Aaron Jones, Director. Flood Risk at Ashfield Group (LinkedIn)
The UK faces growing risks of flooding. Local authorities, risk managers, and insurance professionals play a critical role in addressing these risks, which affect both homes and commercial properties. Property flood resilience (PFR) measures offer a proactive way to mitigate damage and reduce recovery costs, yet widespread uptake remains a challenge. This blog explores how risk managers, local governments, and insurance loss adjusters can drive greater adoption of PFR strategies to protect communities, control losses, and improve flood recovery.
Property flood resilience: A practical solution
PFR strategies aim to minimise flood damage through both passive and active measures. Installing flood-proof doors (passive) or barriers (active), are interventions that can reduce the need for extensive water damage restoration. For professionals involved in insurance risk management or local government planning, these measures are critical in mitigating the growing financial, operational and mental health burdens caused by flooding.
Despite the clear advantages of such measures, many property owners continue to rely primarily on flood insurance options to manage flood risks, often overlooking the substantial benefits of installing proactive property-level resilience in reducing long-term costs and impact. Although FloodRe has enabled Build Back Better to help reduce property flood risk, this is only applied once a property has already flooded, making it a reactive solution, when its inevitably too late.
The barriers to widespread adoption
Despite the availability of funding, such as the PFR Repair Grant Scheme, and Build Back Better, encouraging homeowners to adopt property flood resilience measures has proven difficult. Several obstacles persist:
- Underestimating risk: Many property owners, particularly in lower-risk areas, do not fully appreciate the threats posed by surface water flooding. Even after a flood risk assessment, there is often reluctance to invest time and effort in protective measures.
- Perceived complexity: Installing flood protection measures like flood-proof barriers or doors can seem daunting, especially for those unfamiliar with best practice for flood resilience. Property owners may not be aware of how these solutions can seamlessly integrate with the day to day look and operation of their property.
- Short-term disruption: Many homeowners and businesses worry about the inconvenience that may come with retrofitting properties with PFR measures. Temporary disruptions for installation can feel unnecessary when past floods have not caused significant damage, even in flood-prone areas.
- Project management and funding: It can often be the case that funding may be available, but may require the property owner to initially fund the installation works up front before being reimbursed. This is a luxury many cannot afford to do.
What can be done to fast-track adoption
For risk managers in local government, councils, and insurance, encouraging PFR uptake is essential for reducing future damage and losses and ultimately safeguarding communities. Flood risk assessments must be communicated more effectively to property owners, ensuring they understand the benefits of flood mitigation techniques beyond immediate recovery. Insurance professionals, particularly loss adjusters, can play a key role by highlighting the advantages of resilience measures in limiting damage restoration works and ensuring faster post-flood recovery steps.
To encourage understanding and adoption, the following approaches can help when used appropriately:
- Targeted public engagement: Local government and councils may wish to further collaborate with insurers to improve public understanding of property flood resilience. Having a familiar insurer backing a local authority initiative adds further trust and instant familiarity. Visual examples of effective flood management strategies can quickly shift the mindset from reactive to proactive.
- Non-technical language: The benefits of flood resilience can quickly be lost if it is communicated in complex technical jargon or is simply hard to grasp first time. Using techniques derived from existing studies of human psychology and behaviours can help adapt these approaches for the better.
- Partnerships with flood risk experts: Collaborations with flood advisory professionals up front would enable authorities to turn to these at their time of need. It is often wrongly believed that advice on flood management is costly and lengthy. This is far from reality, and often having a professional at hand to answer even the simplest of flood resilience questions can go a long way in closing the knowledge gap.
Developing a skilled workforce for property flood resilience implementation
One of the most significant challenges in promoting PFR is the shortage of professionals trained in PFR installation. Many flood damage specialists focus on post-event recovery, such as residential water damage restoration, but fewer have expertise in installations to support preparedness and reduce damage. For PFR strategies to be widely adopted, this skills gap needs to be addressed.
Expanding professional training in PFR is key. Risk managers and insurance professionals should advocate for more specialised training programs and certifications that prepare contractors to install PFR measures, such as those offered by CIWEM, the National Flood School and specialist flood product manufacturers. Partnerships with flood data providers and experienced consultants can also provide a broader view of the potential proactive flood resilience measures that are viable to a local authority on a wider scale.
Local government authorities also play a pivotal role in scaling these efforts. By promoting and supporting emergency flood response plans that incorporate professional installations of PFR solutions. Councils can thus enhance both community and business resilience. Such programs not only reduce the impact of future floods but also ease the burden on other flood recovery programs.
Partnering for a resilient future
For risk managers in local authorities, councils, and the insurance industry, the need to advance PFR is clear. With increasing demand and investment, the overall cost of PFR protection will decrease, making the solution more accessible to all. The evidence demonstrating that this is a success story in the making is already there. By encouraging property owners to adopt PFR measures and ensuring that a trained workforce is available to install them, these key stakeholders can reduce the financial and social impact of floods going forward.
