31
• Drive greater awareness of the actions people can take proactively before any
flooding and ensure that practical advice for property owners and occupiers is
available at the right time when making decisions about their properties. This requires
suitably trained advisors in all parts of the market – including the property and
insurance sectors – so that they consider and apply the benefits of property flood
resilience in their work;
• Ensure the right incentives and financial products are available to encourage property
flood resilience installation. This includes strengthening links between property flood
resilience and the cost of flood insurance for those at high risk. This will require that
robust data about the value of resilience measures within properties is collected and
made available to insurers, businesses and householders;
• Consider options to further remove barriers to the uptake of property flood resilience in
homes through the operation of the Flood Re scheme. This will include further
encouraging insurers to price their policies to reflect reductions in risk as a result of
property flood resilience – for example by enabling discounted premiums to be
available to households which have been fitted with flood resilience measures. It will
also include enabling the scheme to support pay-outs which cover the installation
of more resilient repairs – so that properties are less likely to flood in future and
damages are less severe; and
• To further speed up resilient homes we will work with Flood Re and the insurance
industry to explore whether it would be beneficial for insurers to share more
information with customers about their flood risk – encouraging everyone to take
responsibility to encourage greater uptake. As part of this we will also explore whether
there’s more that the Flood Re scheme could do to accelerate uptake of PFR, which
could include using the scheme’s currently available funding. We will also pursue
some technical changes to deliver better value for money.
Appropriate insurance is an important tool in supporting recovery from flooding and helping
people to get back to normal more quickly. We want to ensure that flood insurance is both
accessible and affordable for people in flood risk areas.
All buildings in flood risk areas can improve their preparedness to reduce costs and
disruption to key public services when a flood happens. Our record £5.2 billion investment
in flood defences between 2021 and 2027 will better protect around 46,000 non-residential
properties – including schools, hospitals, transport links and utility sites.
Where infrastructure is not better protected as part of a wider community scale flood
defence scheme, those who own and run these sites – whether in public or private hands
– will be expected to take action to keep water out, minimise the damage if water gets in
through flood-resilient materials, and reduce the disruption caused. This includes effective
contingency planning to mitigate the impacts of flooding on the delivery of important
services.
The government works with industry partners to manage multiple risks to the transport
sector including those caused by flooding. The government will continue to take climate
change into account to ensure infrastructure networks are secure and resilient to any risks
including current and future extreme weather events. The Department for Transport will