UK’s preparedness for climate change impacts remains ‘inadequate’, CCC tells ministers

Progress in adapting to climate change: 2025 report to Parliament is the CCC’s first statutory response to the UK’s Third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3), which the committee believes has been “ineffective”.

NAP3 is a five-year plan to boost resilience against climate change risks, launched by the government in July 2023. It has drawn the ire not only of the CCC previously, but campaigners including Friends Of The Earth who took the government to High Court over its inadequacy.

The CCC’s latest disparaging report discusses how the delivery of effective adaptation in the UK remains limited and planning for adaptation continues to be “piecemeal and disjointed”, although the committee reports some progress in limited areas.

It states: “Adaptation progress is either too slow, has stalled, or is heading in the wrong direction.

“Whilst there is some evidence of policies and plans improving, it is clear that NAP3 has been ineffective in driving the critical shift towards effective delivery of adaptation highlighted in our previous progress report in 2023.”

Extreme weather events and rising temperatures are becoming more and more common in the UK, something the CCC believes we are not ready for.

The period between October 2022 to March 2024 was the wettest 18 months on record for England, where large amounts of farmland were underwater for long periods. This led to the second worst arable harvest in England since modern harvest records began.

The mass flooding that took place immediately followed record-breaking heatwaves in the summer of 2022, which saw temperatures exceeding 40^°C for the first time in many places and resulted in a record level of nearly 3,000 heat-related deaths recorded in England.

The CCC has stated how with limited adaptation to combat and mitigate these threats, the extreme weather will more frequently disrupt the functioning of key infrastructure.

For example, over a third of railway and road km are currently at flood risk, predicted to rise to around half by 2050.

As well as the flood risk, extreme heat can disrupt infrastructure systems via rail buckling and power line sagging. The summer of 2022 saw lineside fires, power cuts, buckled roads and damaged runways in the UK, where the record-breaking heatwave caused severe impacts to infrastructure.

From wrapping elements of the Hammersmith Bridge in foil to painting rails white, the industry tried its best to limit impact from the crisis, but these are short-term solutions with limited effect.

Following these heatwaves, previous Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) president Anusha Shah wrote an opinion piece for NCE calling on civil engineers to be more aware of how the record temperatures had laid bare how vulnerable the UK’s infrastructure is to extreme weather.

As well as infrastructure being at risk, so are properties in the UK — particularly from flooding. Currently, 6.3M properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea, and surface water, which is due to rise to around 8M, 25% of all properties in England, by 2050.

Steadily rising sea levels at the UK’s coasts are also increasing the risk of coastal flooding and exacerbating coastal erosion. Between 5,000 to 45,000 properties could be in areas at risk of coastal erosion by 2050, depending on how coastlines are managed.

Recently, NCE conducted an investigation studying the true effects of coastal erosion on Hemsby, a town in Norfolk that has been covered frequently in the mainstream media due to the loss of land to coastal erosion.

More needs to be done

In its latest report, the CCC further called on the Labour government to do more for the UK’s adaptation. Despite having taken power last summer, the committee believes the government has yet to change the UK’s inadequate approach to tackling climate risks while its manifesto promised to “improve resilience and preparation across central government, local authorities, local communities, and emergency services”.

The CCC believes although Labour inherited a NAP that fell short of the task of preparing the UK for the climate change in the present and no doubt in the future, its assessment has found “little evidence of a change of course”.

None of the 46 areas assessed for the report were noted as making “good” progress in its climate change adaptation, with only three areas achieving “good” when it comes to their future plans and policies.

The report states: “The government must act without further delay to improve the national approach to climate resilience.

“A new approach is still possible.”

In the report, the CCC provides a number of recommendations to start making the UK more prepared for the climate changing.

Areas for improvement

One area the CCC is keen to point out is how inadequate monitoring and evaluation of the progress being made remains a serious barrier. It states that tracking progress on this adaptation remains challenging due to limited national-scale and relevant data.

For nine of the assessment outcomes (i.e. what is needed for a well-adapted UK) in the CCC’s report, there aren’t enough indicators to assess overall progress accurately, according to the committee.

The report states: “In many cases, we have to rely on proxy indicators as substitutes for direct measurements of adaptation or climate risk.

“For nearly all outcomes, there is a lack of clarity from government on what it sees as key indicators and on what levels indicators need to reach.”

The CCC states that this needs to rapidly change under the current government.

It recommends implementing monitoring, evaluation and learning across all sectors where adequate monitoring and evaluation, as well as regular data collection and reporting, is essential to track climate impacts and the effect of adaptation measures at a national level.

The report states: “The long-standing gap of an effective monitoring and evaluation framework for adaptation must finally be closed.”

Another area of recommendation is for the government to improve objectives and targets and, as part of this, communicate the respective roles of government, the private sector and households in delivering and funding adaptation more clearly.

Where communication is concerned, the CCC further states that in order to progress adaptation, coordination across government must improve.

It believes greater coordination across activities, spending decisions, sectors and departments is required in the government’s adaptation efforts, which must be better linked with wider resilience planning to make sure climate adaptation becomes a true cross-government priority.

A further recommendation from the CCC is to integrate adaptation into all relevant government policies.

The report states: “The next Spending Review needs to ensure that climate adaptation planning is supported with sufficient resources across government.

“Public assets, and critical public services such as the NHS, need to be resilient to current and future weather so that they can operate effectively, and in the case of new infrastructure, without costly retrofitting.

“The government’s policy agenda can help to close key policy gaps identified in this report, but only if climate resilience is adequately incorporated into their forthcoming strategies and plans.”

CCC Adaptation Committee chair Baroness Brown said: “We have seen in the last couple of years that the country is not prepared for the impacts of climate change. We know there is worse to come, and we are not ready – indeed in many areas we are not even planning to be ready. The threat is greatest for the most vulnerable: we do not have resilient hospitals, schools, or care homes. Public and private institutions alike are unprepared.

“We can see our country changing before our eyes. People are having to cope with more regular extreme weather impacts. People are experiencing increasing food prices. People are worried about vulnerable family members during heatwaves.

“Ineffective and outdated ways of working within Government are holding back the country’s ability to be future-fit. Is this Government going to face up to the reality of our situation? Failing to act will impact every family and every person in the country.”

Industry reaction

ICE director of policy and external affairs Sam Gould said: “Once again, the CCC has said that the government isn’t moving fast enough to adapt the UK’s infrastructure for our changing climate.

“With extreme weather events on the rise, a significant portion of the UK’s agricultural land, rail and road infrastructure, homes and businesses face flood risk. The CCC also predicts that heat-related deaths will rise.

“Postponing action puts infrastructure, businesses, homes, and people at risk. On the other hand, investing now to improve the country’s climate resilience will be cheaper in the long run.

“It will help protect people, homes, businesses and the infrastructure we all rely on, and strategic investment will also have positive economic benefits.

“The ICE echoes the CCC’s call to improve coordination, monitoring, and how targets are set. These are basic measures that could make a real difference.

“Making the Adaptation Reporting Power mandatory for infrastructure owners and operators, as the ICE has recommended, would give the government much needed information to begin prioritising the most pressing needs.

“To make progress, the government must adequately fund adaptation in this year’s Spending Review, or the challenges the country faces will only get worse.”

CPRE chief executive Roger Mortlock said: “This report is a clarion call to think differently about land.

“It supports CPRE’s evidence that most productive agricultural land is at high risk of flooding and research from this year that shows that farms around our towns and cities are vanishing at alarming rate. We need to safeguard our remaining farmland to boost biodiversity and ensure the UK’s food security.

“Making the best use of our finite supply of land means taking a smarter approach to renewables, infrastructure and housing. If agricultural land is as precious as this report demonstrates, we can’t afford to keep wasting these opportunities to put solar on roofs, not prime farmland.

“Likewise, the default for building new homes is too often a needless take of agricultural land while opportunities to develop 1.2M homes on brownfield sites are ignored. This report urges a rethink on how the government delivers its targets and a recognition that land might be our most precious resource in adapting to climate change.”

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