Aviva’s report, Building Future Communities, prompted this piece. It warns that millions more homes in Britain will face flooding by 2050. The threat is not confined to coasts and rivers. Much of the new risk will come from within towns and cities, where heavy rain overwhelms drains and the land can no longer clear the water.
The report describes a Britain where formal defences can no longer cope. Dykes, pumps, and culverts were built for a climate that no longer exists. The ground is wetter, storms are heavier, and budgets are thinner. Aviva calls for resilience in building and planning, but it also hints at a more profound truth — that some places may no longer be defendable.
History offers a warning. On the Humber estuary, the medieval town of Ravenser Odd was once a busy port with its own market and church. It stood near today’s Spurn Point. Repeated storms and shifting tides gradually destroyed it. By 1362, it had been swallowed by the sea. The people left, and the name survived only on old charts.
Hull stands further inland, but faces a similar danger. About ninety per cent of the city lies below the level of a high tide in the Humber. Its safety depends entirely on a network of pumping stations that lift water out of low ground and push it towards the estuary. When tides are high, sluices close and the pumps must run continuously to prevent water from flowing back into the city.
In 2007, heavy rain overwhelmed parts of the system. Pumping stations failed, and water poured through streets and homes. Since then, the pumps have been modernised, but their dependence on electricity, maintenance, and constant management remains. Without them, large areas of Hull would lie underwater within days.
The city’s long history of self-reliance is reflected not only in its flood defences but in its communications. Hull is the only place in Britain with its own independent telephone network, founded by the city council in 1904. Local control of the telephone system meant that engineers and pumping stations could always stay in contact, even if national lines failed. The decision was made for practical reasons — to keep the pumps, power, and emergency services connected — but it became a symbol of the city’s independence. That local autonomy, once an oddity, now looks like a model for the future.
The lesson is stark. Hull does not stand above the flood. It stays dry only because machines keep it so. As sea levels rise, the pumps must work harder against higher tides. When costs or power shortages interrupt the system, flooding will return.
Flooding is not just a coastal story. Inland towns face a different but equally dangerous threat. Tewkesbury, where the Severn meets the Avon, has flooded repeatedly in recent years. In 2007, it was cut off entirely, and thousands of homes were lost to the water. Each time the pattern repeats — heavy rain, full rivers, overwhelmed drains, and a slow, difficult recovery.
Another, quieter problem is rising groundwater beneath our cities. In Liverpool, engineers now have to pump water constantly out of railway tunnels to keep them dry. The British Geological Survey has found that the city’s water table is rising because industry has gone. Factories and shipyards once drew large volumes of groundwater for cooling and process water. When that abstraction stopped, the underground water began to return. Basements, subways, and tunnels that were once dry are now under threat.
The same is happening across post-industrial Britain. Groundwater is creeping back into places built on the assumption that pumping would go on forever. It is a hidden flood, rising from below, just as the tides rise above.
Together, these examples show how fragile the modern landscape has become. We have built towns and cities that depend on constant effort to keep nature out. When that effort falters — through power failure, neglect, or economic decline — the land reclaims itself.
Government cannot hold back every tide or drain every valley. Aviva has told Parliament that hundreds of thousands of properties are already more at risk because existing flood defences are deteriorating. Insurance is being withdrawn from high-risk areas. The era of guaranteed rescue is ending.
Localism will become the only workable response. Communities will have to decide which ground can be held and which must be given up. They will need their own plans for shelter, food, and recovery. In some places, retreat will be wiser than defence.
Abandonment is not failure if it allows life to continue elsewhere. New settlements on higher ground could become the next generation of self-reliant communities, built around local supply, shared work, and mutual care.
Ravenser Odd was lost when the sea advanced faster than its people could adapt. Hull, Tewkesbury, and Liverpool each face the same test in different forms — the sea, the storm, and the water below.
When Water Has the Last Word
The idea of retreat is not new. Throughout British history, many inland settlements have disappeared when the land became too wet to live on.
In the 14th century, the upland village of Hundatorra on Dartmoor was abandoned after years of cold, wet seasons. Its fields, once tilled for grain, turned to bog. The people left, and a few stone houses are all that remain today.
Further north, in 17th-century Moray, the village of Culbin was lost when violent storms and shifting sand choked the drainage of the River Findhorn. The rising water and drifting dunes buried farms and crofts. Families walked away and never returned.
The pattern continues in modern form. Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire has flooded so often that insurers are withdrawing cover. Businesses cannot reopen after every deluge. One by one, they leave. This is how abandonment begins in our time — not with disaster relief, but with quiet departure.
When the waters rise, the question will not be whether government can save us, but whether we can save ourselves. Localism is not just the response to a failing system. It is the only way of living that can endure when the formal world begins to sink.
Postscript
The story of flooding is also the story of economic change. The industrial economy depended on heavy infrastructure, central planning, and a constant flow of energy to hold nature in check. Pumps, drains, and flood defences were all part of that system.
As the formal economy weakens and energy becomes more costly, these systems can no longer be sustained everywhere. What follows is the return of the informal economy — the local, the adaptable, and the human.
Localism is not just a social response to crisis; it is the next stage of the economy’s evolution. When the machines fall silent, it will be the people nearby, not the institutions above, who keep life going.
