UK Flood and Drought Taskforce Meets Wednesday as Met Office Warns of Strong El Niño Winter

The UK government is setting up a new Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce, and it will hold its first meeting this Wednesday, Oct. 14. Floods and Drought Minister Emma Hardy will chair a group of more than 50 organisations, according to a press release from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Members include the Environment Agency, the Met Office, mayoral authorities, the Fire and Rescue Services, and the farming, water and insurance industries. Defra says it also wants more community-based groups involved so that the "lived experiences" of flood- and drought-hit residents feed into policy.

What the Met Office is warning

The Met Office says its seasonal outlook points to a higher chance of wetter-than-average conditions this autumn, in part because of El Niño. It has said this year's event is likely to be the strongest in living memory, with the peak not expected until the end of the year.

The Met Office has described a "heightened potential" for wet, windy, stormy weather in the coming months.

The Environment Agency is more careful. Flooding is not guaranteed, it says, but the odds of repeated storms, prolonged rain and saturated catchments are higher than average. It is urging households to check their flood risk, sign up for alerts and make a flood plan.

The agency says roughly 6.3 million homes and businesses in England remain at risk of flooding.

A year of weather swings

The taskforce follows 12 months of extreme conditions. Last winter brought four named storms: Bram, Goretti, Ingrid and Chandra. The Met Office reported that England received 42% more rainfall than its winter average.

Then came a summer that the BBC and the Met Office describe as the UK's hottest on record. Defra's release says that summer brought the country's third drought in five years and the driest July in almost two centuries.

Hardy's framing is that floods and drought are linked problems. "We're facing extreme weather, with flood and drought intertwined but the government is taking decisive action," she said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

"This will put communities and businesses at the heart of our work and will make sure the UK is ready for whatever the weather brings next," she added.

The money and the claims

Defra says at least £10.5 billion is committed between 2024 and 2036 to protect homes, businesses and critical infrastructure, and calls it the largest flood defence programme in English history. That is taxpayer money spread over 12 years. Whether it lands in the right places is open to question when the rain arrives.

Defra also says the nation is "better prepared compared to last year" for potential winter flooding and that members have improved their response. That is the department's own assessment. The release does not give a measure for it, such as defences completed or properties newly protected.

The agenda for Wednesday, per Defra, covers three items: assessing preparedness for winter flooding, learning from the ongoing drought, and whether the country's resilience to both can be improved. The group is also meant to support a longer-term resilience strategy.

Defra has not said what the taskforce will cost to run, or what powers it holds beyond sharing expertise and oversight. A group of 50-plus organisations can coordinate. It cannot dig a drain or raise a bank.

The first meeting is set for Wednesday, Oct. 14. The El Niño peak is not expected until the end of the year, so the test comes in the winter months, when the Environment Agency's warnings about saturated catchments and repeated storms either play out or do not.

The measure of the taskforce will be whether Defra's claim of better preparation than last year survives that winter.