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Strengthening Flood Resilience Through Collaboration in the UK
🏠 | Blog | Strengthening Flood Resilience Through Collaboration in the UK
Event: Reset Connect London 2026
Date: Wednesday 24 June 2026
Speakers: Charlie Stratford, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology . Jonathan Glerum, Head of Environmental Outcomes - Anglian Water. Antonia Doncila, Sustainability Manager: Climate and Nature - Openreach. Keith Davie, Senior Advisor, Catchment Funding - Environment Agency and Aire Resilience Company.
Estimated read time: 9 minutes
This panel ran during a red heat warning, which turned out to be the right conditions for talking about floods. A warmer atmosphere holds and releases more water, and it falls on ground baked hard enough that it runs straight off rather than soaking in.
The argument that held the hour together was that flooding is not an environmental problem. It is an economic and security one, reaching insurance, mortgages, payment systems and connectivity, which means the organisations that need to act are rarely the ones being flooded.
You will come away with a working model for funding upstream natural flood management through private subscription, a clear picture of how utility networks depend on one another, and a specific gap in the regulatory landscape that nobody in the room had a good answer for.
Flooding Is an Economic Problem Wearing Environmental Clothing
Keith Davie of the Environment Agency and the Aire Resilience Company made the framing argument, and made it forcefully.
Flooding reaches far beyond wet buildings. People struggle to obtain insurance and companies pay higher premiums. Areas can become places where mortgages are not offered, leaving residents unable to remortgage, sell or move. Investment leaves. Road networks fail, telecommunications fail, and retailers cannot take payments while customers cannot reach cash or banking. "Flooding is a whole economy approach and it needs to be seen as such," he said, adding that he is not convinced the country has grasped it yet.
The line that followed is the one worth repeating in any boardroom: "you do not have to be flooded to be affected by flooding."
His conclusion reframes who has a stake. If flooding is a social, economic and security question rather than an environmental one, then the businesses that should be funding resilience include the ones whose own premises will stay dry.
Three Sectors, Three Entirely Different Exposures
The panel was assembled to show how differently the same hazard lands, and it did.
Jonathan Glerum, Head of Environmental Outcomes at Anglian Water, covers the driest region in England and still spends much of his time on flooding. Intense summer storms send water into sewer systems designed to a standard that some storm will always exceed, and when rainwater mixes with untreated flows it reaches the environment. His useful distinction was between the risk to assets, since water infrastructure sits near water by definition, and the risk from assets, where a flooded asset floods somebody else.
Antonia Doncila, Sustainability Manager for Climate and Nature at Openreach, described a network of millions of kilometres of cable and millions of poles, much of it outdoors. Copper and water do not mix, and the move to fibre has cut fault rates by around 60 per cent because glass is inert to water and carries light rather than electricity. Even so, engineers can wait weeks for floodwater to be cleared before they can repair anything, at precisely the moment people need to call emergency services.
Davie sits on the Environment Agency’s national funding team rather than in flood operations, which is how he ended up building a funding vehicle instead of a defence.
Leeds Has Built a Subscription Model for Flood Resilience
The most transferable idea in the session was a financing structure rather than a piece of engineering.
Leeds was badly hit by Storm Eva on Boxing Day 2015, with an impact Davie put at half a billion pounds to the city economy and no loss of life largely because of the date. The city has since delivered a flood alleviation scheme that protects against a repeat, but further resilience depends on natural flood management in the upper catchment. That work is comparatively cheap to install and expensive to maintain across 40, 50 or 60 years, which is exactly the kind of long horizon public funding handles badly.
The answer was the Aire Resilience Company, a community interest company bringing together public, third and private sectors, which Davie believes is the first of its kind in the country. Businesses pay an annual subscription and receive reduced flood risk in return. The money flows upstream to farmers and landowners who host and maintain the natural flood management, which gives rural communities a sustainable income alongside improved land productivity.
What makes it work commercially is that subscribers are buying a problem going away rather than a defence. Water companies and telecoms operators benefit without ever being flooded themselves.
Partnerships Need a Small Core Driving Them
Both practitioners were candid that collaboration is harder than the word suggests.
Glerum described the UK flood landscape as organically fragmented, with an unusual number of organisations holding a piece of the problem. His example was the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance, formed after months of winter flooding, which involves around 35 stakeholders spanning the Environment Agency, county and district councils, water companies, internal drainage boards, highways, power and telecoms. Managing a partnership that size is itself a skill, and Anglian Water has seconded someone into it. What makes it function is a small core of partners driving delivery, with others joining when needed.
He was also honest that partnership working is a disposition rather than a process. Some colleagues want to work with others constantly and some do not, and that difference decides more than any governance structure.
Davie identified the cultural obstacle from the other direction. The environmental sector, meaning both public bodies and charities, needs to become more comfortable working with the private sector, because mutual suspicion is still slowing things down.
Everyone Said Interdependency and Each Meant Something Different
Asked about interdependencies, the three panellists produced three distinct versions, which was the most useful moment of the hour.
Doncila meant it between networks. Openreach worked with Anglian Water and UK Power Networks on a climate resilience demonstrator building a digital twin of their combined networks against flood forecasts, identifying where cascading failures start. A Scottish forum with the water utility, the environmental regulator and the rail network examines how hazards compound, and found the dependency loop between water, electricity and telecoms varies by region depending on whether water moves by gravity or by pumping.
Glerum meant it across the water cycle. In winter his region pumps water into the North Sea at considerable expense, and by summer is desperate to have it back. Agriculture needs it, and data centres need water for cooling that does not have to be drinking quality, which raises the question of why households flush toilets with water treated to drinking standard.
Davie meant it between rural and urban. Upstream land use determines downstream flooding, while rural communities depend on urban centres for processing, healthcare and schools, and the Aire model simply routes money along that existing dependency.
The Regulators Are Not Aligned on Climate Resilience
The sharpest finding came from a comparison nobody on the panel had expected to be so uneven.
Doncila explained that each utility sector answers to a different regulator, and their maturity on climate resilience varies dramatically. Her colleagues in water and energy work to relatively clear standards for climate risk assessment and scenario analysis, reported consistently enough that data can be aggregated across companies, with funding routes for resilience attached. Telecoms has no equivalent, because climate resilience does not sit within Ofcom’s remit at all.
She noted that a recent national adaptation report included a telecoms section for the first time, recognised the sector’s exposure to flooding and storms, and recommended that the remit be extended. Charlie Stratford, moderating, said he was surprised and concerned to learn that the communications regulator does not currently have climate risk on its list.
Glerum pointed to a parallel gap in planning, citing a recent review of the water sector that recommended regional systems planning to fill what he called the missing middle between local schemes and whole-company plans. Planning at catchment scale, he argued, also makes private funding considerably easier to attract.
Practical Application, How to Get Flood Resilience Onto the Right Desk
Most of this panel’s advice concerns who owns the problem internally, which was also where they thought most organisations get it wrong.
Questions to ask
- Is flood risk owned by our sustainability team or by our risk function, and which one has the budget?
- Have we assessed the risk from our assets to others, as well as the risk to our assets?
- Which other operators would our failure affect, and have we ever spoken to them?
Signals to watch
- Regulatory remits extending to climate resilience in sectors where they currently do not, particularly telecoms
- Regional systems planning at catchment scale, which changes what private funding can be attached to
- Subscription and community interest company models spreading beyond Leeds
Traps to avoid
- Assuming you are unaffected because your own premises are not in a flood zone
- Building a large partnership without a small core of organisations accountable for delivery
- Treating floodwater purely as a hazard in a region that will be short of water by summer
What good looks like, on Keith Davie’s account, is flood resilience discussed at C-suite level as a risk management issue rather than delegated to a sustainability officer as an environmental one.
Key Takeaways
A water company, a telecoms network and a regulator described the same hazard from three positions and reached the same conclusion. The organisations best placed to fund resilience are frequently not the ones getting wet.
- Flooding reaches insurance, mortgages, payment systems and connectivity, which makes it an economic and security issue rather than an environmental one
- The Aire Resilience Company sells reduced flood risk to businesses by subscription and routes the money upstream to farmers maintaining natural flood management
- Fibre has cut Openreach fault rates by around 60 per cent against copper, though engineers can still wait weeks for floodwater to clear before repairs
- Water, energy and telecoms depend on each other in patterns that vary by region, so a single national resilience approach does not fit
- Climate resilience sits outside the telecoms regulator’s remit, unlike water and energy, which leaves the sector without comparable standards or funding routes
Quote of the session
"You do not have to be flooded to be affected by flooding."
Keith Davie, Senior Advisor, Catchment Funding, Environment Agency and Aire Resilience Company
Final Thoughts
Asked what they would change given a free hand, the answers were revealing. Glerum wanted an end to siloed thinking about water, so that floodwater is treated as a resource rather than only a hazard, particularly given the tension between reducing storm overflows and increasing flood risk. Doncila wanted senior leaders and regulators to read the government assessment identifying ecosystem collapse as a threat to national security, and to treat nature as the infrastructure underneath everything else.
Davie took two. Stop pitching resilience to sustainability officers, because they are too junior to sign, and get to the C-suite where it can be recognised as risk management. Then widen the target list well beyond utilities to retailers, hotel chains and anyone else who, in his phrase, operates a flood system whether they realise it or not.
Speakers
Charlie Stratford, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (moderator). Charlie leads partnerships and business development at UKCEH, having spent much of a 25-year career there researching wetland hydrology and hydroecology.
Jonathan Glerum, Head of Environmental Outcomes - Anglian Water. Jonathan leads a multi-disciplinary team covering strategic flood risk management, the future of the Fens and integrated water management, with almost 20 years in the water sector championing partnership funding approaches.
Antonia Doncila, Sustainability Manager: Climate and Nature - Openreach. Antonia holds a PhD in chemical oceanography and drives sustainability initiatives at Openreach covering carbon reduction, circular economy practice and building a climate-resilient network.
Keith Davie, Senior Advisor, Catchment Funding - Environment Agency and Aire Resilience Company. Keith is a Chartered Environmentalist working on innovative approaches to funding climate resilience, and was formative in setting up the Aire Resilience Company to make Leeds a safer city.
Watch Full Session