Take Flood Action

Isabelle: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy podcast, with me, Isabelle Sparrow  

Joanna: and me Joanna Yarrow.  

Isabelle: For those of you who aren’t familiar with Joanna’s work, she is an independent sustainability advisor and presenter. She’s the author of several books, including the popular “1001 Ways to Save the Planet,” she is the current Chief Impact officer at Human Nature, and former Head of Sustainable and Healthy Living at IKEA. So quite the CV. 

Joanna: Thank you, Isabelle. So good to be here and thank you so much for inviting me to join you on the Carbon Copy Podcast. 

Isabelle: In this series: “Do Something Bigger” we’re looking at ways to have more impact, to make more of a difference. Basically to create the biggest change possible in the place where you live. We’re covering a different action relating to climate or nature or sometimes both each week. So if you started with an episode that isn’t really your thing, please come back another time or check out our previous episodes. We’re really aiming to share something for everyone. This is Do something Bigger. Episode 3: Take Flood Action.  

Joanna: So in the UK we love to moan about the weather, don’t we? And we have the stereotype that we can’t go anywhere without an umbrella. Actually, there are large parts of the UK that face water stress. We don’t actually have enough drinking water often and that’s a challenge. But it’s a bit weird because at the same time, due to the effects of climate change, we’re also being affected more and more by flooding and in ways that actually are quite new on a scale that we’re not used to in the UK. 

So, while we’re still needing to be careful about conserving water and water stress, we’ve also got to deal with this added challenge of flooding, which is basically large volumes of water in the wrong place at the wrong time that we’ve got to deal with suddenly and I think, you know, it comes from all angles. Obviously, it comes from rivers, it comes from the sea and it comes from surface runoff and probably for us as individuals, the way that we’re starting to see it most directly is in how it affects our property. 

That could be our homes and it could also be businesses and the numbers of properties that are being affected already are going up and up in the UK. So at the moment we’ve got just over 6 million properties that are in danger of flooding and because of global temperature rise and climate change, that’s going up to about 8 million by 2050. 

So that means that about one-in-four properties are going to be at risk of flooding in just a few decades. It’s going to be something that affects many of us in our everyday lives. You know, it’s gone very fast from something that has been a topic that has been somewhere else or maybe in the future to a risk and a reality that’s becoming part of our everyday lives, our lived experience, our our townscape. Our financial planning and our kind of, our future as a country, actually. And so it’s something that we’re going to need to adapt to and mitigate and avoid where we can as quickly as possible.  

Isabelle: Gosh, yes. There really is just so much at stake.  

Joanna: Yes, exactly. And I know you know, I don’t want to be too gloomster about it, but, you know, even if we were by some magic to achieve net zero tomorrow. So even if we were to stop carbon emissions in their tracks, some of these effects are going to be built in. The more we do now, the less it’s going to cost us in every respect. And actually there are lots of co-benefits from taking action at every level.  

Isabelle: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s something that we find with kind of almost every action that we are talking about during this year, during this campaign of 25 Big Local Actions in 2025.  

So we’ve been chatting to a couple of people who are involved in this world, the world of flooding and the world of water management. And we’re about to listen to some of those conversations. But before we do so, I just wanted to have a little bit more of a chat about your role at Human Nature and what Human Nature is doing in this regard. 

Joanna: Human Nature is a small company that designs, builds and runs places, so neighborhoods and whole communities that make sustainable living easy, attractive and accessible. And we’re based in Lewes in southeast England, in Sussex. And our first project, our flagship project is there. It’s called The Phoenix, and we have a site there by the river – spoiler alert: it’s in a flood zone – and it’s a brownfield site that has been semi-derelict for some decades now. Used to be an iron works and an inland port. And we got planning last February to create a new neighbourhood of about 685 homes. It’s mixed use. So it’s homes, but it’s also workspaces. It’s got lots of public amenity and so on. And it’s all designed around being climate regenerative, nature regenerative and enhancing social and human well-being. 

 So when it comes to flooding and water generally, as I said, it’s it’s a really challenging site because it’s by the river. It’s on a floodplain and Lewes has historically flooded and it had a particularly nasty flood back in 2000, which really affected that whole area of the town, this site and far beyond. And in a way that most people hadn’t experienced in their living memory. And that’s because of what we’ve been talking about earlier, expected to get worse. So for any developments on this brownfield – it’s valuable, it really needs housing. But the first challenge is how do you deal with flooding? So, the first job really is around flood defences. So building a big old fat flood wall that will protect this site and the rest of Lewes. The things I think are probably a bit more exciting and unexpected are what we call the blue green infrastructure. And so that’s all the things that we do around the engineering, the architecture and the landscape design that that use greenspaces, parks, recreational areas, as well as quite light touch engineering and design solutions to make a much more liveable space. That also deals with the realities of water in the 21st century. It’s helping address flooding issues and guard against them, but it’s also… these are areas that are really rich and diverse in biodiversity, whether it’s bog resistant plus drought resistant plants, whether it’s insects and other small creatures. And those small creatures might include children! These are areas that are designed to be used as well as an amenity space. 

Isabelle: You’re listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast. Carbon Copy is a charity inspiring, more big thinking local action for climate and nature. Over the course of this year long podcast series, we’re highlighting 25 Big Local Actions. So, subscribe now to hear the next episodes as soon as they land.  

So we are talking about taking flood action and one part of the UK that is particularly vulnerable to these risks is Hull in East Yorkshire. Back in 2022, we chatted to members of the team at the Living with Water Partnership, which is a partnership between Yorkshire Water, Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the Environment Agency and the University of Hull about their work to create a safer and more resilient city. And we recently caught up with Rachel Glossop to hear about the unique challenges that Hull faces in regards to flooding.  

Rachel: So Hull is a city as many cities internationally built around water, because water brings the trade and wealth. So we built our cities adjacent to water and now we’re sort of reaping those challenges that the benefits brought. So Hull in particular is built on what would have been the delta of the river Hull to the Humber Estuary. So it’s built on marshland. That marshland was obviously artificially drained to create an area where you could develop. And then gradually, as the cities developed, it’s spread out and built onto many of the land, which is called ings. 

So ings is just meaning, it’s either ings or carland, which either means wet woodland or marsh. So we have a city now with a population of around 300,000 that’s all built on an area that’s very susceptible to sea level rise. So all that surface water, all that rain that’s landing not only on the city, but all the surrounding land, which is higher, it all has to drain through the city of Hull to get out and into the Humber Estuary. 

And obviously that is really challenging when you’ve got the topography that we’ve got. To make matters worse, they back in a big there was a big period of regeneration in the 1940s and ‘50s following the Second World War because large parts of the city were destroyed with bombing and lots of the city was actually in terms of the housing stock, it was unsuitable, it needed to be regenerated and there was some quite large watercourses that carried a lot of that water through the city and would discharge out into the estuary. 

So in their wisdom they filled in those watercourses and replaced those with actually what would have been quite a futuristic sewer system. It was very much the concept at the time was let’s just hide water. It’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. We’ll stick it all underground. Nobody really needs to think about it. And the system worked, and it worked well up until probably 2007, when just the sheer volume of rain falling on the city and the surrounding land just simply wasn’t able to get into the sewer system quickly enough. And so it just started ponding on the surface. And that then led to flooding because obviously the water naturally wants to go to the low spots. And in Hull the low spots is a particularly large volume of housing.  

Isabelle: So they are some pretty complicated and complex issues that Living With Water are dealing with and tackling. We spoke to Rachel about the recent work the partnership has undertaken to help mitigate this flood risk. 

Rachel: We have a 25-year blue green plan. So, this is about retrofitting sustainable drainage in various areas of the city. But ideally at the end it will be sort of city-wide. So these systems are creating biodiversity net gain at the same time as storing water, helping with the flood risk and helping with the water quality issues. 

The plants to helping sort of filter that water and pollution out of the system before it goes into the receiving water course. And I think they’re helping people’s mental health and health and wellbeing because you’ve got really like multi-purpose green spaces that people understand that it’s got a function and that’s what it’s there for. And it’s about managing the water above the surface, but also having blue green corridors, which is then about how we convey that water from those storage areas to get it to the estuary, because that’s our biggest issue is obviously the conveyance. I must admit, has been difficult doing some of these SuDS retrofits because people still want water to be “out of sight, out of mind”, and they don’t understand that there’s not enough space; and then when we’ve planted our SuDS features with biodiversity net gain, wildflower seed mix, it’s the perception that that’s untidy and they don’t like it rather than it’s actually not for them, it’s for birds and bats and insects and things as well. The problem with these type of schemes is that they are within people’s streets and they are, you know, close to people’s houses where traditional flood defences, which might be pumping stations and walls, tend to be further away. So people don’t, aren’t as sort of involved on a daily basis as they are with these type of blue green schemes that we’re trying to implement now.  

Isabelle: Now, I think that is such an interesting take on the response to these things. Watching how flooding affects people’s lives on the news. I mean, I’m lucky enough to have never experienced flooding in my own home, but the devastation that it wreaks on people’s lives, you would think that anything that that could be done to protect people, protect people’s homes against these things happening to them would be welcomed with open arms. So what do you what is your thoughts about that? Why do you think that there’s this resistance and have you kind of experienced any of that in terms of your planning of The Phoenix, for example?  

Joanna: Well, I mean, I agree. Gosh, this you know, there’s so many so many parallels in what Rachel was describing, but obviously that they’re coming out of this from a retrofit perspective, which, like I say, is not necessarily – well it brings its own challenges. This “out of sight, out of mind” thing is massive, isn’t it? Because like you say, flooding hasn’t been part of our everyday lived experience until recently. And also the job of dealing with water has been… so flooding has been somewhere else, someone else – and dealing with water and the problems associated with it with flooding, has being someone else somewhere else. 

And so all of a sudden there’s this massive collective mindset shift, isn’t it? I think there is still, as Rachel was describing, this idea that it needs to be big infrastructure that’s not going to touch my everyday life. So I think in most people’s minds, you know, the idea of flood walls and pumps and everything else carries on as usual, it would be their everyday expectation. 

 So I think there has been a journey that we’ve needed to go on to say, “Well, yeah, okay, we acknowledge this is a challenge, but actually we’re going to need to do things differently” because there is no single big infrastructure action that’s going to solve this for us, it’s just physically impossible. The technology that, you know, it would be so expensive. And also because the challenge is going to get so much worse, that’s not going to deal with it. Let’s come at this. We have the infrastructure, but we also need those every day interventions.  

Isabelle: The next person that we spoke to is an incredibly well-known voice on the on the flooding scene, if I can talk about that being a flooding scene! Flood Mary, as she’s known, was flooded and probably the same big flooding event that affected Lewes in 2000 and has since then been on a huge, interesting and influential journey about how people can cope with and can prevent flooding in their in their homes and the impact of flooding in their homes. So let’s hear from Mary.  

Mary: I evolved really from being flooded myself 24 years ago, last winter or this winter. And during that time there was no help, no support, no advice for anybody. The only information I got was ten days into my flood from environmental health telling me to wash my hands if I came in contact with flood water. So that was my sort of moment when I thought: “just a minute…” I need now to find as much as I can out about flooding, particularly at a property level and what we can do to reduce the awful impact of a flood property level. Raise awareness of flooding because I didn’t know I was at flood risk and also what people can do to help their homes recover. So really it evolved organically over the years. When I made my own home flood recoverable, I was flooded again. I was able to pump out, sanitise and carry on living there. So that really was the moment when I thought “right, this information needs to get out to people” because I did learn that the Environment Agency and local authorities and those that generally manage flood risk are charged only with managing flood risk, not protecting our properties from flooding. That’s our responsibility. Hard as that may sound. 

Isabelle: Yeah, that’s really interesting. It’s something that I, I pretty much have learned through making this podcast episode. And when people have talked to me about it, it suddenly clicks the actually it’s your house and you protect your house from burglary. You protect your house from fire. Flooding is another risk that can affect your house. So, yeah, it’s absolutely on us as individuals to help reduce the damage that flooding can cause to our homes. So Mary talked a little bit more about some of the natural solutions that people can put in place.  

Mary: Well, I am quite frank and honest with people when they come to ask advice from for me, especially with surface water flooding, I regularly talk about, especially in presentation with communities, about how we can “green up”. And my strapline is to work with nature rather than against it. Because if we if we literally pave over everywhere, we are encouraging flooding. But even if we can do a little bit of greening up within our gardens with water thirsty plants that can absorb the water and doing things like having a water butt. So when it rains hard, first of all, if you know, rain’s coming to empty that water butt and then all the water from the roofs can go into the water butt and not into the drains. So if we all did a little bit to disconnect our rainwater from the sewage system, from the drainage system, that would dramatically reduce the amount of water that goes in. And you could also put permeable paving down so you can still have paving to park on, but it will let the water percolate through when it rains hard. 

And of course, you’ve got to remember as well that trees as well can absorb an awful lot of water. So actually planting trees can reduce flood risk. And I don’t think generally people realise that nature, in that situation is very much our friend. And I know we have busy lives and we don’t have time to mow lawns, but actually having a garden can make a huge difference. And I remember back to the terrible floods in 2007 when a lot of Hull went underwater, and one guy contacted me to say that he was the only house in the street that hadn’t flooded, and he said he got water butts, a lawn in the back garden and a lawn in the front garden, and everybody else had got paving. And he swore, black was white that that was the reason he hadn’t flooded, because he, again, had worked with nature and not against it. And we absolutely have to all wake up and smell the water and know that if we all did our bit, that that could reduce our own flood risk and the flood risk to other people.  

Isabelle: Mary did also talk about some of the things that we can do in inside our houses to make them more flood resilient. So this is again, thinking about the kind of onus being on us as individuals to protect our property. And she has some really great ideas about ways to, in the event of a flood, ways to protect what you hold dear.  

Mary: So obviously you can use property level flood resilience products, for instance, flood doors and barriers and non-return files, self-closing air bricks and sump pumps. But more importantly in my book, because I’ve seen many properties that have got barriers, that are still flooding because flood water will find its way through the walls and in any wicked way into somebody’s house. And I have written an e-book about this and the average person who hasn’t made adaptations can be out with their home for about nine months. In 2007, many people were out for two years because of the sheer volume of properties that were flooded. But people that have made adaptations, for instance, waterproof plaster, perhaps plastic skirting boards or taking tiles up the wall and solid flooring, big porcelain tiles that have got waterproof grout and adhesive underneath, or even that people love laminate flooring. You can get plastic flooring that looks like laminate, that can recover from a flood. 

Electric sockets up the wall, waterproof plaster and plaster board, and then waterproof kitchens as well. So flood recoverable kitchens so they can be wet, they can be washed down and sanitised. So what many people are doing now that have made these adaptations to flood water comes in, they pump it out and one hint and tip is to throw some eco-friendly washing up liquid into the flood water and some eco-friendly disinfectant type thing. Agitate it and it will leave your house clean on the way out. So you’re cleaning your house and people then light their fires, open windows and can carry on living there rather than making an insurance claim.  

Isabelle: So those are obviously all really excellent ideas and things that we can do as individuals. But I can’t help but wonder what we could do to make flood action bigger. Carbon Copy is all about collective and collaborative action, and this series is about doing something bigger. So I wanted to know more about the things that we can do together to take action against flooding.  

Mary: Well, first of all, we can get lots of Flood Action Groups, so lots of communities now are getting together and having community emergency plans because they know the vulnerable people within their community and they know where to target support. A lot of places have what you call flood buddies. So people that know that some an elderly or vulnerable person is at risk of flooding, they will go and help them put up their flood barriers. One of the projects I’m working on in Northamptonshire, which is called the Rain Project, and it’s to develop support communities at risk of flooding on one of the things that that project is providing communities regular risk is a sort of emergency flood kit, including flood boxes. 

So things that within the flood box that the community can deliver to vulnerable people, even quick fixes, for instance, putting insulation tape on on an air brick and up the doors and things like puddle pumps and household plans as well as community plans, things that people can do to try and reduce the flood. And they will be delivering them to the vulnerable in our society in the risk of flooding.  

Isabelle: I absolutely love the idea of flood buddies. I think that’s such a lovely thing. And, you know, I kind of feel like that sort of buddy system could apply in lots of other kinds of community kind of resilience ways. You know, you could have a buddy system for any kind of disaster that might affect a community. So it’s a really it’s a really lovely one to hear about. So there’s loads of ways for us to take action as individuals, as well as collectively to manage flooding. And I wanted to know how the Living with Water Partnership was getting their information out to communities in Hull. 

Rachel: It’s a bit of a two-pronged attack. So their first thing is children. So it’s education. So we have sort of primary education, secondary education offers; the sort of lessons and assemblies. With the primary, you discover that children are very worried about climate change, so they really appreciate us going in and talking to them about flood risk and understanding the things they can do. So we give them wildflower seeds and things to plant themselves and they love that. 

So and then they go home and educate their parents or ask their parents, what are we doing about flood risk and things? And that helps prompt action. The secondary offer is around sort of jobs. So especially in Hull with the levels of deprivation and the lack of employment, often it’s about trying to link it in to the fact that with the changing climate, flood risk is certainly going to be a very big growth sector in terms of jobs. 

The second one we do is I have specifically a community co-ordinator and what she does is she uses existing networks, so linking in with growing groups, linking them with conservation groups, linking in with all those other networks that are out there. So we have a group of volunteers, Hull and East Yorkshire volunteers that were like our City of Culture volunteers, and they are like a trusted brand within the city. So they all have blue jackets and you see them at any event in the city and they’re there and they guide people to things. And so we’ve, we’ve trained up 20 of them as our flood ambassadors. What that means is just they can talk to their neighbours, their networks, their taxi drivers, their hairdressers, anyone they talk to within their groups. 

They can then sort of just talk about flooding and make it normal. And so that’s what we’re trying to do, because when I talk to people, I’m always seen as “there’s that woman from the council again going on and on about flooding”. Whereas if it’s, you know, a neighbour who’s saying, “oh, look, I’ve got this flood door” or “I’ve actually just planted these seeds in the garden”, then it’s so much more powerful. So we’re trying that two-pronged attack of the young and the old. And then it’s the in-between that we really struggle with. But I do find that is the hard demographic to reach. So that’s generally how we do our sort of engagement.  

Isabelle: We’re going to finish this episode with some simple takeaways to help you and those around you do something bigger to take flood action. First up, I think it’s really important that people know the flood risk in the place where they live and they take it seriously when flood warnings are issued. This is something that we’ve heard from both of our guests. You know, people need to be aware it is on you as an individual to be conscious that flooding is real and it’s coming and you can do things to prevent it being as bad as it could be. 

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think hope for the best, prepare for the worst would be my mantra there. And you know, as well as understanding what the flood risk is likely to be getting a step ahead by getting a flood of flood kit together and thinking about actually what would happen in and around your home, were the worst to happen. And getting ready to reduce flood risk on your doorstep. Literally, if you’ve got space for a water butt, as was suggested, you know, empty it out before the big rain so that you can hold water back. If you’ve got a garden or if you’ve got any outdoor space – de-paving it, making it more permeable. That will help both to reduce the overall flood load, if you like, and also protect the area around your home. 

Isabelle: Yeah, absolutely. And then finally, I think it’s about how you come together collaboratively with others in your community. So we’ve heard about these flood action groups. They sound like they are a brilliant idea and should be in every community. I feel like, you know, we’re talking about one in four people being at risk of flooding that sort of feels like pretty much everywhere needs a flood action group. 

So if you don’t know if there’s one where you live, have a look. And if there isn’t one, maybe think about setting one up. If this is something that you feel like you’re passionate about and could get involved with. 

Joanna: And find yourself a flood buddy.  

Isabelle: Yes. Find yourself a flood buddy. Exactly. There’s so many different things that people can do and some things seem quite small individually, but if we bring them all together, we can have such a big impact, which is kind of what this podcast is all about. 

It’s about the collective impact of of taking action where you live. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing all of your experience around flooding and around the work that you’re doing with Human Nature in Lewes.  

Rachel: Total pleasure. Thank you for having me on.  

Isabelle: Thank you for listening to the Carbon Copy Podcast. Our guests today have been Rachel Glossop and Flood Mary. This episode was written and produced by Bradley Ingram and presented by me and Joanna Yarrow. In the next episode, I’ll be joined by a special guest host, Kathryn Machin from WWF. And we’ll be talking about how to farm with nature, with Martin Lines from the Nature Friendly Farming Network, and Stephanie McEvoy, who’s working with farmers and businesses in Northern Ireland to improve sustainability. If you’d like any more information about any of the initiatives or organisations featured on this episode, just check out the show notes. Until next time, Goodbye.