The WWT (formerly known as the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust) has called for significant investment in natural flood management schemes to increase resilience to future flood risk.

It says that the recent impacts of storms Babet, Ciaran and Debi have exposed how unprepared the UK is to the growing risk of flooding caused by climate change. The new report (full report / executive summary) is calling on the Government to increase the amount they spend on natural flood prevention by an extra £130 million per year to help address this.

Currently, only a small percentage of flood prevention schemes in the UK use natural flood management (NFM) where processes such as re-wiggling rivers, restoring wetlands and planting hedgerows, are used to sustainably and effectively slow down and absorb floodwater.