Climate change is bringing more than adverse weather effects to Scotland’s inhabitants; Sea levels are rising, and in some months when there are the highest tides of the year, more of Scotland’s costal homes could see increasing chances of damage in the future.
Along with coastal soil and cliff erosion, general rising tide levels and predictions of significant changes within a few decades will likely affect property prices in high risk costal areas. The Scottish Executive noted in a study in late 2005 that Scotland is at particular risk in August when tides are at their highest, and experts then predicted that storms and flooding may leave property values awash and floored by up to 40 percent.
In the study the Scottish Executive indicated that any property that is between 0 and 5 metres above the sea level is at significant risk. This means planning permission for new building projects now must be set with the requirement that property developers need to show that they have taken into consideration the risk from costal flooding and could demonstrate a set of strategies to deal with the issues; flood defences must be built first before building are built for example.
In Edinburgh, especially north Edinburgh, there has been a lot of development since 2005, including Western Harbour a project of up to 18,000 new homes. Interest is also around existing homes and properties, and owners looking to sell their home, take out a new mortgage, or remortgages mean that typical Edinburgh mortgage brokers
and other northern Edinburgh mortgage specialists may soon find they have fewer mortgage providers available for their customers. The irony is that these locations that bring the risk of flooding are popular from the appeal that would be buyers are looking for; the opportunity to live close to the sea or close to water and so one can say that such properties at risk will still sell, but at a lesser price than perhaps seen previously.
Outside of Edinburgh places such as Saltcoats in Ayrshire, which has always had problems with flooding, houses being flooded biannually or more, have had the first real steps to tackle the situation put into place with existing flood defensives being improved. Areas that are at high risk need a measure of overestimation and over caution exercised so that new homes are not built without a good deal of future proofing.
Insurance prospects are not the greatest for homeowners living in these areas either but it does seem that the Scottish Executive is starting to raise its own internal awareness, and has taken recent significant steps including additional investments of £40 million over three years which has a direct effect on impacting and lowering the risk for 2,000 properties around Scotland.
What remains clear is that the source of the problem, climate change and global warming, is quickly forgotten as we rush to put a band aid on a smaller consequence of a huge problem. Further information is available from the Scottish Executive websites, from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/Water/Flooding/ with some interesting statistics and action plans.
