West Midlands told to be 'flood ready' despite dry summer leaving river levels low
The Environment Agency is urging people to check they are prepared in case of a flood during the wetter months of the year
Flooding is appearing to be becoming an annual event across the West Midlands according to one of the Environment Agency's (EA) area incident managers.
Places across the region were impacted by flooding around this time last year from some of the main rivers such as the River Severn, River Avon and River Wye, including from Storm Bert in November and also from Storm Henk in January 2024.
In Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, rainfall from Storm Bert led to the Kyre Brook which runs through the town bursting its banks and causing a wall to collapse, leading to businesses being flooded in the centre and on Teme Street.
Be 'flood ready'
The EA is running its annual flood action week from today (13 October) until the 17 October which focuses on reminding people to be prepared to the risk of flooding.
West Midlands area incident manager Nick Green says it is essential people are still 'flood ready' despite the dry spring and summer as things could change quite quickly.
"We're still in drought, so we're talking about being prepared and getting ready for flooding when the river levels are low," he said.
"As we saw with Storm Amy though, a lot of rain fell, thankfully not in the West Midlands area but further north, and we did see impact.
"So if we get a number of named storms over the next month or two, we could see the rivers start to rise and therefore issuing flood alerts and flood warnings."
Government investing to protect more properties from flooding
The government announced earlier this month more than 24,000 homes and businesses had been better protected from floods and confirmed the delivery of 151 schemes in its first year in power.
It also added it redirected £108 million for urgent maintenance works on flood defences and by the end of the current two-year investment programme in April 2026 the total number of properties better protected by new defences is expected to rise to over 52,000 properties.
Mr Green says the EA team have been working through the summer to make sure their defences are ready for the autumn and winter with flooding becoming more and more of a yearly occurrence.
He said: "Year-on-year we're seeing these impacts, so previously people might have seen a big storm and thought that might give us a bit of room for the next few years but in the West Midlands it seems like flooding is an annual event for a lot of communities.
"Therefore it's important for us to help all of those communities because it's not always possible to build hard structure walls to keep the water out.
"So it's helping people understand the risk, signing up for the alerts and warnings that we've got and what actions can they do to reduce those risks within their properties."
As part of its Plan for Change the government adds it's investing at least a record £10.5 billion until 2036 which it says is the largest flood programme in history and is projected to benefit more than 890,000 properties.