Recommendation 18

The Agency is on track to better protect 300,000 homes as a result of its capital investment programme for 2015–16 to 2020–21. While this a clear and easily understood measure, it does not provide any indication of what has happened to flood risk for non- residential buildings, agricultural land and infrastructure, although the Agency does separately measure the impact of the programme in these areas.20 Also, the measure does not take account of the impact of other homes becoming less well protected over the period due to, for example, through new housing development or the impacts of climate change. When taking these other impacts into account, the Agency estimates that nationally there will be 5% less economic damage from flooding in an average year as a result of the current programme. It also estimates that the next investment programme (2021–22 to 2026–27) will reduce damages by up to 11%. However, it acknowledges that this risk reduction calculation is based on a high-level model and the method of calculation has not been improved over the past six years, and that it is highly sensitive to the input assumptions. It also does not have a comprehensive measure to assess progress against this.21