A54Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Protect flood-defence maintenance and appraise schemes by risk
Existing action A54, assessed at the same scope.
Provisional single-reviewer desk assessment, 6 October 2026.
- Who and where
- Households and businesses in areas of England at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea and surface water, especially those at high risk. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: England.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- The Starmer government committed £7.9bn over ten years and £4.2bn for 2026–27 to 2028–29 (16 June 2025) and consulted on a simpler way to bid for flood-defence funding. Allocating against the 2024 risk assessment, protecting maintenance and publishing homes better protected against that map each year are a UK Facts proposal; whether the Burnham government has kept the settlement unchanged is not confirmed here. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Separate maintenance of existing protection from long-lead new defences and assess each against local exposure. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Housing
- In the national plan: Resilience and sustainability appraisal queue
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Flood protection is a risk-management decision. A year without a flood is not evidence of effectiveness, and one historic funding gap is not today’s national bill.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Separate maintenance of existing assets from a named new scheme; define exposure, failure probability and the do-minimum option.
- Test whether it works
- Asset condition and modelled expected damage under alternative climate and failure scenarios, with observed performance when events occur.
- Establish the cost
- Whole-life capital, maintenance, renewal, land and residual risk; test uncertainty in damage avoided and property exposure.
- Protect against harm
- Assess downstream effects, vulnerable communities, nature and residual-risk communication.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Protect flood-defence maintenance and appraise schemes by risk: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Reviewer’s reason: Problem scale judged from the linked domain evidence; not a population estimate of those helped.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Separate maintenance of existing protection from long-lead new defences and assess each against local exposure. This is a provisional marginal-change judgement, to confirm against commissioned delivery.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Reviewer’s reason: Risk maps and audits justify attention; they are not experimental proof of a uniform policy effect.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown: no sufficiently supported magnitude for this exact change.
Residual harms (Hm)2 of 3 — Manageable harm with specified safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Residual risk, false assurance and displacement of water or spending to other places.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown: the proposed increment has not been costed and matched to an approved affordable allocation in this review. Existing programme envelopes are not that allocation.
Delivery capacity (Ca)1 of 3 — Binding scarce resource
Reviewer’s reason: Use engineering and risk appraisal; low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Distribution assessed against the target group and the burdens described here: Residual risk, false assurance and displacement of water or spending to other places.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Reviewer’s reason: Timing judgement concerns the first meaningful outcome in: Asset condition; modelled protection standard; observed flood harm when events occur. It does not imply all long-term benefits arrive then.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: List safety/maintenance gaps, cost them and appraise new schemes using expected damage and distribution. Owner: Defra, Environment Agency and local partners in England.
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 14.5–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 16.4–21.8 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 16.7–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Incremental lifetime costs and funding not established. Use engineering and risk appraisal; low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending cost, funding, scope and capacity appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Partial — some lines costed, no whole-life total.
- Flood and coastal erosion risk management programme 2026–27 to 2028–29 (programme envelope) (published programme envelope; C-FLOOD-2629)
Still to cost: Incremental lifetime costs and funding not established. Use engineering and risk appraisal; low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged.
Funding status: programme route, not allocated.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Defra, Environment Agency and local partners in England. (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Defra and the Environment Agency, with HM Treasury; lead local flood authorities for surface water (action record)
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Flood risk management is devolved: Natural Resources Wales, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and councils, and the Department for Infrastructure (Rivers) in Northern Ireland run their own programmes; not reviewed here.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: Use engineering and risk appraisal; low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged.
Safeguards
- low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged (proposed, not yet specified)
- Separate maintenance of existing protection from long-lead new defences and assess each against local exposure (proposed, not yet specified)
Risks and residual harms: Residual risk, false assurance and displacement of water or spending to other places.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Asset condition; modelled protection standard; observed flood harm when events occur.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Properties in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water: latest about 6.3 million (2024 national assessment); baseline not published (England).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Asset condition; modelled protection standard; observed flood harm when events occur.
Risk maps and audits justify attention; they are not experimental proof of a uniform policy effect.
SWOT points it addresses
- About 6.3 million properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water; with climate change the Environment Agency projects around 8 million — 1 in 4 properties — by mid-century. (Housing)
- Infrastructure and services are not being adapted to the climate already arriving: the Climate Change Committee judged the UK’s preparations inadequate and found no adaptation outcome, of the 46 it assessed, with evidence of good delivery. (Growth & productivity)
- Water and the sea are local risks now: in late September 2026 Southern Water was at drought level 1 in its Hampshire and Isle of Wight supply zones with temporary use bans in force, and in Portsmouth 8,077 homes and 704 commercial properties in Southsea are at risk from coastal flooding, which a coastal scheme funded in 2020 is being built to reduce. (Hampshire)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer desk assessment, 6 October 2026.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Carried from the earlier domain review (C record): must be calibrated jointly with the G/W/E/NG/NW/NE records before any combined comparison.
Decision route: List safety/maintenance gaps, cost them and appraise new schemes using expected damage and distribution.
An earlier assessment exists on the 4 October 2026 selection table (nine H/M/L bands; superseded 7 October 2026). Its bands are kept, not converted into these scores.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.