flood risk which is to be very clear that in any areas where there is a risk of flooding, you should be getting the advice from the Environment Agency," she told the Today programme."If the Environment Agency says this is high risk, the development should not be going ahead."But the minister went on to say: "What we're not saying is that there should be no house building anywhere in the city of York which is on a flood plain, the Romans built it on a flood plain, or around 10 Downing Street, that's also on a flood plain."You've got to increase the protection for areas which are at high risk, some of the areas which have been flooded actually have never been flooded before, and so we need to look very seriously at whether some of the flood risk areas need to be redefined and need to be updated in the light of all of the things that have happened."Responding to Ms Cooper's comments, homelessness charity Shelter said that housebuilding on flood plans should be a "last resort"."There are real problems with building on flood plains and what tends to happen, and the floods in Hull particularly showed this, is that the houses that are built on flood plains are the houses for some of the poorest people, and they are the people who are not insured," the charity's chief executive Adam Sampson told BBC Radio Five Live's Wake up to Money."There is a very real problem in this respect. This is one of those places where the needs of protecting the poor and the needs of protecting the environment actually coincide absolutely."
Share this..
Related stories
UK homeowners pulled into negative equity trap
A review of the UK property market may look promising for the short to medium term but for those who acquired properties back in the early 2000s the doom and gloom will go on. A report issued today claims that those who acquired property in the UK just prior to the 2007 peak in the market will remain in negative equity until at least 2014 with many struggling to cope with increases in energy bills...
Read MoreA quarter of consumers to ditch the credit this Christmas
A quarter of Britons will be ditching the credit cards this Christmas, in favour of trying to repay their debts, a new survey has shown.Debt consultancy Thomas Charles found that around 15 per cent of the population were in serious debt, owing over £10,000, but their survey also showed that many people are trying to get themselves out of debt, with one in four saying that they would be steering c...
Read MoreHSBC to see UK retail arm split as 8,000 lose jobs
09/06/2015 HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver has announced that 8,000 UK jobs will be cut as the global bank plans to split its UK retail arm from its global operations. HSBC will now also change the name of its ring fenced UK retail banking arm once it has legally split, and the HSBC logo will disappear from British banks. Naming options could include reviving the Midland Bank brand, wh...
Read MoreUK manufacturing shows surprising strength
Despite the fact that the UK manufacturing base has been decimated over the last 20 or 30 years, there are signs that the recovery in the economy has spread through into the manufacturing sector. The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply's purchasing managers index rose from 51.8 in November to 54.1 in December - with a figure of over 50 indicative of growth in the sector. There was also go...
Read MorePrice of petrol set to rise further
The price of petrol in the UK is moving higher and higher with a potential 3% increase expected by the August Bank holiday weekend and an 8% increase over the next year. This will take the average price of a litre of fuel in the UK to 125.9p as changes to the VAT system and an increase in fuel duty kick in. It seems that UK motorists are yet again being milked by the authorities in an effort to sh...
Read More