New build homes, flood resilience and environmental justice – current and future trends under climate change across England and Wales

Losses from flooding remain high in England and Wales in spite of improvements in the management of flood risk and the introduction of new regulations. An important reason is that new homes continue to be built in locations that are prone to flooding: over the last decade more than 120,000 new homes in England and Wales have been built on flood-prone land. While there have been significant improvements in understanding flood risk trends in England and Wales, there is still a lack of understanding of how changes to the building stock through new developments will be exposed to flooding in the long term, which this paper addresses. The authors find that new homes built in economically deprived parts of England and Wales between 2008 and 2018 are more likely, compared with new housing in more affluent areas, to become exposed to high flood risk over their lifetime as a result of climate change. This has implications for future spending on flood defences and highlights issues of affordability of private level flood protection as well as flood insurance in the face of climate change.