As Cumbria struggles, Osborne plots to build homes on floodplains

What more can we expect from a government with such a shambolic response to climate change and disregard for the poorest people in high-risk flood areas?

Not everyone is equal in their capacity to recover from flooding. Tenure, for example, is a particular problem: people who rent privately and struggle to get their landlords to fix even minor problems in their homes may be up against significant challenges in the face of natural disaster.

Meanwhile housing associations and councils, already blasted by cuts, are likely to struggle to repair homes quickly with dwindling funds and mass staff layoffs. Many socially deprived areas are also in high-risk flood areas: charting the Indices of Multiple Deprivation against maps of flood risk shows a high correlation between poorer areas and those vulnerable to flooding, especially as a result of rainwater flooding.