Abstract/Summary

The construction of flooding and flood risk management are complex and there is potential for dissonance between the individual and institutional understanding and experience of both. In this paper we start by investigating how flooding is managed and the change in paradigm from flood defence to more adaptive approaches which embed resilience into flood risk management. Using analysis of semi-structured interviews with members of the flood authorities in England, we explore how flood management authorities construct ‘flooding’ and establish that it is often defined by in-the-moment impacts. Whilst these in-the-moment impacts are understood to be devastating, there is less appreciation of the long-term human impacts of living at risk of flooding. We uncover how the construction of ‘flood risk management’ by the flood management authorities is complicated by factors, such as the construction of resilience, the availability of funding, technical expertise, whether they provide other services to customers and the responsibility fragmentation that the Floods and Water Management Act (2010) has created. We conclude that the differing constructions of flooding and flood risk management between flood management authorities in England hinder how flooding is managed. In a world facing climate change where impacts of flooding are expected to intensify, this dissonance could readily stymie partnership working and therefore we propose that a more nuanced understanding of flooding and flood risk management is essential for effective partnership working between flood risk management authorities and communities.