Property flood resilience - enabling uptake
The Defra Property Flood Resilience Action Plan is progressing a range of themes aimed at encouraging better uptake of resilience measures for properties at high flood risk. This will be hugely beneficial to individuals, families and businesses alike. It will help to both significantly reduce flood damages and provide greater peace of mind to those communities where traditional forms of flood alleviation have not been feasible.This presentation will explore the challenges that we face in achieving these objectives, by drawing on the evidence available from community property flood resilience schemes delivered by the Environment Agency and Local Authorities, as well as post-flood grants such as we witnessed following Storm Desmond. Levels of public awareness, the language we use and how property flood resilience is delivered are key factors that can act as barriers affecting take-up. But simply increasing take-up will be of no value without listening to the needs of property owners or insurers, and without developing and adopting best practice standards in flood risk assessment, product design, installation and ongoing aftercare. By addressing these barriers, we have a great opportunity to enable people to better prepare their homes and businesses for future floods, empowering communities to manage the impact that flooding has on their lives and livelihoods.
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