Industry News
New PFR Research from Hull and Intact: Our Read on the Blueprint Report
The University of Hull‘s Energy and Environment Institute and Intact Insurance have published Blueprint for Innovation in Property Flood Resilience (PFR), a research report identifying where the current PFR market falls short and what needs to change. We received an early copy. Here is our read on what matters.
The report is part of a wider research partnership between Hull and Intact that aims to support the adoption of PFR in commercial properties. It draws on a catalogue of existing PFR products and three case-study sites in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, including a care home, an industrial healthcare manufacturer, and a Grade II listed residential property.
Three things in particular stood out to us, each of which has practical implications for how property owners, insurers, and planning authorities think about flood resilience.
1. The case for a commercial Build Back Better scheme
The Flood Re Build Back Better scheme has been available to domestic policyholders since 2022. It funds resilient reinstatement after flooding, rather than simply restoring properties to their pre-flood state. There is no equivalent for commercial properties.
The Hull report calls for that gap to be closed. It notes that small and medium businesses in particular often cannot afford to retrofit PFR measures without external support, and that conventional commercial underwriting models still rarely recognise the presence or effectiveness of PFR when pricing risk.
The report also acknowledges, fairly, that funding alone has not driven uptake even on the residential side. Early reports on the existing Build Back Better scheme suggest only a few hundred claims have been made across the entire country, with some insurers reporting as few as 13 eligible cases. A commercial extension of the scheme would need to come with the simpler application processes, clearer outreach, and stronger insurer engagement that the residential version has lacked.
Our view
A commercial Build Back Better scheme is overdue, but the lessons from the residential rollout matter. Without insurer buy-in and a route for businesses to actually access the funds in the days after a flood, a commercial scheme risks the same low uptake. The mechanism needs to be designed alongside loss adjusters and delivery partners, not bolted on afterwards.
2. Procedural resilience is not a substitute for physical defences
One of the report’s case studies focuses on St Mary’s Care Home in Hull, an 86-bed facility for elderly residents. The original planning approval required 600mm demountable flood barriers at all external ground-floor doors, plus permeable paving. Both were later removed under a Section 73 amendment, replaced with a Flood Evacuation Plan that relies on moving residents to upper floors during a flood event.
The justification rested on an updated Flood Risk Assessment which argued that recently completed Environment Agency defences had effectively reduced the site’s residual risk. The report is appropriately cautious about that conclusion. It points out that the assessment was not supported by site-specific hydraulic modelling, that the EA mapping still designates the site as Flood Zone 3, and that residual risk from surface water and defence overtopping cannot be ruled out.
This is the kind of decision a properly scoped flood survey is designed to flag. A Flood Evacuation Plan has its place, but it is reactive by definition. It depends on timely warnings, available staff, and the practical ability to move vulnerable residents at short notice. For a care home in particular, the loss of physical barriers in favour of procedural measures alone is a significant reduction in resilience, even where headline flood risk has improved.
Our view
Hybrid resilience, combining physical PFR measures with a tested evacuation plan, is almost always more defensible than relying on either in isolation. Where physical defences are removed during a planning amendment, the residual risk needs to be quantified properly, not inferred from the presence of nearby strategic schemes.
3. The certification bottleneck is a market problem, not just a technical one
The report includes a useful inventory of UK test facilities for PFR products. There are five, and most are owned and operated by PFR manufacturers themselves. Independent third-party testing capacity remains limited, which has measurable consequences. The report cites Flood Divert withdrawing from the BSI scheme because no UK facility was large enough to test their product under the relevant standard.
This matters for two reasons. First, it slows down the introduction of new products to the market and pushes development costs up, particularly for products aimed at commercial and heritage buildings. Second, it complicates the picture for insurers, surveyors, and property owners trying to distinguish between certified and non-certified products on a like-for-like basis.
The report calls for additional independent testing capability, certification frameworks tailored to modular and portable systems, and an update to British Standards to reflect real-world flood risk more closely. The University of Hull’s own PFR testing lab, which became operational in 2025, is part of the response, but the wider market gap remains.
Our view
For property owners, the practical implication is that “certified” does not always mean “comparable”. A flood survey that recommends specific products should be transparent about which standards each product has been tested against, by whom, and what the limitations of those tests are. Honest framing here matters more than presenting certification as a binary.
What the report doesn’t change, and what it does
The fundamentals of property flood resilience are well established. CIRIA C790, the Code of Practice for Property Flood Resilience, remains the reference document. The Environment Agency’s standing advice on flood risk assessments, the NPPF’s sequential and exception tests, and the existing British Standards for flood doors and barriers all continue to apply.
What the Hull and Intact report adds is a credible, evidence-based account of where the market is currently failing the people it is meant to serve. It identifies multifunctional product gaps, such as flood doors that also meet fire safety and accessibility standards, and the absence of automatic deployment systems for door openings. It makes the case for parametric insurance models, fast-track planning approvals for certified products, and a commercial Build Back Better scheme. None of these are radical proposals, but having them set out together, with research backing, helps move the conversation forward.
For insurers, loss adjusters, surveyors, and commercial property owners weighing up resilience investments, the report is worth reading in full.
Source: Furnues, D., McLelland, S.J., Thomas, R.E., Davidson, G.A. (2026). Blueprint for Innovation in Property Flood Resilience (PFR): Identifying Gaps and Opportunities in Product Development. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18245752
