The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has warned that government spending on flood defences in the United Kingdom needs to increase by 10% a year to £750 million by 2011 to deal with the growth in

The ABI says that 570,000 homes are now at high flood risk, compared to the estimate of 220,000 when current flood spending levels were set in 2002.

In its report, A Future for the Floodplains published in July 2006, the ABI says that coastal floods and storm damage will increase markedly over the next 50 years. "Bad storms that currently occur just once a century could happen every five to ten years."