Building climate resilience in flood-prone communities: the Resilient Roch approach

27 May 2025

In Rochdale, a pioneering project is combining flood protection, energy efficiency and deep community engagement to support vulnerable households

“People might know they are at flood risk – but if they’re struggling to pay the bills, pay the rent, and keep food on the table then they won’t be thinking about the potential of flooding in a few years’ time no matter how much upset that will cause to their lives.”

These are the words of a local government officer in the North West, quoted anonymously in the Rochdale Flood Poverty Report, who admitted that policy makers were “not in touch” with the extent of the challenges that people at socio-economic disadvantage faced.

Produced by Rochdale Borough Council in 2024 and supported by National Flood Forum, the report set out to explore these challenges. The Resilient Roch project is part of our response.

Resilient Roch is part of the Flood and Coastal Resilience and Innovation Programme (FCRIP). Itself part of the government's National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England, the six-year programme (which runs to March 2027) sees 25 projects testing and developing innovative new approaches that will reduce risk and increase flood resilience. The aim is to encourage behavioural change and new ways of working with and within flood affected communities.

Working in two communities in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, we’ve taken a more holistic climate-resilience approach to property resilience, seeking to deliver more flood resilient and warmer, more energy efficient homes for the future. We are supporting residents, schools and businesses to be more aware of their flood risk, confident about taking ownership of it and helping to manage it more effectively as individuals and neighbourhoods.

Vulnerable communities

It will not be a surprise to many that in Rochdale, as indeed in many older urban settlements, we found a correlation between flood vulnerability and social vulnerability. Communities may be transient. Landlords may be absent and unwilling or unable to maintain their properties. People who are vulnerable are likely to have more immediate priorities than flooding, except when the floods arrive.

The flooding and deprivation link

• People with fewer resources move to areas with cheaper housing – either renting or owning.
• Cheap housing may be cheaper because it is in poor condition and/or it is at risk of flooding and is therefore attractive as “buy-to-let” investments.
• Many landlords and homeowners do not or cannot afford to invest in their properties to make them/keep them habitable.
• When flooding occurs many houses are vulnerable due to poor build and maintenance.
• After flooding, homes may not be dried out and/or reinstated, leading to damp related health issues and increased heating costs.
• People without residential property insurance are particularly vulnerable – they bear the costs or live in damp and mouldy homes – both are drivers for deprivation and poverty.

These factors, among many others, heavily impact the community’s capacity to employ the self-led flood resilience techniques and processes that we encourage as a society and as a sector. And even when these traditional approaches are adopted, they reduce risk but do not eliminate it. People are still at risk and need both the vigilance and capability to be able to respond individually and as a community.

© Paul Cobbing | Property needing attention

In low-income areas the impact of flooding on people can be greater because they may be more vulnerable and do not have the resources to cope, especially if they lack residential property insurance. With the average insurance claim for buildings residential insurance topping £30,000, this is well beyond the ability of most people in our target areas.

The Rochdale Flood Poverty Report recommended that in addition to traditional flood risk management methods (such as structural defences like walls and engagement methods like flood warden systems), a more cross-sectoral and integrated approach should be taken to developing and maintaining a broad definition of resilience that includes community, financial and physical aspects.

Beyond risk management authorities

The first focus of Resilient Roch is to ensure that any resilience measures are installed and subsequently maintained correctly, and with support and guidance provided by the local authority. There is an emphasis on ensuring residents have both the measures themselves and the knowledge needed for them to be effective.

The second focus is on resilient behaviour, which involves building community capacity for collective preparedness on top of traditional understandings of personal resilience (knowing your flood risk and being prepared). For example, we will be working with property flood resilience (PFR) companies to develop training for local tradespeople in maintaining PFR correctly and ensuring that non-flood related work they carry out helps and doesn’t hinder flood resilience.

CIWEM’s property flood resilience initiatives

PFR is critical to protecting homes and businesses, but a lack of confidence and consistency in its delivery has led to low levels of uptake and quality. So in spring 2025, CIWEM launched a specialist professional register of PFR professionals.

It provides an independent, recognised benchmark of competency for those delivering PFR measures, building on our BeFloodReady Community of Practice and comprehensive training programme. For more information visit befloodready.ciwem.org.

This moves beyond the premise that increasing flood resilience is only delivered through the recognised risk management authorities such as the Environment Agency, lead local flood authorities and utility companies. Our project aims to embed delivering better flood resilience into the remit of a much broader suite of organisations working in and created with these communities.

Organisations such as Rochdale Boroughwide Housing and other social housing providers, Groundwork (who support communities through various schemes aimed at providing social benefits), Citizens Advice and very local community and faith-based projects and organisations are all playing a role in supporting key day-to-day flood resilient behaviour and practice.

Property flood resilience

Resilient Roch is combining flood resilience with energy efficiency measures, like insulation, whenever possible on individual properties in our two target areas of Wardleworth and Littleborough, creating more sustainable and climate-resilient homes. We’ve surveyed over 200 properties for flood resilience measures to date, and the installation process is currently underway. Where eligible we’ve carried out energy efficiency surveys to identify measures to make homes warmer.

Littleborough and Wardleworth are two of Rochdale’s highest flood risk areas.

Despite being geographically close, the areas are demographically quite distinct. Whilst Wardleworth experiences high levels of multiple deprivation, more subtle forms of deprivation can be found in parts of Littleborough where some households are ‘property rich and cash poor’ as many of the residents have very little disposable income even if they do own a home. This leaves them with little money for retrofitting for flood resilience. These contextual issues need careful consideration when working in and with these communities.

We are engaging the local community through multiple channels and introducing property-level solutions that will have long-term benefits for residents’ wellbeing and the environment. For example, warmer, flood-resilient and air-tight homes will be less damp, less likely to flood and will require less energy to keep warm, saving residents money.

Working with Rochdale’s housing team and the lead local flood authority on property climate resilience maximises the added values from the project. By aligning investment better, we have unlocked economic benefits for the borough. The approach means we can signpost any issues to other council services, for example around wider property condition or health and wellbeing issues.

An honest broker for community engagement

We’re building upon longstanding engagement work in our community with the National Flood Forum. Partnered with the council since 2013, the charity has developed in-depth knowledge and strong relationships with the community, helping to increase awareness of flooding and develop the confidence to adopt more resilient behaviours.

Having a third party – an honest broker that can work in and with communities – to build trust is key to the project’s success. This is especially the case where people feel disenfranchised from years of consultation and ambivalent about any form of engagement with authority. This work takes place on many fronts, collaborating with the many organisations that are active in communities to build community resilience, as well as working in schools, with flood action groups, street champions and more.

Climate change hubs are being developed as a place for knowledge sharing, surgeries, meetings, exhibitions and workshops. Where language proves a barrier to engagement, community groups such as the Rochdale Women's Welfare Association have helped with translation, providing an essential bridge to ensure that our messages reached those who might face language or cultural barriers.

Another notable example of collaboration with existing organisations is the work with the Rochdale Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) on flood insurance and signposting people to accessible, affordable and appropriate insurance. On most weekdays CAB employees sit at the front of Rochdale central library supporting residents with dozens of queries a day. They are a present and trusted source of information in the borough. Partnering with them, and other organisations like them, is a vital way of sharing ways to support Rochdale residents impacted by flooding.

The insurance challenge

Residential property insurance is probably the single most important thing that people can do to protect their financial resilience in flood risk areas. Having surveyed residents on property flood resilience and energy efficiency retrofit measures, we found that roughly one third of people had residential property insurance, one third did not and a third did not know. Promoting insurance uptake as part of the overall approach in the target areas is an integral part of our approach, working with the insurance industry and organisations engaged with the communities.

In many low-income households, affordability is still a barrier to insurance despite eligibility for the government-backed Flood Re scheme. We have begun to investigate the possibilities for insuring these households, exploring how access to affordable insurance can be provided through social housing providers. It raises questions for both the insurance industry and at government level. For example, if some social housing providers can offer affordable insurance schemes, why aren’t these policies available to all social housing tenants or anyone with an affordability issue?

Looking forwards

Community preparedness requires support and investment. Particularly in vulnerable areas, the capacity for preparedness and resilience needs to be built in by addressing the multitude of factors that make people vulnerable. Preparedness can only be achieved when community capacity is built up through whole society and climate resilience-based approaches.

The project begins to explore concepts of what resilience and social justice really mean and how flood risk management can address these issues in different types of communities.

We are halfway through the programme now and have until 2027 to fully develop the impact of our practices. We will continue to bring the community alongside us as we deliver more PFR installations, community level SuDS, further insurance training for existing community support groups, and develop community hubs that will ensure the aims of the project have a lasting legacy. Along the way, we are looking for any opportunities that arise to develop or mainstream some of our key practices. For example, how we engage on flood resilience and how properties in the social housing sector are maintained. While we are already involved in disseminating some of our learning, we are always looking for further opportunities to do so.

We hope to create warmer, drier homes where people have greater confidence in their ability to be climate resilient. We also want to support residents in building positive relationships with flood risk management agencies and have the confidence to collaborate with them to manage flood risk in their communities. Where communities are effectively engaged, better environments are made for managing flood risk. This looks like communities where residents understand how to be physically, socially and financially resilient, and if they are not (because not everyone will be), there are always organisations present that have the right knowledge to support them.

At the end of the project, we also hope that we can prove the economic and social benefits of combining energy efficiency and PFR measures. Currently we know it is possible and replicable, but soon we hope to share more of our successes.

After the project ends, its legacy will continue: community hubs, better informed residents, more climate-resilient homes, more nature-based solutions providing multiple benefits, and continued multi agency working. We hope that our innovations will be further developed elsewhere.

Fran Comyn of Rochdale Borough Council and Resilient Roch will be taking part in a session on 'Building climate resilient communities' at Flood & Coast 2025. Book your ticket here.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 print edition of The Environment. CIWEM members can read the issue in full (and all back issues dating back to 2016) via MyCIWEM. You can also stay up-to-date with our free monthly 'The Environment' newsletter – subscribe here.

Charlotte Jones is a flood engagement officer at National Flood Forum
Paul Cobbing is a freelance flood risk consultant and former chief executive of National Flood Forum