Scotland’s flood fight stalls. Homes wait. Waters rise.

By: Akinde Oluwaseun

The warning is blunt. Thousands of Scottish homes, sitting in the shadows of rising seas and swollen rivers, may never see the flood protection they were promised. Why? Leadership tangled. Funding short. A system that watchdogs now call “not fit for purpose.”

The numbers hit hard. Four hundred thousand households could be under threat by 2080. Not a vague, far‑off nightmare—it’s already happening. Brechin knows. October 2023, Storm Babet tore into the town, smashing through defenses that were meant to stand for two centuries. They didn’t last fifty. The South Esk roared, the streets drowned, and more than 130 homes were gutted.

People lived it, not reports. Kim Clark’s house on River Street? Flooded four times in twenty‑three years, but the last storm forced her out for nearly a year. Eleven months away from home, eleven months of drying out, repairing, waiting. She’s blunt now. “If it happens again, I’m walking.”

But the larger system lags. Projects drag on. Costs balloon. That £500 million bill? Now likely pushing a billion. Public bodies—government, councils, water authorities, environment regulators—point to each other, shuffle responsibilities like a deck of damp cards. Nobody grips the wheel.

And with every delay, inequality grows. Older residents, families with tight budgets, people already worn by health struggles—they’re hit hardest. Insurance vanishes for some. Recoveries take longer. Whole streets, like Kim’s, half abandoned, scarred, boarded up.

Scotland’s leaders say they’re improving strategy. Groups, funding, registers, resilience committees—they all exist on paper. But as the auditor’s report reminds them, paper doesn’t stop water. Flood walls do. And in the meantime, storms aren’t waiting politely for the paperwork to finish.