WN among most likely to flood?
REPORTS that West Norfolk is one of the most likely places to flood in Britain will come as no surprise to its residents, the Environment Agency said yesterday.
They should not be unduly worried by it either as research that led a Channel 4 programme to last night reveal West Norfolk as the fourth place most at risk from flooding did not take into account flood defences already in place.
Dispatches: Britain Under Water said more than 8,000 homes were at "significant risk" of flooding, with Boston in Lincolnshire topping a list of the 20 places most at risk.
The Environment Agency, which provided flood risk data analysed by the programme's researchers, said the statistics did not take into account existing flood defences.
They were also based on the number of homes in each area, with bigger populations more at risk.
"People in Lynn and West Norfolk know that they are at risk of flooding. I don't think this will come as a big surprise," said a spokesman. "What it does have, though, are good flood defences which we are working on all the time."
West Norfolk Council leader Nick Daubney said the area is often highlighted as an area of significant flood risk, but how flood defences minimise that risk is not often presented.
In the programme the chief executive of the Environment Agency, Baroness Young, called on insurers to refuse insurance to houses built on flood plains against advice to deter developers from building in at-risk areas.
She told Dispatches: "Many of the properties that flooded in the summer were built in the '60s and '70s and the '80s and we've got a huge backlog of that in the flood plain now and we don't want to increase that by building any more.
"We'd like the ABI (Association of British Insurers) to be tougher – we'd like the insurance companies to be tougher and to simply refuse to insure properties built on the flood plain against our advice. But we've not persuaded the insurance industry en masse to do that."
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 26 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
