Could it be that someone in these flood-prone areas already has done some rough sums and figured out that in the long run it's much cheaper to just reimburse (barely) people for the occasional flood damage than it would be to erect proper defences to ensure that the occasional floods didn't happen?
But as in Carlisle's case, they spent millions building a flood defence that was totally inadequate, someone somewhere should be accountable for that, the amount of flooding I have seen from photos sent to me wasn't much greater than the previous floods, that makes you wonder did they simply raised the flood defenses to the level of the previous floods and not higher?
Bitts park BTW always flooded all the years I lived there, though some areas of the City would be difficult to defend against flooding, due to the likes of where the Caldew joins the Eden and the built up area around that being in close proximity to the river with few opportunities to build defences.
The problem with flood defences though is they simply shift the problem from one area to another.