Newsletter #7 (August 2025)

Dear all,

If you’ve had a holiday and are slowly checking back in, welcome. I’m personally at that sweet spot with my batteries fully charged, ready to get back to work. 

I want to share some massive news.

Flooded People UK have successfully led a group of organisations in applying for a £1.47million grant, which will fund work around flooding in highly disadvantaged neighbourhoods for the next four years. 

The process started some time ago when, in 2024, I met Sanjay and the representatives of two neighbourhood unions over zoom to discuss a plan. 

The National Lottery was asking for proposals from groups of organisations as part of its new climate programme. The proposals would have to reach new people, to connect with local realities, and to bridge divides across communities. We set to work building and refining a vision. 

One of the best pieces I have ever read about flooding is a report dated 2017, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The report’s authors had designed a method  for understanding how much harm a flood would do in a given neighbourhood.  By including the age of people, rates of chronic illness, income, disability, language, tenancy type, and so much more data, they built an index of how vulnerable neighbourhoods were to flooding. 

The researchers didn't stop there. They compared this vulnerability of neighbourhoods, how harmful a flood would be to them, with how likely a flood is in the first place. Through this clever method, the report identified a number of places left behind by UK flood policy. 

And then not that much happened. So we came up with a way to follow up. 

Teaming up with ACORN (the Association of Community Organisations for Reform) and Living Rent Scotland, both organisations expert in organising in working-class communities, we devised a plan. 

First, drawing on these groups’ well-established methods, we build community organisations in the 5 most vulnerable areas - which respond to immediate concerns like unsafe housing. Then, as these grow, house flood action groups in them as ‘flooded people’s committees’. In this way, we build community groups in the areas we know flooding is most destructive who can take action. 

The grant will allow us to serve some of the most disadvantaged flooded communities into the UK, bringing their voices into our community and ensuring the government cannot ignore them. This is the first time something like this is being tried around flooding. As we learn from this work, we’ll share it here.. We could not be more excited. 

We go into ‘prep season’, getting ready to respond to floods through the winter, well rested, well resourced, and well enthusiastic to deliver for flooded communities. 

In solidarity, 

Louis