Weather chaos: More than 1,000 UK homes flooded 

Imagine thinking that the UK government is even capable of caring about you.

The solutions have been known for years. Reforest higher lands, slow down rivers with beavers and for goodness sake stop building on flood plains.

This is what happens when greedy developers are allowed to build on flood plains.

Sunak speaking to flood victims : "Have you ever considered working in the financial sector?"

This country is an absolute mess. It is so sad.

Government is so out of touch with real life in the UK 😢

Greed again. A blind eye is turned to the cover of hundreds square miles of flood plain by concrete. Talking about flood defences is pointless if those in charge act in such ignorant ways. Where do they expect the rain to drain to. The climate is always changing easy to blame the people never the greed of the establishment and big business.

This is what happens when you continue to concrete over (and build houses) on what was once grass,forest and meadow. I see it all over the country as I drive up and down the country

The Prime Minister always seems to talk with a smiling face, no matter what he is talking about. So strange.

Not to mention the storm discharges being opened, pretty much constantly. That isn't just rainwater, its raw sewage.

No wonder his environment minister has resigned.

Maybe if they stopped building on flood plains and stopped cutting trees down particulary in Wellingborough where I am. It might help.

Traditional drainage systems, such as drains and sewers, are designed to manage water in urban areas. However, as cities expand, these systems might become overwhelmed, leading to increased flooding. Additionally, the alteration of natural landscapes during urbanization, such as covering green spaces with concrete, disrupts the natural flow of water and reduces the land's ability to absorb rainfall, contributing further to flood risks.

When a sewage treatment plant receives flow greater than its treatment capacity the excess flow is diverted to the river. These are referred to by the plant operators as “storm flows”. Larger treatment plants do have storm tanks, but it does not take long to fill these. When they are full they overflow to the river. Now if you are downstream of this flow you are going to see the river level rise and your area potentially flood. So, the awkward questions to ask are; Why do we send storm flows to the water treatment plants only divert it to the the rivers? Why do we not separate surface water from sewage at source? Why are half the sewage water treatment plants under sized? Who is responsible for the development of water treatment plants and distribution of the effluent? OFWAT receive complaints from the public about the water treatment companies. The real question should be who regulates OFWAT? and should we be spending money on HS2 when our homes are under water?

Why he smiled? No emphaty only empty words

It isn't climate change Alexs, it's building on flood plains. 🙄

That woman was smart enough to realize that they shouldn't be building more housing on a flood plain and yet government housing planners don't know something that simple. You always need areas to soak up excess water. Concrete won't do that. That flooding is just absolutely terrible. I'm a senior citizen and a flood like that would be very difficult to recover from. What's worse is that this flooding will likely happen more in the future after you have already replaced what was destroyed in this flood. An endless cycle of destruction maybe every few years. I can understand a street or two flooding but this looks rather widespread for whole neighborhoods. Insane flooding with no easy solution to stop it from happening repeatedly. In NYC where I live, they won't stop building houses until every empty space is filled and they should know that it isn't going to turn out well.

Living on a boat isn't such a bad thing

A lot of places in Nottinghamshire the water is coming up through the grown floors of homes, the water table is that high, mainly caused by new build estates and inadequate drainage

Hmmm, I wonder why we need so many new houses...

The prime minister grinning from ear to ear.. whilst turning a blind eye to problems of the people in this country.

When someone from the environment agency says "climate change, I don't know" after stating the increased frequency of these events you can only shake your head.

The only question I have is will they get their house drained before the inevitable hose pipe ban.

I always knew when I was 12 years old that England would soon go under water I knew the world would soon have to many people in it 😩😩😩🤦🏾🤦🏾

Climate change MIGHT be a contributory factor, but continuous building is the problem. There's nowhere for the water to go.

Did the environmental guy just say he didn’t know if it was climate change? Bro isn’t that literally your job?

Poor flooding system every year you hear about this in the UK. What is the government doing nothing? It doesn't affect them. They don't worry if it doesn't affect their donors they don't worry

The world today scares the c**p out of me. The PM's distinct apathy towards the environment never ceases to blow my mind.

she smiled the whole way through that interview

I feel very sorry for these people here who are suffering these floods, i hope they get the help they need from the government to put things right, but i can't help but think maybe the government should stop building homes on reclaimed land called - 'Flood Plains' near river systems, then less of these unfortunate incidents would happen in peoples lives and to their precious homes and businesses.

the rain will come back next year and the next one after that.....

Here is my own experience... A year ago I noticed as I was walking along my street that a roadside drain was basically blocked solid with leaves and dirt. Out of curiosity as I was walking along the street. I looked at every roadside drain... All blocked. For the best part of 3/4s of a mile.!! So why do you think that road utterly flooded in heavy rain? So you have to wonder is some localised flooding is just down to the fact that the council hasn't done anything to actually clear the drain system? Check your own drains... Do you have the same problem?

So sad. This is what happens when you no longer clean out the road gulleys or dredge rivers. Something which was carried out regularly a few years ago.

Sewer backflow could only mean one thing: insufficient waste water drainage. Water had nowhere to go but back up. We have similar problem on the West Coast of the States.

Horrible, awful for the residents....first question when purchasing a home, "Has there ever been any........."

The EA haven't maintained a riverbed since the Thames Conservancy and the NRA was absorbed over 35 years ago. The Thames has lost over 30% of its conveyancing capacity since the early 1980's so its no surprise that any river that can't flow properly gets overwhelmed by peak periods of rainfall. It's like a blocked drain that can't empty fast enough. The EA and DEFRA won't admit that they have never dredged to maintain flow rates, however a FoI revealed that they had a budget of about £1 / mile of the River Thames, so they only dredge to keep navigation viable. It is a complete joke. It's much easier to pull the wool over your eyes and blame Climate Change.

to much building going on

Tory gov ain’t doing whistle

People blame developers but there is another force in play here. There were plans to build a 6000 new homes estate on the edge of my hometown. This would have increased the population of the town by around 15%. The plans were announced to great fanfare but in recent years everything has gone quiet and not one shovel of dirt has ever been dug. It's like it's been kicked into the long grass. This quietness has occured since an incident where some years ago now, not long after the original plans were announced, in a period of long persistent rain the river did overflow the banks. Though the banks held, the defences were greatly damaged It's my belief is everything has gone quiet because the powers that be have finally realised what long time local residents had said from day one, that the flat open farmland that the houses were to be built on is floodplain land to the nearby river Trent and thus, from day one would be at risk of potential flooding. I don't know how true it is but the rumour amongst locals is that no developer wants to take on the task of developing the site because of the fact the land is floodplain. So then the natural question is, who is it who is proposing these crazy plans in the first place? Councils and other local authorities?

Heartbreaking stuff.

Dredging rivers and keeping them as clear as possible should be standard practice too. Something that seems to have been forgotten about over recent years. Apparently in 'the old days' farmers would remove silt from streams, dry it and use it to enrich soil or sell it as compost! Keeping the waterways clear in the process.

Bought my house ~11 years ago. Intentionally bought at the top of a hill. It didn't cost more.

I’ve worked all my life in construction, as carpenter ,building surveyors ,assistant site agent and building inspector for the NHBC and I can honestly say hand on heart that the whole industry is all about profit making large sums of money and that there. all in bed with one another. The NHBC aren’t what they used to be for a fact and most of there board directors are all ex CEO’s and building tycoon’s that all self regulate to protect all of there interests. It’s about time that our parliament/ government put and end to all this nonsense and have an independent situation that has the best interests of the common people at heart. All these poor people from all walks of life unaware and getting caught out .

Four new housing estates have popped up near me in past two years but the villages drainage and sewage systems haven’t been updated since the turn of last century so the new estates as well as the old ones are all using the inadequate systems. Also road large puddles appear next to the drains where all the leaves are blocking them and hence the roads flood. Can’t this be an immediate yearly job whereby the local Communities or councils have one job to clear all the leaves away ?

I wonder which country will donate for this disaster first

Stop building on flood plains it's not rocket science 😢

Regular river and drain dredging, and jetting/clearing of urban drain networks and road gullies would go a long way to stopping this problem. From an ex land drainage engineer.

How many of the people in here complaining about building on flood plains are the same ones who say we need more houses.

Build on a flood plain and farmers don't manage the land as they did in order to stop flooding, what do you expect! The Kings highway was always high up in order to avoid the floods down in the valley! We'll be going back to that soon!

Flooding is caused by run off. The run off is caused by Mono-farming (large scale farming of the same things) which degrades the soil and doesnt hold the rain water in the ground for longer.

Sheesh, you don't want Sunak there. Theres too much water already, that drip would only make it worse!

We're hitting 1.5C this year, for the first time, so expect more of this and much more besides.

There used to be regular clearing of drains, now there is not. New building has little attention to drainage, this is the result. Cost affective no, old or new, your home is at risk, streamlining costs, costs a lot down the line. Thankyou to C4, for putting this out on the internet, for I don't watch TV, not for a long time. I feel sorry for those suffering because a bit of rain, drainage, sort it.

Farmers fields used to have ditches along side them in the 1960s , these were filled in long ago during the 1970s and 1980s this is result of commercial changes that happened at farming levels across the country x water companies were sold to france the investment in drainage was not out in place. This is out come of policies since 1960s onwards really worked well hasn't it.. Ditches filled in , no water course for rain to go into underground water tables and flow out or be absorbed. . . We reap what we sow for commercial usage and financial gain causing more problems in long run for families ..

Whens the last time anyone saw the river being dredged out?? not in my entire life some 40 years plus

I’m currently writing my dissertation on how the uk is due 30 times more extreme rainfall events by 2050… 😬

We have not updated the drainage infrastructure to cope. Add to that the fact that with so many new housing estates, previously rainfall would percolate through the soil now it runs along tarmac giving much more surface runoff.

One of the signs of the end times being near is weather becoming far more volatile

When the reporter was asking the so called environmental agency female,looked like he was trying to hold back at not laughing .

Stop voting Tory.

Regards and best Wishes to all People there from also flooded Germany. Stay in good Health.

Which places are flooded?

Every year I ask.. "What was done this year to dredge rivers to maybe increase their depth?" You can raise defences or you can deepen the river , no?

I'm afraid that the EA is studiously avoiding addressing the real problem - that our river channels are now so neglected that they can no longer carry even the normally expected winter rainfalls, let alone the extra rainfall that is the product of global warming. On the Thames (which is also flooding in some places) in early 1990 the EA announced that it was terminating the routine dredging program by which the former Thames Conservancy had made the river so safe and reliable, foolishly justifying this with the utterly inane claim that "rivers are self-dredging", which any hydrologist will tell you that is irrational nonsense. Since then, the non-tidal Thames has lost 30% of its pre-1990 banks-full flow capacity. Worse still, there had been extensive building and concreting-over of the Maidenhead flood-plain, causing heavy flooding of the town. So the brain-dead EA built a bypass, the Jubilee River, to discharge that which should have filled the flood-plain straight back into the river; opened in 2002, this caused extensive downstream flooding in January 2003 (but kept Maidenhead dry). And in 2014 it caused massive flooding in January, and again in February. The solution would be to reinstate the old dredging program, so as to restore the flow capacity back to, and above, what it had been before that was stopped. Instead, the EA proposed a complex system of bypass channels which in 2014 was costed at £185 millions, but has still not been started and is now reckoned to cost upwards of £650 millions! For purely doctrinal reasons, the EA refuses to contemplate dredging, which would enlarge the channel and, if properly conducted, would alleviate the growing flooding problem way into the future. Instead they are wringing their hands and pretending to care while the fatal combination of ever more hardened surfaces (roads, housing, industry, airports, etc) - creating ever faster run-offs - and global warming - bringing increasingly severe rainfalls wrecks ever more lives, businesses, homes and infrastructure. Frankly, the EA - as constituted, funded and run - is less use than a chocolate teapot. Just re-run this same video and hear how they witter on!

Beg pardon ! How many houses in UK and there’s a big fuss over 1000 homes being flooded ! Well that’s 1000 house owners that have a house in the wrong place !

When are we getting aid?

MAY GOD BLESS AND PROTECT UK 🇬🇧 😢🥺🙏

Clearing off rivers, drains as people are littering much more which will be greater chances of drainage getting blocked.

Kept waiting for the Alex woman to turn around and flush, looks like she was speaking from a toilet! 😂

It's not "climate change" (the climate has always changed) it's all the extra housing without drainage infrastructure to cope. The woman was absolutely spot on. These areas are prone to flooding but the huge growth in housing development has exacerbated the problem.

When Channel 4 say 1000 UK homes flooded, is that 1000 homes from across the UK or 1000 homes in one flooded part of the UK?

Cloud seeding, weather engineering,La Nina, etc. The governments are excellent at this.( weather engineering) We in Australia 🇦🇺 had this for three years now. it's 2024, and we haven't had a decent summer yet. For Christmas 2023, it was cold and wet in Australia!

Its kind of mad that people are choosing to live here at this point 😂

Been saying the great flood is coming back for few years now. This is just the start of it.

i remember when our town flooded in 1974. it was up to our waists. the police had a panda car with an urn of hot chocolate for them and the firemen, and i remember we really wanted some, but never got any.

Depte environment spokes person delivers s master class in speaking without saying anything meaningful.

4:55 Alex McDonald, that didn't go so well did it? We had a wet winter - well-done that happens most years River Levels broken 5:15 More common flooding more properties flooded 5:38 What would it take to stop flooding? 5:58 We can't keep building walls and defense's so the other measures are for you to do 1. Installing a flood proof door 2. Changing to Closing Airbrick 3. Raising Electric Waterproof plasterboard (Waterproof plasterboard - I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be submerged? and if its covered in excrement because the sewers backed up what good is it being waterproof its not excrement proof is it?) 6:35 Why cant we build more flood defense's? the walls would need to be high where rich people live, so where not going to do that. 7:10 We underspend on flood defense's It cost lots we have to look at the economics. 7:48 we need to look at how to manage it differently via natural defense's - as long as it doesn't effect rich people. 08:00 make communities' more resilient and you said all the with a smug smile on your face.

Sorry but that woman saying they keep building on flood plains is bs. Just because builders put houses on flood plains doesn't mean people have to live in them. They knowingly move into houses on flood plains then complain when they get flooded 🙄

Main reasons in my Humble opinion are...... Lack of investment in the infrastructure of UK. and stupid planning of house's putting profits before people lives Always the same empty words from people that do not really care

Rudderless ship runs aground again.

I have a left-of-field but obvious point to make. My spouse and I noticed that after last year’s VERY short-lived car insurance drop, the latest quotes that hit late in 2023 were pretty unforgiving. I would suggest, there’s a huge amount of cross-subsidisation now about to hit everyone. IE the water/flood damage catastrophe has now reached epidemic proportions, and has become ‘normalised’ and so someone has to pay or these homes and of course vehicles, cannot be insured. Insurance companies are going to keep very secret, just how exposed they are, to whichever geographical regions and types of insurance. There’s another problem too, and I wish I didn’t have to mention it… …if floods are now predictable, then unfortunately that makes it an absolute banker some people are going to ‘cash in’ on that. In other words, why ‘crash for cash’ when you can simply drive it/park it knowing full well it’ll probably get flooded if it’s in a certain location? A guy once said to me, his father didn’t want to repair his car, so he parked it in a place guaranteed to have a car slide into it when the snow and ice came. It was situate at the bottom of a short cul-de-sac, and it was steep too. Everyone knew, you leave a car there, it’s gonna get hit when folk try to get to work on an icy day and the short bit of road did not get gritted. There’s going to be an outbreak of that, and that’s the segment of claims, I object to paying for. I don’t see how ‘normal’ insurance can work now. So much of the UK seems prone to flood damage, and the scams I mention above, it will literally break the insurance model of business as we know it? My car insurance is double now. There’s some shift in my circumstances, but not much. I think they’ve ratcheted up every extra charge possible, as well as basic rates, in order to try and stem the humongous losses they expect from now on. Because it’s not a two or three-year bad patch. I’ll save you looking the tables up. The rainfall in the UK, runs in ‘banks’ of 5-year periods. During these mini-cycles of increased rainfall, they slowly peak about year 4 out of 5, and drop away. But, I took a ruler and sat it peak-to-peak over 30 years of these ‘mini-cycles’ of increased rainfall, and the trend is that the rainfall is increasing. In other words, the new, ‘low’ figure it drops to after every five-year cycle, is always more than the last 5-year cycle, and worse the long-term trend is say, 10% more rainfall over the 30 years. Now that, is a problem. We are going to live with this from now on. On the plus side, we are near the end of this particular ‘mini-cycle’. I think we’ve got 6 months or a year to go, then it will fall back once more, but not as low as the low the previous 5-year cycle left us at. There are places in the UK that are so predictably flooding, we need to do the Miami thing - revamp the houses so the bottom storey is sacrificial, for motor vehicles only. Sadly, a lot of older stock, won’t take to that. They won’t support a new storey being built, so they end up being an apartment atop a garage, and worth a lot less money as a result? And, that still leaves a lot of us, paying through the nose, for people who spend £30k on a car, only to not have somewhere dry to park it. We have three cars, and added together, they ain’t HALF that value. So I am a little perturbed that if we have a car flooded, we’ll get five grand, and it’ll be a fight to get a cheap enough replacement. At higher costs, that’s a shed load of premium increases required, to cover these high-value write-offs. This will need long-term major fixes - walled towns, levees and bunds all over the shop, raised car parks some distance from people’s homes, lower storeys sacrificially turned into vehicle-only, so the people are safely 10 feet up at least. Electrics, they’ll have to get fixed. They need raised up and down on ground floors waterproofed. It goes on and on I am afraid, because the alternatives are things like moving whole villages or towns. Heart goes out to the people affected, but I deliberately have bought on higher ground since 1987 when my mother advised me to do so, and pointed out some cracking examples of what happens if you don’t. Then there’s the famous building of houses on flood-plains in the past 40 years! Should never have happened, needless to say. It’s rotten for those it hits, but it also can’t be constantly paid-out for, these homes needing renovated every 18 months, while we have kitchen units from 20 years ago, because we don’t get flooded and renovated. It is unsustainable as-is, and this present government, has zero long-term planning interests. They just don’t do it. They didn’t do it for the Brexit baloney, and they sure ain’t going to do it for this - it’s a trillion-pound project. Good luck, take care, and prepare all you can until a government really puts its shoulder into this.

Maybe because we build so many houses and buildings which covers the land so the water can't soak away.

Building on flood plains. Like building next to a volcano

A curse for how criminal British government can be.

Thats what you get for building on flood planes also if I was living in such area I would have made specialised door barriers also vents would have been blocked to stop as much water as I could from getting in but easier said than done I know, but I would have had ready 6 threaded bars in the walls 3 on each side and either treated plywood or thick strong plastic etc and also some sort of material as a seal to put between the barrier and wall and then tighten up the nuts on the threaded bars to cause a flood defence of some sort, also when the weather is bad I would go out of my way to make sure I was prepared also I would have a sub water pump worked off a power bank all in place just incase and also small ladder or steps to climb over barriers just incase, it's the only way in areas such as this. Anyway I feel for the ones that had all the damage done to their properties and all the mess they must clean up, my thought are with you from Wales.

Otherwise known as January in the UK...

Nothing to do with the thousands, of new house built on green field sites every roof drive road patio offers rainwater direct access to the rivers and drains. Also the river Severn always, had a main channel of 14 to 16 feet due to commercial boat traffic since the river is, not used for commercial traffic the main channel is, now only a fraction of the depth in was. Every weir slows water flow and allows silt to build up behind them. Weirs that could be lowered during floods and when the navigations are closed to boat traffic during winter months, would allow the rivers to clean themselves due to increased water flow to the sea. An old river man once said to me 1 persons, flood defence means another person's flood. Of course all the above would cost money but the government has other priorities and agendas to fund DON'T THEY!!!

The money and resources to help these people is being spent housing illgeal imigrants in their warm homes.

My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Climate change or decades of privatisation and neglect of public infrastructure?

Forget the coast and waterways, yesterday's digested meals are now floating down UK streets.

How many people got a government warning alert, on their phones ?? We had to install it for things like this !

The river Trent is full!!

Im glad Im living in an upstairs Flat,On the first floor,Just incase if any floods like this ever flood over here,Less chance of my Flat being flooded out,Bad to those who have had their homes flooded out,Makes me wonder why first thing every year,Around the new year,Always getting more floods in

It’s never stopped plurtin’ doon for months. Who broke the sky?

Dredge the rivers - maintain public drainage systems - plant trees/ greenery - & stop the building of toytown housing estates with tons of impermeable surfaces. This is not global warming - it's the result of cutbacks, poor planning & council incompetence

When was the last time anyone witnessed a river being dredged, local authorities are responsible for dredging rivers.

Them cheap build houses are badly built as it is.Now with the flood,will make em worse.

Where is the famous english engineer ? In Indonesia they paid 10 times than local, and have 10 wives too. More wives, more responsibility

Sending prayers to UK 🙏🏻✝️🇬🇧