London faces more floods and heatwaves – so what’s the plan?

Image: Flooding at Chiswick Mall

The urgent climate risks facing London

Guest blog by James Thellusson, with contributions from William Butler

Last week, the Evening Standard warned that by 2030, over 40% of London properties could suffer from subsistence because of climate change.

The forecast was one of many in the London Climate Resilience Review, which was commissioned by the Mayor of London, and overseen by a former chair of the Environment Agency.

The Review says London faces more frequent and more intense weather events which may cause floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, sea level rise and subsidence. Heatwaves may claim thousands of lives, if no action is taken now.

Surface flooding will increase partly because too much land has been concreted or paved over which makes the ground is less able to soak up water in heavy rainfall. The current head of the Environment Agency says this is the issue which ‘keeps me up at night’.

To some, these threats may sound too Biblically catastrophic to ring true. As if a farm full of Chicken Littles had teamed up to write the latest implausible movie in the disaster franchise – The Sky Falls In Again. Others will discount these forecasts as a mid-distance prophesy about which they can do nothing.

But the fact is that the climate change shit show is already happening. In 2021, 30 tube stations closed due to flash flooding, London hospitals postponed important operations because the heat crossed the wires of their IT systems and over 280 people died due to the extreme heat.

READ ALSO: Flooding in Chiswick Mall higher than usual

Image: The Thames regularly floods in Chiswick 

Proposed solutions and their challenges

The report is not all doom and gloom. In fact, it has 50 recommendations to mitigate the worse aspects of what’s coming. These include building a new reservoir to serve the south-east (where water stress will be most acute); building a new Thames Barrier by 2070; improving flood defences, maintaining street trees and a ‘heat plan’ to protect the vulnerable, especially the old and those in care homes.

Which is all well and good. But, according to a recent House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report, the government has been too short term focused in addressing this issue. Do we expect a new Government will be any better?

Moreover, the responsibility for measuring, managing and mitigating the challenges to London rest in the hands of many private and public bodies. The buck, so to speak, doesn’t appear to stop with any one person. Or purse. Or public body.

Which is concerning.

My first boss told me never to present more than three solutions to any problem. He said if I offered him more than three, he’d sack me. God knows what he’d have done if I had suggested 50 recommendations.

God knows what would have happened if I had been asked to implement 50 recommendations.

Of course, managing climate change risk is a complex problem. And the report recognises the need for joined up planning and response.

It stresses the need for scaling up solutions and better coordination. The Guardian suggested councils might pay people to pull up the concrete paving stones in their front gardens to reduce the risk of surface flooding, as one solution.

READ ALSO: Flash floods in Chiswick 

Image: A car is partly submerged in recent flooding at Chsiwick Mall

The role of Chiswick residents and local government

Reading the report was like taking a cold shower, a wakeup call. The Thames is forecast to rise by more than one metre, Chiswick has many underground rivers and many hard road and garden surfaces. The Mall appears to flood more than before.

What’s next? High insurance costs? Selling up and moving to the Peak District? I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little, but I now have a feeling the climate change threat to Chiswick is larger and more urgent than I previously thought. Is that right?

Despite the prior efforts of the Chiswick Calendar and others to raise this issue, it feels like time to widen this debate. I think every resident in Chiswick should read the report. Or at least its summary. So should every councillor.

The London Climate Reslience Review

Chiswick residents need to know and understand more about the risks, the scale of those risks and their immediacy we face from climate change.

We need more proactive engagement from the council and others about the challenges ahead for us as individual residents and as a community. We need to know what is happening and what is planned. And what we can do to help. This ought to be a top accountability issue for the 2026 local elections.

‘London Calling’ by the Clash is one of my favourite songs. In it, Jo Strummer wrote:

‘Engines top running, but I have no fear

‘Cause London is drowning and I live by the river.’

I never understood why he was so complacent about living in a drowning city. Perhaps he owned a barge?

After reading this report, I don’t share his complacency.

I can see my son sunbathing in the garden. He’s the one that going to have to live with the consequences of further climate change inaction and the greenhouses gases I’ve been thoughtlessly pumping out for 60 years. (If he survives the melanoma he’s currently courting, that is.)

It’s time to do something for him, right?

So, I’m off to rip up the flagstones in the front garden and write a letter to the Council to see if I can find out how much it costs to rent a barge.