Towards a Flood Resilience Strategy

Scotland’s Programme for Government 2022 set out the aim to consult on a new flooding strategy for Scotland. This includes how the country can build community flood resilience and engage a broader range of delivery partners to deliver more diverse flood management actions faster.

The Scottish Government is committed to producing Scotland’s first Flood Resilience Strategy in 2024. The purpose of the Strategy is:

• to change our approach from fixing flooding problems to creating flood resilient places
• to lay out the principles to improve flood resilience
• to set out strategic changes that are needed.

To support the development of the Strategy, Sniffer was commissioned to engage with a diverse range of stakeholders during 2023, working collaboratively with the Scottish Flood Forum and ClimateXChange. We have conducted surveys and held a series of workshops.

Key findings

The first set of workshops, which focused on the building blocks for a flood resilient Scotland, identified key issues as:

• Land and place
• Inclusive community engagement
• Working together to make good decisions
• Roles and responsibilities
• Sharing our knowledge and stories.

It also addressed what a successful strategy could look like and how to measure success.

Building on these, in stage 2 we identified enabling conditions that participants considered would help to achieve a flood resilient Scotland by 2045. Clustering these we were able to create a Theory of Change that sets out the vison, outcomes and enablers as the key pillars of People, Place and Process, as well as an additional priority of Relocation.

For further details on the approach to stakeholder engagement activities, findings and future steps, please read the report on the Sniffer website.

Pictures from the workshops