Storms Ciara and Dennis brought misery to the many businesses and homeowners who were left baling out their properties and discarding belongings and stock. Most will be out of their buildings for months, many face a big repair bill and there is good data showing that flooded businesses often never recover.
The head of the Environment Agency, Emma Howard Boyd, made it clear when launching the EA’s draft long-term flooding strategy in May 2019 that climate change increases the chance of flooding and it will be impossible to build tall enough defences to contain the water. Instead, the EA’s aim is to develop consistent standards to help communities understand their risk, decide what to do at a local level to reduce it or recover more quickly after a flood, and then “build back better” by choosing flood-resilient repair methods.
The EA is not the only organisation championing such ideas. Since the 2016 Bonfield Report, a group of interested parties (government bodies, insurers, business organisations such as Business in the Community, surveyors, lawyers, engineers and other flood experts) have been working hard to deliver solutions. An early success was the BRE Certification Scheme for surveyors with special expertise in flood resilience. This runs alongside an RICS training course on how to carry out flood surveys, assess flood risk properly and recommend flood-resilience measures, either as part of post-flood repairs or advance planning for anticipated flooding. Certification gives a client confidence that their surveyor is suggesting work that will be of genuine benefit and regarded favourably by insurers and lenders.
The code of practice
The next building block is the Code of Practice for Property Flood Resilience, launched on 10 February. It is designed to overcome the existing confusion about which measures work, in which circumstances, the minimum standards for their manufacture and the right way to install them. Sadly, this lack of regulation, consistency and provenance has sometimes led property owners to spend money on unsuitable defences that did not work as expected in the next flood.
CIRIA led the project that produced the Code of Practice, which is free to download here.
The Code focuses on property flood resilience measures and sets out six standards to be achieved (see boxes above). These standards will be supplemented by guidance later in 2020. The Code is suitable for property owners and tenants (whether public or private sector); all professionals advising a client whose property is at flood risk; manufacturers of PFR; builders, developers and contractors who install PFR; local planning authorities and building control officers (specifying standards for future developments/monitoring the quality of rebuilding); and insurers, brokers and loss adjusters (who hold the purse strings of any post-flood repair).
Solicitors’ duties
Solicitors are bound by the Law Society Practice Note on Flood Risk, reissued on 31 January 2020. It says they should:
- consider whether to discuss flood risk with the client;
- make further investigations into flood risk if appropriate;
- consider advising the client, pre-exchange, to discuss the property’s flood risk profile with their surveyor or other consultant;
- encourage the client to check out early whether they will be able to get insurance (including flood cover) on acceptable terms. Although Flood Re has done a good job of widening the market for flood insurance for some at-risk homes, it does not cover a significant number of homes (for example, those built since 2009 or leasehold blocks of flats), or any business property.
Where a client discovers that it cannot get flood cover at an acceptable cost, it may prefer to carry out PFR rather than abort the acquisition. For existing owners who find their flood cover is no longer available on renewal (which happened to several caught up in Storm Dennis), implementing PFR might persuade the insurer to continue cover. Solicitors/surveyors can help by pointing to the Code of Practice, which sets out, step by step, the route to successful PFR.
Where next?
With the Association of British Insurers and Aviva involved in drafting the Code, the hope is that other insurers will view compliance as a benchmark of good practice for improving flood resilience and reducing the likelihood or cost of future flood claims. They should then be more willing to pay for PFR as part of post-flood repair work. This will improve the level of property-specific protection in the at-risk areas and complement the EA’s flood defence work.
What is PFR?
Property flood resilience measures (PFR) are ways to adapt a building to reduce the damage caused by flooding and speed up recovery and reoccupation of flooded buildings.
There are two categories:
Resistance measures: keep water out of the property or part of it (eg air brick covers, flood doors, back return valves on plumbing)
Recoverability measures: use of materials, products and construction methods that prevent the internal fabric of a property from being unduly damaged by flood water so that it can recover quickly afterwards (eg hard wood floors not carpet; metal not MDF kitchen units, high-level electrical points, engineering bricks)
The Code standards
- Carrying out a proper assessment of the cause, depth and likelihood of flooding, using information from many sources
- Assessing the building and its susceptibility to the types of flooding identified (eg its design, materials, orientation, elevation and use) – this goes further than a typical condition survey
- Preparing a specification for the recommended PFR, considering efficacy, cost, ongoing maintenance and products which meet recognised industry standards
- Installing the PFR properly, choosing a competent installer and supervising the work effectively
- Testing the PFR and training the property owner/occupier to use it
- Regularly testing/maintaining PFR so it works correctly when deployed
Sue Highmore is a writer and trainer
