Climate Change Committee warning of rising flood risks and calling for urgent, coordinated action to build resilience.
Join other savvy professionals just like you at CIHT. We are committed to fulfilling your professional development needs throughout your career
On 30 April 2025, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the independent advisor to the UK government on climate change, published a ‘Progress in adapting to climate change: 2025 report to Parliament’.
The CCC committee report states that:
“Over a third of railway and road kilometres are currently at flood risk, predicted to rise to around half by 2050. Extreme heat also disrupts infrastructure systems via rail buckling and power line sagging.”
The report assessed the progress in preparing for climate change of both the Strategic Road Network (SRN) and local roads. While the SRN’s preparedness has improved, local roads still face challenges. The CCC flagged limited actions around delivery and implementation of adaptation and insufficient policy and plans.
The report is available to read here.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng FRS, Chair of the Adaptation Committee and an Honorary Fellow of CIHT, said:
We have seen in the last couple of years that the country is not prepared for the impacts of climate change. We know there is worse to come, and we are not ready – indeed in many areas we are not even planning to be ready…
Ineffective and outdated ways of working within Government are holding back the country’s ability to be future-fit. Is this Government going to face up to the reality of our situation? Failing to act will impact every family and every person in the country.
The CCC report echoes CIHT calls in the report ‘Delivering a resilient transport network’, calling for improved coordination across government departments, integrating adaptation into all relevant policies and the implementation of monitoring, evaluation and learning across all sectors.
CIHT had previously called for:
Urgency to act now and be prepared: CIHT calls for adaptation and resilience to be made an immediate investment and policy priority across all governmental transport strategies. There is a risk of significant and expensive infrastructure failures if resilience measures are not recognised as key strategic objectives now. Extreme weather events are happening with increased frequency and intensity – it is imperative that we act now to mitigate the risk of losses.
Mandatory assessments of the current and future resilience of the infrastructure: CIHT encourages the legislative road authorities of the UK to make it a statutory requirement for all transport asset owners to carry out transport resilience assessments. This will help to identify vulnerabilities in the network, prioritise remedial action and identify who should be responsible. This should also apply to neighbouring asset owners and utilities where risks and impacts are clearly inter-twined.
Building a nationwide leadership: CIHT encourages the legislative road authorities of the UK to provide coherent and consistent guidance to the sector on how to undertake risk assessments on resilience. There is a need to avoid different operators and asset owners developing their own internal assessments based on different assumptions, leading to non-transferable or non-sharable data.
CIHT looks forward to continuing to work with the Climate Change Committee and the government to ensure the UK’s transport networks are resilient in the face of climate change and increasingly adverse weather.
CIHT will shortly be releasing its own CLIMATES Report that will provide a series of practical recommendations to enable the sector to make genuine change.
For more information, please contact e: communications@ciht.org.uk
Join other savvy professionals just like you at CIHT. We are committed to fulfilling your professional development needs throughout your career
{{item.AuthorName}} {{item.AuthorName}} says on {{item.DateFormattedString}}: