The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has launched a new extreme weather taskforce - its first - bringing together the Met Office, the Environment Agency, mayoral authorities, and representatives from the farming, water, and insurance industries. It arrives as approximately 6.3 million homes and businesses in England face flood risk, ahead of a wetter and windier autumn and winter forecast on the back of the UK's hottest summer on record.
Environment minister Emma Hardy said the government was acting as flood and drought risks collide simultaneously: "We're facing extreme weather, with flood and drought intertwined, but the government is taking decisive action."
The taskforce is intended to go beyond emergency response, bringing in the systems that shape how communities withstand extreme weather - including river management, farming, water supply, and insurance. The government has earmarked at least £10.5 billion through 2036 to shield homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure from flooding, according to the Environment Agency.
As Insurance Business reported in September, the current El Niño is the strongest in recorded history, with sea surface temperatures in the Pacific having broken a 150-year high. It is one reason the Met Office expects wetter-than-usual autumn conditions across the UK. The previous winter saw storms Bram, Goretti, Ingrid, and Chandra all named, during which England received 42% more winter rain than average, according to the Met Office. The Environment Agency has noted that the chances of repeated storms, prolonged rain, and saturated drainage zones are higher than normal this season.
Drought and flooding are colliding simultaneously because parched ground hardened by the record summer heat cannot absorb rainfall quickly enough. Across the UK and Ireland, rain is now ten times more likely to trigger damaging floods than a generation ago, according to Environment Agency analysis.
The inclusion of insurance industry representatives in the taskforce is the development most relevant to brokers and underwriters. It reflects a recognition that insurers do not merely respond to extreme weather - they shape how communities prepare for it through pricing signals, product design, and risk information.
Flood Re - the government-backed reinsurance scheme that enables affordable flood cover for high-risk residential properties - was designed for a flooding risk profile that predates the intensity and frequency of events now being modelled. The taskforce's focus on long-term infrastructure and systemic resilience rather than reactive emergency response is welcome. But the deeper question is whether Flood Re's eligibility criteria, premium structures, and property coverage categories are calibrated for a climate that has moved materially since the scheme was established in 2016.
Brokers advising residential and commercial clients in flood-exposed postcodes should be having two conversations: the immediate one about signing up for flood alerts and making a flood plan before the winter storms arrive, and the longer one about whether the cover in place - and the Flood Re support available - reflects the risk environment their clients now occupy rather than the one that existed when the policy was first written.
The Environment Agency urges residents to check their flood risk at gov.uk/check-flood-risk and sign up for free flood warnings. That is the starting point. Whether the insurance framework behind those warnings is adequate is the question the taskforce now needs to address.
