The Environment Agency’s head warned that homes on flood plains or near eroding coasts might have to be evacuated as it could prove too expensive to protect them from rising seas and increasing storms due to climate change.
Emma Howard Boyd said that some communities may need to relocate to an area less susceptible to flooding.
She said, “We will have to keep assessing if we can, collectively as a nation, afford to preserve different parts of this landscape.”
She said that 200 people died in the last July floods in Germany, illustrating the need for people and communities to be aware of the dangers and take immediate action.
A February survey by the agency revealed that nearly three quarters of people believed that they were being cheated.