Blue Mountains City Council Mayor Mark Greenhill said raising the wall would damage cultural and heritage sites within the historic area.

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“A better solution is to stop building in the floodplain,” he said. “Further development in the floodplain is pure insanity. What we ought to be looking at is investing in downstream anti-flooding measures - such as levees or diversions, proper escape routes and the potential for voluntary buying back properties in areas that are being rendered not safely habitable by climate change.”

The population of flood-prone areas in Sydney is expected to rocket in the coming years. Areas in the north-west of Sydney have a target of 33,000 new homes to be built before 2026 across Blacktown, The Hills Shire and Hawkesbury councils, while the south-west councils of Camden, Campbelltown and Liverpool have similar targets.

The report recommended the government build a disaster adaptation plan for each city and town, with planning instruments discouraging – and in many cases forbidding – development in disaster-likely areas.

It also found that future developments in the area need to include evaluations of existing and anticipated risks, as well as ensure flood risk management works with the economic and social needs of the community and greater resilience of infrastructure.

The government has said it will accept the report’s findings.

Hawkesbury-Nepean resident Suzette Turner, who lives in Shanes Park about 50 kilometres west of Sydney, has lived through four floods in the last two years.

In the March and July events, she lost almost everything and two months on, she said her family was still coming to terms with the disaster.

“It is devastating, I want to give up. We are so exhausted and tired. Financially it has ruined us, emotionally we are broken, I don’t know if we can do another flood, I don’t know how we will survive,” she said.

“We have considered leaving the area, but the housing crisis is in such a bad situation, where do we go? We are stuck.

“Every time we hear the rain, we panic.”

She said nearby development had made the flooding risk worse, with even a few days of heavy rain seeing roads through Shanes Park cut off.

Turner said they were struggling to get any compensation from the government.

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