Developing Flood Resilience Through Collaboration: Action Research with Water Professionals and Residents in Hull, UK

Traditionally, the public are expected to be passive recipients of flood defence which is undertaken by water authorities at the behest of the state. Over the past 40 years however, the discursive shift to ‘flood risk management’ (FRM) has signalled the state’s retreat from promises to prevent flooding. If carried to its logical extent, FRM conjures imaginary collaborations in which trusted water authorities coordinate widespread public action to reduce flood risk. This one-year action research project sought to explore the potential for these relationships to transform and this FRM imaginary to become a reality. In 2007 surface water flooding inundated over 8000 properties in the UK city of Hull. Although the water authorities are investing in additional storage and pumping capacity, they remain under regulatory and public pressure to do more. In the context of a highly urbanised city with limited public land, widespread additional water storage in located in private gardens could go some way to further reduce this flood risk. However, developing an initiative to mobilise such public water storage is far outside the expertise and experience of technically oriented water authorities. Undertaken between January 2019 and April 2020, the research explored the feasibility of placing raintanks in two communities in Hull. The research revealed that while local residents were often enthusiastic about the prospect of contributing to storm water storage, resource-intensive investment would be needed by water authorities to tailor each system to individual circumstances. However, the surprise and enthusiasm residents expressed on learning that they could play an active role to reduce their community’s overall flood risk, suggests that such investment would both increase water storage capacity, but also be an effective way to engage communities, which is considered a prerequisite for local collaboration and public understanding of flood risk management. Although the water authorities stated their commitment to community engagement and expressed enthusiasm about the publicity our activities attracted, there were also ongoing concerns about the potentially negative consequences of individual residents initiating water storage solutions of their own. A further issue was the perceived resource demands of ‘rolling the initiative out’. Moreover, interviews with both groups demonstrated an underlying lack of trust between the authorities and the communities. This action research project revealed a large cultural division between residents and water professionals, which it began to bridge by building relationships. We expect the fuller transformative potential of the project to be more fully realised when/if a pending bid for funding enables action research to develop these relationships further.