Protecting Future Homeowners from Flooding

Last week, BACA Director Richard Coutts visited the 'Flood school' at HR Wallingford’s flood testing site near Oxfordshire to attend Flood Re’s 'Property Resilience Roundtable.' Flood Re is a reinsurance scheme that makes flood cover more widely available and affordable to homeowners.

The topics covered included an update on the PFR Community of Interest, the Flood Compliance Platform, a detailed update on and practical exercise on Build Back Better, an update on the Scoring Project, and updates from Defra and the Environment Agency on policy and implementation.

Moving forward

It is our observation that homeowners will not wade through 500-page manuals and, often and reluctantly, will only engage with the statutory requirements of the building regulations. Recent conversations with clients have included challenging discussions over their requirement to have larger areas of glazing and questioning why we need to deliver 10% net biological gain. Another observation is the growing trend to pave over front gardens to enable electric cars to charge next to the home – the owners feel they’ve done their bit for the environment when, conversely, they are removing landscaping that attenuates and reduces surface water flooding. The rising cost of fuel prices has also added to the mix, and hence it is in this context that the Flood Re Insurance Coverage and proposed version of the EPC Certificate should be considered.

The data sets are encouraging, but what is clear is how best now to translate complex data (and, as we know, every flood site is different) into some simple, comprehensive guidance that empowers householders to improve their stock either proactively or after a flood event has occurred to boost their future resilience.

Our suggestions:

• Based on your postcode, the EA has flood mapping that provides information on the severity and probability of a flood event. Perhaps this information can also provide the height of the floodwaters (This information is available from the EA in Flood Pack 4).
• Based on the above, the homeowner is directed to no more than 10-20 products and solutions – each with a weighting that is linked to the EPC score. The guidance - linked to updated building regs - will provide sample detailing and retrofitting information on how best to fit individual products and/or as a suite of solutions.
• Flood Re to provide guidance on the financial benefits to the homeowner for doing so (i.e., payback periods balanced against the probability of flooding).

The assessment should also include what percentage of the property's external spaces are hard or soft (therefore addressing issues such as paving over gardens for electric cars and considering permeable paving as an alternative) and therefore not exacerbating surface water flooding.