Flooding: More protection for homes in Kent and Sussex

Yalding has been badly flooded several times, including in 2007

More than 50,000 homes in Kent, East Sussex and parts of South London now have better protection from flooding, according to the Environment Agency.

It said this was down to work carried out over the past six years, as part of a national scheme to improve flood defences for 300,000 properties.

Areas that have seen work carried out include Romney Marsh, Medway and Rye.

Across England, the Agency said it had spent £2.6bn since 2015.

The work carried out on the Romney Marsh cost £130m and will protect infrastructure.

'At risk'

Mark Douch, of the Environment Agency, said: "Most of Romney Marsh is below sea level.

"We've got the trunk road that we would lose, we've got the railway line, Dungeness Power Station would become an offshore island. There's 14,500 homes at risk, over 700 businesses."

The area where the rivers Medway, Teise and Beult meet have seen work carried out on individual properties where flooding risk is particularly high.

Places such as Yalding and Tonbridge have experienced severe flooding several times in the past, including in October 2007 and again in 2014.

However, people are being warned not to relax their guard.

Dr Eleanor Parker, a consultant in risk resilience at Coventry University, said: "There's a finite level of protection that those barriers offer, so in the event that we get a really catastrophic flood, the people that have lived protected behind that barrier for a long time may have lost some of the preparedness measures that they had in place because they've got used to not being flooded.

"For people that live where a piece of coastline is likely to be lost to the sea, that's absolutely devastating, but there isn't a bottomless pot of money and fighting a battle against the sea and erosion is something that we are eventually going to lose."

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