The leisure and amenity value of willow trees in green field settings, as opposed to grey concrete channels, 'adds value' and attracts property developers to build on the floodplains. But the less popular 'hard' solutions should not be written off. The mechanisms that helped to save a large part of York from the worst affects of the recent floods were hard structures. Soft defences in this area would have been useless. Hard concrete solutions may be ugly but they cannot be excluded from future flood defence solutions, as has been suggested by some environmentalists.
Flood prevention is complex and solutions are often localised.
But local solutions have implications for other areas. New building on river plains means handling the increased rate of run-off and building in local and network 'buffer' capacities. But this would require more spending to replace the outdated and crumbling sewer infrastructure in some lower catchment areas . But water companies' funding is stretched - and often the choice is between improving treatment to meet Urban Wastewater Treatment Directives, or working on combined sewer systems to avoid premature spilling and prosecution. There isn't much funding left for serious infrastructural solutions to developing floodplains.