Are you flood ready? A Planet Possible deep-dive

03 November 2025

How to check your risk of flooding and prevent property damage, including how to find or become a registered professional

As autumn gets properly underway in the UK, with the first named storm of the 2025/26 season having hit our shores in early October, it’s time for each of us to consider whether our home is one of the 6.3 million that the Environment Agency warns is at risk of flooding.

To find out, as well as understand how to prevent damage to your property in the event of a flood, and how to speed up recovery after the fact, there’s BeFloodReady, a collection of online resources for the public and professionals alike.

Paul Shaffer, director of projects at CIWEM, the organisation leading on BeFloodReady, joins Niki Roach, host of the Planet Possible Spotlight podcast, to talk about the importance of flood readiness, or what the industry terms ‘property flood resilience’.

Over to Niki and Paul…

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Niki Roach: Let's start by understanding what is property flood resilience, and why is it so important at the moment?

Paul Shaffer: Property flood resilience is really about approaches to make people and property less vulnerable to flooding. There's three core areas. One is being prepared for flooding in terms of understanding your flood risk, signing up to flood warnings, and also making sure there's a flood plan. And then the next bit is about what can be done to reduce the chances of water or floodwater entering your property through flood resistance – these are things like flood doors and flood barriers.

The third thing is around flood recoverability, which is accepting that water might enter the property and working out what could be done to reduce that damage and that impact. Because typically in a house that hasn't got flood resilience, it could take six months to a year for people to return. If people are undertaking property flood resilience, there's a way to reduce that disruption, that damage, and also speed up the recovery, so people can get back into the property shortly after the flooding event.

NR: For those people that don't live near a river, are they still at risk of flooding?

PS: Wherever you are, if you're served by drainage, you're at flood risk. At the moment, there is a growing risk of surface water flooding – which is water runoff that doesn’t get into a water course or drainage system. At the end of December last year, the Environment Agency produced a flood risk assessment that said that around 6.3 million [properties in England] are at flood risk. A large proportion of that, 4.6 million, are susceptible to surface water [flooding]. And with climate change and urbanisation, that's likely to increase: around 2050, around 8 million properties are likely to be impacted, so that's one in four.

NR: If people are wondering if they might be at risk, is there an easy place that they can go to find out?

PS: We've produced a website called BeFloodReady, CIWEM’s Community of Practice and within that there's lots of information about where to find out about future flood risk, but also find out about flood warning, and there's opportunities for that to be sent through to your phone. There's also opportunities for that to be sent to smart speakers as well. It gives an opportunity for people to be prepared.

NR: Why are CIWEM so interested and what have you been up to, Paul?

PS: CIWEM has got a royal charter that is about making sure that the public are protected from potential environmental risks. Part of that is making sure that we also support with the professionalisation of those working in the sector, so we've been involved in property flood resilience since about 2015.

Back then, it was recognised that there's a huge challenge about making sure those people undertaking property flood risk surveys and then implementing the measures are qualified. What happened in 2014 is that government introduced some grants following flooding, and there was an increase in the number of builders saying they could deliver property flood resilience, and it was increasing concern about the quality of that. So we're really keen to make sure that as property flood resilience is mainstreamed, that the quality and the confidence in property flood resilience increases. So we've been working with organisations to support the development of a code of practice, which was released in 2021. And following on from that we've been working with our partners and the Environment Agency to develop some training that's aligned with this code of practice.

There's six standards within this code of practice that covers everything from flood hazards all the way through to operation and maintenance of property flood resilience. We're producing training that covers that but also we're developing this specialist register: people participate in accredited training, but also demonstrate their experience and their skills through producing surveys and reports about the competency that they have and also an assessment.

NR: So if I decided that I needed some flood barriers at my house, is there a way of using what you're doing to check the person that I've asked to do this work is competent?

PS: On our website and on the CIWEM main website we're going to have the list of those people that have passed through our specialist register. They're broadly broken down into those people that undertake the PFR [property flood resilience] surveys, and then also do the quality assessment of the installation, but also the installers and the builders and contractors that have gone through the course and the special register application process.

There aren't building regulations to specify PFR (and there's a number of us trying to progress that because it seems to be like a obvious quick win) but there are planning requirements in terms of making sure that whatever you do, you try to avoid that risk. So property flood resilience at the moment is primarily for retrofit applications, but there are things that can be done with a new build in terms of making sure that those recoverability measures and the ways that the buildings are developed are easier to recover from following a flood.

NR: If you end up going with a provider who hasn't had the training, what kind of risks are people running?

PS: Some key elements of the work that's gone into this code of practice are about making sure that there's good communication and that there's a proportionate delivery of property flood resilience: there are risks that it could be not the right type of product for the type of flooding or it could be really expensive. But also I've seen some really basic examples where contractors that have installed flood barriers but not looked at the quality of the brickwork, joins around windows, what have you, and [not] been able to identify really basic points of entry for water. I've seen pictures of quite expensive flood barriers being installed, but right next to them is a really big hole in the wall where water would obviously enter.

NR: You've talked about a ‘community of practice’, which feels like a bit of an industry word. So just explain a little bit more about what that is.

PS: The community of practice is about recognising that there's a number of people doing quite a lot of good work out there. What we're really keen to do is collate that information and make sure it's accessible to both the public and also professionals in an easy way. So fundamental to the community of practice is a website that we produced where we have accessible information designed for the public and also professionals to make sure there's a join up of information. We've also got a resources page, where we're cataloguing and making available 140 or so resources which we’ve split into the different stages of flooding and also different audiences.

There's information in there that's suitable for the public, but some of it might be more technical, more suitable for professionals. We've also got a number of case studies that can be searchable in terms of the types of measures that are used and also the geographies. As part of this community of practice we also deliver webinars and events, primarily virtually, on key aspects of public flood resilience, whether it be around innovation, delivery mechanisms or some of the technical changes that are happening. We also have opportunities for people to sign up to a quarterly newsletter for them to be updated on those latest changes. Throughout the year we also have a collection of blogs from those professionals involved in BeFloodReady, talking about some key changes, sharing some of their opinions and also just making sure that people are aware of what's possible.

NR: If our listeners are organisations that want to get involved beyond registering, are there opportunities to support what you're doing with BeFloodReady?

PS: In the next couple of months, we're going out to the sector to see if there's interest in supporting the community of practice and demonstrating thought leadership and also accessing the training that we're delivering. So there's opportunities for credible organisations to get involved and there's also associated with that an organisation called the International PFR Association, which is out there to support the supply chain as well. We're keen to focus on what we can do to support the public and those professionals that work in the supply chain.

We've also got opportunities for partners and supporters to raise their profile, get early access to information, and also to network with peers in terms of delivery of good practice.

NR: Brilliant. Well, it's been really comprehensive. Thank you so much for taking us through everything you're up to.

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There’s much more where that came from – listen to the full conversation here. You can also search for Planet Possible and Planet Possible Spotlight in your favourite podcast app for more interviews.

Visit the BeFloodReady website and sign up to receive quarterly updates on property flood resilience.